The co-creator of the popular “Matrix” films, Lilly Wachowski, has finally confirmed a long-standing fan theory: the blockbuster sci-fi series is indeed a transgender allegory.
Wachowski — who created the “Matrix” universe with her sister Lana, as a creative team named The Wachowskis — looked back at the ground-breaking franchise during a video interview for Netflix, which was posted Tuesday.
“I’m glad people are talking about the movies, the ‘Matrix’ movies, with a trans narrative,” she said.
“I love how meaningful those films are to trans people, in a way that they come up to me and say, ‘These movies saved my life,'” added Wachowski, who co-directed the first three films, released between 1999 and 2003.
“I’m grateful that I can be throwing them a rope to help them along their journey,” she added.
Both sisters came out as transgender after the movies were released — which probably fueled the popular fan theory that they were telling a story of transformation, with transgender undertones to it.
“I’m glad that it has gotten out that that was the original intention,” she said, adding that, “the corporate world wasn’t ready for it.”
The series “was all about the desire for transformation, but it was all coming from a closeted point of view,” she said responding to a question about the character Switch.
Played by the Australian actress Belinda McClory, Switch was “a character who would be a man in the real world and then a woman in the Matrix,” which was where her and her sister’s “headspaces were” then.
“I don’t know how present my transness was in the background of my brain as we were writing it,” Wachowski said, “but it all came from the same sort of fire that I’m talking about.”
Both sisters were “always living in a world of imagination,” which was why she gravitated toward science fiction.
“It was all about creating worlds. It freed us up as filmmakers because we were able to imagine stuff at that time that you didn’t necessarily see onscreen,” she said.
A fourth “Matrix” movie, directed by her sister Lana, is scheduled to be released in 2022.