Lana Wachowski, co-director of the Matrix trilogy, has spoken out regarding her decision to revive characters Neo and Trinity in the film’s much-anticipated fourth instalment, The Matrix: Resurrections.

Having both apparently died at the end of The Matrix: Revolutions, the imminent return of the iconic black-clad pair, played by Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss, has been met with speculation. And the release of the upcoming film’s full-length trailer last month didn’t alleviate our feverish hypothesising as to how everyone’s favourite dystopian couple managed to evade death. 

Speaking as part of a panel on screenwriting at this month’s International Literature Festival Berlin, Lana Wachowski shed light on how her decision to resurrect Neo and Trinity came in the wake of her grief after the death of both her parents and a close family friend. She explained, “My dad died, then this friend died, then my mum died. I didn’t really know how to process that kind of grief. I hadn’t experienced it that closely … You know their lives are going to end and yet it was still really hard.” 

Describing the healing potential of storytelling, she continued, “My brain has always reached into my imagination and one night, I was crying and I couldn’t sleep, and my brain exploded this whole story. And I couldn’t have my mum and dad, yet suddenly I had Neo and Trinity, arguably the two most important characters in my life.” She continued, “It was immediately comforting to have these two characters alive again, and it’s super simple. You can look at it and say, ‘Okay, these two people died‘ and, ‘Okay, bring these two people back to life’ and, ‘Oh, doesn’t that feel good.’ Yeah, it did! It’s simple, and this is what art does and that’s what stories do, they comfort us.”

While the project may have been cathartic for Lana Wachowski, her sister and co-director of the first three films, Lilly Wachowski, decided not to be involved in the fourth Matrix instalment, recently stating: “There was something about the idea of going backward and being a part of something that I had done before that was expressly unappealing”. 

The Matrix: Resurrections is planned for release on December 22 in the UK and in the US