Well folks, it’s finally here for all to see: the first trailer for The Matrix 4, officially titled The Matrix Resurrections. A fourth Matrix movie seemed like a far-fetched notion for so long, but here we are, and the Matrix 4 trailer is chock full of goodies to explore and analyze. We're perhaps even more confused as to what The Matrix 4 is about now than we were before the trailer. So, let’s just get right down to it, and break down what we learned from this first look.

The trailer opens with Thomas Anderson (Neo, as played by Keanu Reeves) in therapy with an analyst played by Neil Patrick Harris. Neo is looking very John Wick-esque, complete with long hair and beard, which helps to illustrate that it’s seemingly been quite some time since the events of the original Matrix trilogy. A black cat meows atop the therapist’s desk, which is of course, a call-back to the black cat déjà vu that Neo experienced in the first film.

Neo tells the therapist that he’s “had dreams that weren’t just dreams.” What follows is a barrage of quick images displayed to the tune of Jefferson Airplane’s "White Rabbit," a throwback to the tattoo that Neo was told to follow, also in the first movie. While the images are pretty much a blur, fear not. We're here to break it down for you.

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Image via Warner Bros.

First, we have Neo walking down a street and seeing that it’s all green Matrix coding. The coding is then present in the eyes of an unknown assailant who opens fire on Neo. Neo reaches to slow the bullets down with his abilities. This may be related to a later scene in which Neo is on his knees in the rain with someone pointing a gun point-blank at his head. We next see Neo’s naked Matrix insertion form being surrounded and prodded by huge insectoid machines. Sadly, it’s evident that Neo’s eyes are still burnt out, as he was blinded by an Agent Smith-possessed Bane (Ian Bliss) toward the end of The Matrix Revolutions. We also see two hands reaching to hold one another, which could pretty much only be Neo’s and Trinity’s (Carrie-Anne Moss).

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Now, while Yahya Abdul-Mateen II’s character has yet to be officially revealed, every scene in which he’s included in this trailer point to him being a young Morpheus, or a different variation of Morpheus. He’s shown dressed smartly, firing two automatic guns, which is an image extremely reminiscent of Laurence Fishburne's Morpheus during the highway scene in The Matrix Reloaded. He covers Neo as he ducks into a red-lighted doorway on a roof. Further, he is shown later in the trailer fighting Neo in a dojo, just as Morpheus had done to train him in The Matrix. Neo makes short work of him, using an air blast that sends Abdul-Mateen flying, and blows up the entire dojo. But the most critical evidence of all that the actor is playing some version of Morpheus is that there is a quick shot of him wearing Morpheus’s trademark round, nose-clipped sunglasses.

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Image via Warner Bros.

The entire therapy scene highlights that Neo is somehow stuck in the Matrix after all this time, unable to remember the events of his past, but still retaining that splinter in his mind that something is wrong with the world. And it’s driving him mad. Some signs he sees that things are off include flocks of birds flying in concentric patterns in the sky and everyone around him not being able to take their eyes off their phones and tablets (a clear statement by filmmaker Lana Wachowski about our dependence on the machines of today).

Neo has a prescription for blue pills – the kind that makes Matrix inhabitants believe their surroundings are real. We later see Neo dumping these pills down a drain, illustrating that he eventually overcomes the influence of what can only be presumed as the machine-affiliated programs around him, including the therapist. Later, Neo takes a red pill (the kind that snaps people out of the Matrix’s spell) from Abdul-Mateen.

Another scene shows Neo shaking hands with Trinity in a coffee shop, as if they were meeting for the first time. But there’s an obvious connection, and Trinity asks if they’ve met before. Abdul-Mateen, later speaking to Neo, makes reference to Trinity: “The only thing that matters to you is still here. I know that’s why you’re still fighting, and why you’ll never give up.” Later in the trailer, we see Trinity, somehow also still alive after her death in The Matrix Revolutions, hooked up to the Matrix by the machines. An action sequence shows Neo and Trinity on a rooftop being fired at by a militarized squad. Neo stops the bullets with his hand. When two helicopters show up, Neo is able to telepathically guide one of their fired missiles into the other helicopter.

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Image via Warner Bros.

Further scenes involving Trinity show her and Neo mowing people down with her motorcycle and jumping off a skyscraper hand-in-hand. She’s also seen fighting soldiers, and then screaming as she’s fractalized into three images of herself. This isn’t the only evidence that the Matrix is behaving in strange new ways. A mirror reveals a much older, balding Neo to himself, and there are multiple scenes of characters walking in and out of doorways and mirrors in completely different locations from their origins.

At one point, Neo walks into an eatery and comes upon a wise-looking lady reading Through the Looking Glass. She smiles up at him, knowingly. While this is just speculation at this point, it seems possible that this may be the new form of The Oracle, or perhaps even a grown-up version of Satine, the young girl from the end of The Matrix Revolutions.

Another interesting scene comes in the form of a soldier firing an RPG into a wall behind a screen that is playing footage of Neo being extracted from the Matrix in the first movie. The missile winds up exploding in a train where Abdul-Mateen and Jessica Henwick’s yet-unknown character are fleeing.

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Image via Warner Bros.

Speaking of Henwick, who was so terrific in Love and Monsters and Marvel’s Iron Fist, she is a definite stand-out in this trailer. Punked out with piercings and short, blue hair, her action sequences are the most complex of anyone’s. Soldiers fire at her as she jumps off a roof, does a mid-air flip, and lands on a lower roof, smashing it in the process. She’s shot at by police and agents and manages to jump backwards over a police car for cover. And then, of course, there’s the scene in which she and Abdul-Mateen exit a door that’s placed in a hallway sideways, allowing her to wall-run for an extended amount of time while firing her guns backwards at agents behind her. She then flips upward to the other wall before she and Abdul-Mateen jump out a skyscraper window and fall into what looks like a skylight filled with Matrix coding. Whether this confirms Henwick as a new version of the One, as suspected by many, has yet to be seen.

At the end of all this excitement, Neo is back in therapy, this time with Jonathan Groff overseeing his treatment. Groff states, “After all these years, to be going back to where it all started, back to the Matrix.” I couldn’t have said it better myself.

The Matrix Resurrections releases in theaters and on HBO Max on December 22, 2021.

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