Lilly Wachowski has condemned the “crazy ideologies” that have grown up around The Matrix, saying right-wing groups have twisted the films’ ideas into propaganda while turning the franchise’s “red pill” imagery into a political slogan. Speaking on the So True with Caleb Hearon podcast, in remarks highlighted by Deadline, the co-writer and co-director said she watches the theories that have formed around the movies and thinks, “What are you doing? No! That’s wrong!” before reminding herself that audiences will interpret work in their own way.
Wachowski explained that she has “to let go” of total control over meaning, yet she drew a sharp line at how far-right movements have used the films. “Right-wing ideology appropriates absolutely everything,” she said, adding that such groups lift left-wing ideas and “mutate them for their own propaganda” to hide the original message. “This is what fascism does,” she argued, describing a process in which widely accepted questions about humanity and power are stripped of their weight and repurposed as slogans.
Her comments address years of “red pill” rhetoric in online spaces tied to MAGA politics, men’s-rights forums and extremist communities, where the choice offered to Neo has been recast as an awakening from liberal “brainwashing.” Researchers and journalists have traced how that language helped organize misogynist and far-right networks that rallied behind Donald Trump and other populist figures.
Wachowski has set out a very different reading of The Matrix. In earlier interviews she described the original film as an allegory of gender transition and a story shaped by her and Lana Wachowski’s experiences as closeted trans women in the 1990s, pointing to the symbolism of the red pill for trans healthcare and the script’s early idea of a character who shifted genders between worlds.
This week’s remarks extend a pattern of public pushback. In 2020 she responded to Elon Musk’s “take the red pill” tweet and Ivanka Trump’s “taken” reply with a blunt “F*** both of you,” objecting to their use of language tied to her work.
Her fresh criticism lands as Warner Bros. develops a fifth Matrix film with Drew Goddard writing and directing, Lana Wachowski on board as executive producer and Lilly absent from the creative team. The franchise continues to circulate through memes, politics and academia, yet Wachowski’s latest statements underline her view that The Matrix began as a story of liberation, not a permission slip for reactionary movements.
