WMG / The Matrix Resurrections

The Matrix Online is still canon, and backstory to this movie

• The canon status of The Matrix Online is a major question going into this movie, but two major plot points may impact this movie. First, that Morpheus actually died relatively early in TMO, and remains dead. Second, a radical splinter group was formed within Zion called "EPN" (E Pluribus Neo), founded by the Kid, who vowed to continue to uphold the values of Neo and Morpheus. Bugs's crew are said to be a small resistance group who grew up believing in the legend of Neo and never gave up on finding him again even when all others lost hope. It's possible that Bugs' crew are the current iteration of EPN, or spiritual successors of sorts to EPN.

The rebooted Matrix is dictated by humans.

• In the reboot of the franchise, there is a role reversal and humans are the primary antagonists this time around, instead of the machines. A faction of Cypher like-minded individuals wanted the old ways back and hijacked a load of machines to keep it running as they see fit, including retelling the story of Neo. But this virtual world suffers from loads of glitches and technical problems. Things aren't quite right.
  • Adding to this, the machines who are still committed to peace with the City of Zion would be forced to join forces with the people of Zion to stop the Cypherite putsch before the software bugs in the Matrix cause the Matrix to crash.
  • Just as Young Morpheus is replacing the original, Jessica Henwick's character is the new generation of Cypher.

That's a later version of The One, not actually Neo

• We know the Merovingian is back, and he's the one who mentioned the predecessors first, so obviously this movie is the start of a new chapter with the next One.

Laurence Fishburne is secretly in the movie playing Old Morpheus

• The actor denied being in it because he doesn't want to spoil the surprise, or his performance was filmed later and secretly. There will be a big twist involving old Morpheus or a sequel teaser. Young Morpheus perhaps is an avatar, program or glitch.
  • Or possibly, the events of The Matrix Online MMO is being accepted as canon, and the guy that looks like a young Morpheus in the trailer is actually the Morpheus Simulacrum and the real Morpheus (now aged) is still unable to enter the Matrix due to the events of the MMO.

The film is going to be a satire of modern franchise-and-reboot-driven Hollywood

The Wachowskis have been approached numerous times to revisit The Matrix series, but they have been pretty consistently reluctant to do so. Eventually, rumors appeared that Warner might continue the franchise without their involvement. So Lana decided to take this Trilogy Creep and run with it. The first trailer and teasers already contain a number of references to previous installments that are so on-the-nose that it can’t possibly not be on purpose. In Revolutions, the Matrix had undergone a literal reboot, which symbolizes a Continuity Reboot; the teaser and trailers contain a number of elements that suggest the original film has become a (supposed) Show Within a Show in Resurrections. All in all, this looks like it’s going to be a deliciously ironic commentary on Sequelitis.

• Confirmed. While in-universe The Matrix is a popular video game series rather than a film franchise, it otherwise follows this beat for beat, even citing the desire of the gaming company's parent, Warner Brothers, to make a sequel game whether or not the creator wants to. Meanwhile, Neo — said creator — has to listen to a bunch of people explaining what the game series actually meant, all in service of a cash grab sequel that he is only working on to avoid having someone else take it over.

The film will be a Torch the Franchise and Run

As the above has noted, if WB is going to continue the Matrix without their input, then perhaps they can continue with smoldering ashes.

The woman at the book store with the red glasses is the most recent version of The Oracle.

In the trailer, Thomas goes to what appears to be a bookstore and encounters a woman with a copy of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. The young woman is actually a recent version of The Oracle (maybe having once again having to sacrifice her previous form for a newer one as she had between The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions).

• Alternatively, it's not the Oracle as we know. It is Sati from The Matrix Revolutions, all grown up and has taken over the role the Oracle previously had. Semi-Confirmed. It's Sati, but she isn't actually the Oracle.

The Darrining of Morpheus will be a minor plot point.

Perhaps whoever is running the Matrix now found Morpheus to be so deeply ingrained in his beliefs and convictions that it necessitated an almost complete "factory reset" of his simulacra. The beginning of the film will chronicle the programmed Morpheus re-discovering the truth and his attempts to Put the Band Back Together to combat whatever is happening.

• Perhaps this Morpheus is a Legacy Character who admired the original.

The real Neo and Trinity didn't survive the events of the original trilogy. The Neo and Trinity we see now are their digital "afterimages".

Just came to suggest they were brain uploaded.

• Based on Trinity's multiplying effect and Neo seeing a different face in the mirror, it's possible both have taken over blue pills, much like Agents.
• Alternately, the machines might have access to cloning technology. They cloned Trinity and imprinted her "afterimage" on the blank slate mind that left, creating a duplicate for Neo to pursue.
• Or they might have actually resurrected the originals and put them back into the Matrix. Neo and Trinity crashed in the middle of Zero One (the Machine City on the Arabian peninsula). This is the most technologically advanced place on Earth, and has stood for hundreds of years since the end of the Human-Machine War. You'd think brain death would be a minor inconvenience to a collective of Mechanical Abominations.
  • Partly-confirmed. The Analyst took the "resurrect the originals" approach. Most of the "mirror faces" stuff is digital smoke and mirrors to hide them from anyone trying to rescue them.

Neo is led to believe, by the psychiatrist and possibly others, that he is a movie actor or some other kind of content creator.

Given that the trailer features a scene from The Matrix played on the side of a building, and Neo only vaguely remembers the truth, the lie that's been constructed for him is that he used to be in a film trilogy and that his current mental state of remembering his past life is just a case of him being in a dissociative state while contemplating from his most famous "role".

• Further fueling this theory is the setting itself. The interior of Neo's house, as well as Neil Patrick Harris' therapist house, look stylish and clean. He would probably have a large source of income to afford these luxuries.
  • Confirmed, sort of. Thomas Anderson in this Matrix is the programmer of a wildly successful game trilogy, The Matrix, which is basically his memories of the first three films.

The film will explain Agent Smith's absence

Hugo Weaving confirmed he was unable to reprise his role as Agent Smith due to scheduling conflicts and Lana writing his character out of the film. So, my guess is the film explains the Machines make sure Agent Smith is gone for good due to his actions in The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions which almost destroyed the Matrix.

• Alternatively, Smith will be put into a new "shell" like the Oracle. In this film, he will be played by Jonathan Groff.

Neo survived at the end of Revolutions and was plugged back into the Matrix

• There's one still of someone with burn scars over their eyes and cables from the new film, which is likely Neo. Possibly what has happened is that Neo still had to return to the source of the Matrix to reboot it, and so that's why his body was carried out by the machines at the end of the third film. However, he was too physically injured after his confrontation with Smith (in both his fight with Bane/Smith and in the Matrix), and so that he could survive, he was plugged back in. The trauma he suffered has led to at least partial amnesia, and the psychologist is working with the Machines to slowly bring him up to speed, because he is now too old to be unplugged normally, and if he was removed as he was in the first film, the shock would kill him. The Machines want him alive, not as a bartering tool or a hostage, but as someone who was willing to broker peace with them, and are nursing him so to speak as a measure of good will.
  • Zig-zagged. It pretty much looks like Neo and Trinity were dead, but the machines (specifically the Analyst) had the tech to bring them back, albeit at excruciating "expense" (presumably in terms of time and resources.)

The Machines ensured The One cycle ran smoothly by copying certain archetypes each cycle, but Neo's memories are disrupting the reset

• Each time the Machines complete a cycle, an "afterimage" of key characters in the cycle is created and imprinted on the next crop. Their personalities and actions can be predicted based on this, ensuring the creation of Zion and the controlled growth of The One. The disruption of the last cycle and Neo's unprecedented evolution has caused the attempted reset to stall as his presence starts waking up the archetypes. This is why the new Morpheus seems to know Neo despite being a different person.
  • This is also why Neo sees a different man in the mirror and Trinity is surrounded by afterimages of other women at one point. These are past iterations of their archetypes and the disruption of the cycle is causing their memories to bleed over.

The machines are using Neo to keep the Matrix stable.

Every "One" before Neo, chose to simply go into the Source, and disseminate the "patch" code in order to keep the cycle going. Neo however, chose to reject that option, because of that, the patch code he had inside him kept running, rather than integrating to the Source, this longer "runtime" meant the patch code was actually "finished" instead of being incomplete. The reason this never happened before is that the previous Ones never rejected the choice. So, by rejecting the choice to return to the source, he caused what the Architect was always looking for, a final "patch" to keep the Matrix running smoothly, instead of it breaking down every couple of centuries. The reason Neo is still alive, is that the Code is integrated into his very DNA, without him, the code becomes incomplete again, so they revived him, and keep him plugged in and essentially "sedated" as a blue pill, the movie is going to be the fact that as a One, blue pilling him isn't working as well, because of his One Code.

There will be a joke at the expense of those who promote being antifeminist, anti-diversity, anti-LGBTQ, etc. as being "Red Pill"

More specifically, it will be revealed that the Machine War began as a worldwide civil war that was started by socially conservative humans who supported the machines similar to how the Spanish Nationalists initiated the Spanish Civil War. Likewise, the Cypherite coup to restore the Matrix's old ways as mentioned in an earlier WMG entry will be depicted as an allegory of the 1981 Spanish coup attempt to restore the Francoist dictatorship.

The film will have a meta-aspect for the story.

The filmmakers will purposefully play around with a meta aspect for the story inspired by a WMG for the original film. In the upcoming film, The Matrix Trilogy will be presented as a set of films in-world, and "Thomas" is an actor who played Neo. Unfortunately for him, he's a method actor, and even after having filmed the trilogy years ago and knowing they're fiction, he still cannot shake the feeling that his reality isn't real, which is why he's seeing a shrink. Of course, there will be some differences between the Matrix films in-world in comparison to ours (such as the film giving the name of a different actress playing Trinity in the films). It will be revealed that the machines purposefully planted the idea for the films in the filmmakers' heads and allowed for the release of the films as a means of hurting the chances of the Resistance releasing more humans from the system (so that if someone from the Resistance tried to free anyone after such films were released, people would think they're nuts and "got it from a movie", basically using the films as a built-in Cassandra Gambit failsafe).

The Matrix never really shut down, the Machines just incorporated Zion into their system

Zion has limited resources and could never have supported every human being released to them by the Machines. Instead, they set up a system where any individual who acts out will be released and given to Zion without a fight. This keeps Zion busy handling new humans and trying to build up their infrastructure while also removing trouble elements in the simulation. Per the meta-aspect WMG, the events of the previous trilogy were released as films in-Matrix to help shake loose the problem elements in an early pass. The increase in people aware of the Matrix has resulted in three factions: Zion, who is nominally at peace with the Machines and focused on rebuilding; the Red Pills who reject the partial peace and want the Matrix completely destroyed; and the Blue Pills who reject the normal world and would rather use their knowledge to have lives of virtual luxury.

Neil Patrick Harris' character is a new incarnation of the Oracle

During the infamous "Architect scene" in The Matrix Reloaded, the Architect reveals that the Oracle was originally created by the Machines to assist him with creating a better version of the Matrix after the first one turned out to be a failure. As the Architect explains: the Architect's greatest weakness is that he has an extremely limited understanding of human nature (due to being designed as a purely logical entity), which limited his ability to create the kind of virtual world where humans would be most happy. The Oracle was essentially created to be the yin to his yang, being designed as an empathetic and compassionate entity who actually could understand human thought and behavior. He specifically says that the Oracle was "initially created to investigate certain aspects of the human psyche."

While he doesn't explicitly say it, the apparent implication is that the Oracle was originally something akin to a psychiatrist, designed to evaluate humans' psychiatric profiles to help the Machines understand them better. And Neil Patrick Harris' character is a psychiatrist. Do the math.

Jossed. He's the new version of The Architect

The message of this sequel will be "The Matrix is good actually"

The lessons will be that it is judgmental and bad to judge people who want to stay in the Matrix, and more generally that the Matrix is just as real as the "real" world because everyone decides in their head what is real and what is not and there is no objective reality or scientific truth.The bad guys will be fanatic terrorist humans who want to force humans to leave the Matrix because of the bigoted view that the Matrix is not real.

The Oracle could still be alive.

She's Just Hiding. Wishful thinking perhaps, but if the Merovingian and a few exiles were able to survive the Purge, why not her?

• That's assuming she wasn't specifically targeted by the Analyst for purging. Think about it, part of the reason why the events of films took place the way they did was due to her. It was due to her telling Trinity that she'd fall for The One that basically cemented Neo's decision to go back and rescue her instead of resetting the system (which was what the One's purpose was), and basically brokering peace between the Machines and Humans. Her actions basically was disruptive to the system, despite her being an essential part of the system. Seeing that the Analyst wouldn't want Neo and Trinity to wake up again and disrupt what he's got going with the new Matrix, removing her would have been necessary because without her, there'd be no way for Neo and Trinity to connect with one another again and mess things up. Unfortunately, he never took into account the one thing: love is one hell of a motivator and not easy to squash.

The film is designed to be a franchise killer.

Considering the Reality Subtext featured in the film with Thomas, the original creator of a work, having to listen to what people think what his original games were about, and having to deal with Warner Brothers pestering the creators of doing another Matrix film for years in real life, it's not out of the realm of possibility that Lana purposefully designed the film to kill the franchise. This would explain why the film is tonally, visually and thematically different in comparison to the previous films. She wanted the franchise to remain dead after the conclusion of The Matrix Online, but Warner Brothers may have threatened to do another film with or without the Wachowskis involved (which is where the scene Thomas is told by Smith that Warner Brothers wanted another Matrix game came from). She purposefully made the film the way it is in hopes of stopping more sequels or reboots from ever being made. Also, it is not out of the realm of possibility that this was the case because there have been examples where Warner Brothers in the past have abused their creative control of artists before, as one such example includes musician Prince, who tried to get out of his contract by producing as many albums as possible in a short time after WB lied to him about allowing him complete creative control when getting him to sign up with their music division.

• zig-zagged. While there are currently no plans for future Matrix films, Resurrections ends with enough potential sequel hooks (Machines Vs. Synthients, the crew of the Mnemosyne, Smith still on the loose) to justify further films. That said, it's all still given a meaningful ending that could leave this film a standalone.
  • The ending may have been intentional due to possible Warner Brothers' insistence of leaving it open for more future films. For all we know, they may have had it in the contract for leaving the film's ending open for a possible continuation, and Lana knowing that Warner Brothers would insist on keeping an open ending, designed the film in a way to insure that Warner Brothers didn't know she was trying to tank the franchise until after the film was completed, released and failed.