So far, we still don’t know anything about The Matrix 4 in an official capacity, but that hasn’t stopped plenty of rumor, speculation and fan theories making the rounds. Warner Bros. are yet to divulge what the fourth installment in the sci-fi action series is even called, although The Matrix Resurrections has repeatedly been touted.
It’s a love story between Neo and Trinity, that much we can guarantee having heard it directly from Keanu Reeves, but everything else is entirely up for debate. Laurence Fishburne says he’s not in it but Morpheus might be, there’s been talk of a time jump 60 years into the future, a meta angle that positions John Anderson as a game developer for WB working on the fourth entry in a console series known as The Matrix and much more, but none of it can be taken as fact just yet.
A new theory puts forward another wild idea, one that would position Neo as the villain of the piece, and ultimately set him up for a redemption arc. As per the latest line of inquiry, The One only exists in canon due to the instability of the Matrix, but Revolutions‘ ending that gave humans free will and the ability to unplug means the purpose of an all-powerful being designed to aid the program as an arbiter of sorts is obsolete.
If The Matrix Online were to be taken as canon, which is has been in the past, then it could set up a narrative journey to retrieve Neo’s body from the Machine city, which is where we saw his body being taken when the trilogy ended. They could reprogram The One to do their bidding and pit him against the rebels, making him a formidable foe for the human cast of characters as The Matrix 4 focuses on how they’d possibly hope to stop him.