By the time the original trilogy wrapped in 2003, 9/11 had happened and George W. The economy was strong and capitalism was the counterculture’s main enemy. When the original Matrix premiered in 1999, it was the tail-end of Bill Clinton's presidency. Click the red, and the voice of Yahya Abdul-Mateen II (who is playing an as-yet-unnamed character, but seems to be filling the Morpheus role this time around) recites the time of day before saying “that couldn’t be further from the truth.” Click the blue, and it’s the voice of Neil Patrick Harris saying “you’ve lost your capacity to discern reality from fiction.” Harris, it seems, is Neo’s therapist, delivering a never-ending stream of blue pills. There they were, right on the landing page: a red pill and a blue one. Or at least it was until Tuesday, when a mysterious new landing page emerged on, teasing the trailer that dropped this morning.

The phrase perhaps reached its nadir last year when Elon Musk sent a tweet encouraging his followers to “take the red pill,” to which then-presidential adviser Ivanka Trump responded “Taken!” Not one to let her work be misconstrued, Lilly Wachowski-who, along with her sister Lana, created the Matrix franchise-quickly responded “ fuck both of you.” It was one of the first, if not the first, times the movie’s creators expressed discontent at the way their creation had been co-opted by the darker corners of the internet. Most recently, the idea of “red-pilling” has become a metaphor for a certain kind of political awakening, an adoption of far-right, and often misogynistic, views. In the two decades since, the sociopolitical meaning of red pill vs. His narrative arc was changed, and a meme was born. In 1999, Laurence Fishburne’s Morpheus presented this option to Keanu Reeves’ Neo, who gulped down the red one with only the slightest trepidation. Take the blue, remain in blissful ignorance.

Swallow the red and it’s like eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil-suddenly all the universe’s dark secrets are revealed. The choice has always been, relatively speaking, simple: red pill or blue pill.

The matrix red blue pill