Warning: minor spoilers for The Matrix Resurrections are in play. If you haven’t seen the film yet, you might want to hold off on reading this story for the moment.
Those last day of work feelings hit everyone differently, as parting with the people we’ve come to know as a family of colleagues can be bittersweet, and sometimes even sad. Carrie-Anne Moss experienced both ends of that spectrum during her time working on the pop culture milestone known as The Matrix. However, the ending of the latest installment, The Matrix Resurrections felt very different from that of The Matrix Revolutions, and for some pretty important reasons.
The first of which is, as any Matrix fan will tell you, that Revolutions ended with Trinity dying to get Neo into the Machine City. Wrapping your time on a movie that gives your character that definitive sort of a capstone is absolutely going to lead to some ugly crying, and Moss admits that’s exactly what happened. In an interview with ReelBlend co-host and Fox 32's Jake Hamilton, Carrie-Anne Moss described the final day of The Matrix Revolutions as following:
That’s really easy. The last day of the third Matrix was my character’s death. And so I really had this opportunity to really grieve, letting go of something that had meant so much to me. I remember Lana and Lily crying; we had to go outside. I mean, it was snotty crying. OK? I knew this was it, like I am saying goodbye to something that has meant so much to me…. I had a full day of just weeping.
An integral part of the franchise that started with 1999’s The Matrix, there was no way that resurrecting Keanu Reeves’ Neo was going to happen without bringing Trinity back for the ride as well. However, when it was announced that Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss were going to do just that in The Matrix Resurrections, one word could sum up most people’s thoughts: How? It was a big question that needed to be answered.
And here's where the spoilers come into play. The title pretty much said it all, as the invention of “resurrection pods” allowed this unbreakable relationship to continue into a new, post-mortem sequel. Things end on a much happier note for Neo and Trinity this time out, so you could imagine that when Carrie-Anne Moss wrapped on The Matrix Resurrections, there was no snotty crying. Given the fourth movie may be the last though, she used a different adjective to talk about her last day on set:
So at the end of this one, the last day of this one, it was bittersweet. It felt so good to have done it to have been with everyone, it didn’t have quite – it had some emotion, for sure, but not quite in the way that it did years ago.
Time, and the ending to a new legacy-quel, can change a lot. Coming from the emotional well that Lana Wachowski drew from in order to create her story for The Matrix Resurrections, one might have expected the finale to be a bit more lighthearted and optimistic. It may not have led to the huge sob fest that Carrie-Anne Moss experienced 20 years ago, but endings are generally bittersweet, and this one was no exception.
The Matrix Resurrections is currently in theaters, but if you’re an HBO Max subscriber, you’ll be able to stream the film at home until January 21, 2022. Which is a good way to close out one year of movie watching, while preparing to ring in another! If you’re feeling excited for the future, that’s another reason you should check out our 2022 release schedule.
