Last year, Lilly Wachowski confirmed fan theories that The Matrix movies, which she wrote and directed with her sister Lana, are an allegory for the trans experience. Now, the Wachowskis have revealed that one of the members of Morpheus’ crew, Switch, was originally written to be a trans woman in the 1999 film’s first draft.
Switch was one of the two women aboard the Nebuchadnezzar, the hovercraft captained by Morpheus. She takes Neo to meet Morpheus, after which Morpheus famously offers him the choice of taking either the red or blue pill.
In an interview with BBC News, Lilly Wachowski said: “We had the character of Switch – who was a character who would be a man in the real world and then a woman in the Matrix.”
According to IMDb, Warner Bros. changed the script so that actor Belinda McClory would play the character in both the Matrix and the Real World. Switch’s name, however, is a nod to her character’s original gender portrayal, which we also see reflected in her deliberately androgynous look.
Elsewhere, Matrix: Resurrections, the fourth film in the Matrix franchise, is planned for release on December 22 in the UK and in the US. It will come out 18 years after the most recent instalment, the 2003 The Matrix Revolutions.
Watch the full trailer below.