Forget the Red Pill: Queer Politics but also Transhumanist Ideology in The Matrix

Following the Matrix trilogy (1999, 2003, 2003) the franchise’s iconic red pill trope became an anti-feminist meme in neo-fascist circles. This essay analyzes how Matrix Resurrections (2021) reclaims the red pill in an explicitly feminist and queer narrative. But the fourth Matrix film also is an ideological fantasy: Resurrections resonates just too much with a transhumanist belief in a human-machine synergy that also fuels Silicon Valley’s new American Dream. Propelled by this transhuman delusion, The Matrix ultimately has little to say about life in the era of climate catastrophe and control capitalism.