We may have finally seen the trailer for The Matrix Resurrection, but if we had solved every mystery about the new Matrix movie we would have lied.
If anything, the very first trailer presented more questions than answers, such as how Neo and Trinity returned after their alleged deaths in the original trilogy, why Morpheus now played someone new, and more.
We won’t get definite answers until the movie is released in December and it will take a while for us to see the new trailer as well. However, in the new HBO Max promo trailer, we get a glimpse of the Matrix resurrection which is mainly made up of the footage we watched.
Even a slightly extended moment can give you a clear indication of how Neo has come back from the dead.
About 46 seconds into the HBO Max promo, we see some now-familiar snippets of the new movie, in which Neo takes a red shot and fights Morpheus in a dojo.
We also see that someone is plugged into the Matrix, and while it’s a beat from the trailer, it’s (slightly) obvious. Now, of course, he could actually be almost any of the artists, but from this new look, it definitely looks like Keno Reeves’ Neo acquaintance.
We knew from the set photos that Reeves had played a buzz during the filming, so it wouldn’t be a surprise to show the film Neo out of the matrix. But if it is Neo, what difference does it make?
Going back to the original film, Cypher struck a deal with Agent Smith to betray Morpheus in exchange for rejoining the Matrix.
“I know this steak doesn’t exist. I know that when I put it in my mouth, the matrix is telling my brain that it’s juicy and delicious. Nine years later, do you know what I found out? Ignorance is joy,” he said. Agent tells Smith.
“I don’t remember anything … you put my body back in a power plant, put me back in the matrix and I’ll give you what you want.”
Agent Smith agrees with Cipher’s terms, and while we must assume that he is telling the truth (because he probably won’t), it means that machines have a way to add humans to the matrix, even after they’ve seen the truth. Not only that, once a person goes back inside they can erase the memories.
What if the machine did that to Neo? After he sacrificed himself to free Agent Smith in The Matrix Revolution, we saw the machine remove Neo’s body, and we saw him last.
Maybe to revive him or to save his life if Neo didn’t actually die, they reattached him to the Matrix. Whether intended by the machine or not, this could explain the loss of his memory and why he appears to be taking a blue pill in the first trailer of the new movie.
A flash in the same trailer and you’re going to miss-they can confirm that Neo is plugged in again.
When he talks about having “dreams that weren’t just dreams,” we get the flash of working on Neo by machine, with burnt eyes at the end of the original trilogy.
Combined with the neo-like figure attached to the matrix we see, this could be the result of what the machine did after the neo-revolution. The question then is whether he started a new iteration of the Matrix or it will be just an extended version of your identity.
Equally, it can all be a clever marketing misdirection, and the answer is something you haven’t considered yet. In the world of matrix, the answers can be literally anything.