The Real Reason Neo Flies at the End of The Matrix

The Matrix tricks you. You show up for the kung-fu and bullet time, and then weeks later you catch yourself spiraling about reality and choice while doing dishes. That ending is a big reason why. Neo flies, the code turns into a language only he understands, and a single kiss rewires destiny. Let’s pull the threads and make sense of the finale without getting lost in the green rain.

Why Neo flies at the end (and why it actually makes sense)

Neo taking off into the sky isn’t the movie flexing just because it can. It’s the visual punchline to everything the story’s been doing to him.

For most of the film, Neo plays by the Matrix’s rules: gravity hurts, bullets kill, fear is real. Morpheus trains him to see the truth — the Matrix is a construct — but that’s just theory until Neo literally dies, comes back, and the world snaps into focus as cascading code. In that moment, the Matrix stops being a place and becomes what it is: a program.

That shift maps pretty cleanly onto Eastern spiritual ideas the movie keeps flirting with. Think Buddhism and Hinduism: enlightenment as waking from illusion, or Maya. In those traditions, levitation shows up as a symbol of mastery. Neo’s flight is that symbol. He isn’t showing off a new superpower; he’s done taking orders from a fake world. Gravity is part of the lie, so it doesn’t apply anymore. Once he understands the truth, nothing can hold him down — metaphorically and, in his case, literally.

Trinity’s kiss: the most low-tech reboot imaginable

Yes, The Matrix is loaded with tech talk, which makes the whole "true love’s kiss" moment feel like it wandered in from another movie. But within the film’s own logic, it lines up.

Earlier, the Oracle tells Neo he has the gift but he’s waiting on something, maybe even "next life" timing. She never crowns him the One outright. Trinity, on the other hand, was told she would fall in love with the One — and she’s in love with Neo — so if that’s true, he can’t be dead. When Neo flatlines after Smith guns him down, Trinity says what she’s held back, and that conviction snaps the last piece into place. Love, here, operates like a rule-overriding key, not Hallmark magic. Trinity’s belief bridges who Neo is and who he chooses to be. He wakes up, stops bullets midair, and stops believing in death. From there, it’s over for the Agents.

Seeing the code (and using it)

After Neo gets back up, the movie lets us inside his new POV: the Agents read as pure green code. That’s more than a cool shot. We’ve already seen the crew staring at monitors and reading the Matrix’s data stream like it’s a language — down to specifics like picking out hair color. Neo goes way past that. He doesn’t just read the code; he edits it in real time.

The result is a calm dismantling of Agent Smith: every punch misses Neo, every grapple gets reversed, and then Neo literally takes Smith apart from the inside. He isn’t stronger now because he hits harder; he’s stronger because he understands the system well enough to rewrite it. That’s the whole thesis of the movie flattened into one fight.

What the Wachowskis say the movie is actually about

Lana and Lilly Wachowski, who made The Matrix and are both trans women, have been open about the film’s deeper layer. In 2020, Lilly said the trans allegory was there from the start, even if the culture wasn’t ready to hear it when the movie came out. Fans have told her the film literally saved their lives, which tells you how much it resonated beyond the action and leather coats.

"The Matrix stuff was all about the desire for transformation but it was all coming from a closeted point of view. We had the character of Switch - who was a character who would be a man in the real world and then a woman in the Matrix."

Seen through that lens, Neo’s awakening plays as a journey out of an identity forced on him and into one he claims for himself, no permission needed. Yes, the language around the movie — especially "red pill" — got hijacked by online grifters trying to sell insecurity back to young men. The irony is they call it waking up while clinging to whatever makes them feel validated. Meanwhile, the creators’ actual intent is right there on the record. Hopefully that’s the version that sticks.

Quick hits and where to watch

• Director: Lana Wachowski and Lilly Wachowski
• Main cast: Keanu Reeves, Carrie-Anne Moss, Laurence Fishburne
• Release date: March 31, 1999
• Rotten Tomatoes: 83% critics, 85% audience
• Runtime: 136 minutes
• Streaming (USA): MGM+

The original still hits

The Matrix kicked off theories, conspiracies, and a whole franchise, but the first film still plays on multiple levels at once: brainy philosophy hiding in a slick sci-fi shell, a story about identity and liberation, and a sharp metaphor for systems that use people up. What’s your go-to read on it — spiritual awakening, trans allegory, something else entirely?