The Matrix 5 has long been a topic of discussion among fans, and with the fifth Matrix movie now officially confirmed, the possibilities for the future of this franchise are endless. There will likely be a change in format following the mixed reception of The Matrix Resurrections, but it’s unclear how the Wachowskis intend to deal with this. The filmmakers have never been ones for predictability, and The Matrix 5 likely won’t be any different. The upcoming film could be a prequel or some kind of spinoff, following a different area of The Matrix’s timeline.

Thankfully, the Matrix franchise has done a great job of leaving doors open and dropping hints about certain areas of history that haven’t been explored yet. This has been done since the very first movie, with specific lines that initially seemed like throwaway exposition turning out to be crucial backstory in later films. It will be fascinating to see which part of The Matrix’s franchise is brought back for the fifth movie, though one line from Resurrections seems to indicate the filmmakers’ intentions.

The Matrix Resurrections Revealed That A Machine Civil War Happened After Revolutions

One Brief Line Revealed A Lot About This World’s History

Although the concept of a Machine Civil War isn’t something that’s been widely discussed in the Matrix franchise, the fourth installment in the series confirmed that it had happened at some point after the events of The Matrix Revolutions. The details about this conflict are still sparse, but it’s clear that Neo’s sacrifice was the inciting incident that caused some machines to think differently about their relationship with humanity. When Neo valued peace with machines above his own life in The Matrix Revolutions’ ending, certain factions of machines began to lose their unified hatred for humanity.

This meant that machines were no longer of one single mind, and there was no homogeneous opinion about how humanity and machines should coexist. This variance in beliefs caused the machines to split into multiple factions, warring against each other for complete control of the Matrix. This information was only revealed briefly in The Matrix Resurrections, but it’s one of the franchise’s most interesting and fertile concepts yet. The machines have always been the antagonists of The Matrix, but this proves that their beliefs and ideologies are actually much more complex.

Why The Matrix Resurrections Didn’t Show The Machine Civil War

The Conflict Didn’t Play A Large Role In The Fourth Movie

The reason that nothing further about the Machine Civil War was explained in The Matrix Resurrections is fairly simple: it wasn’t deemed necessary for the story that was being told. The conflict happened after Neo’s sacrifice in Revolutions and before his return in Resurrections, so it’s essentially unrelated to the character’s journey. The backstory was only revealed as a way to better explain The Analyst’s motivations and help audiences understand which side he was on. The Matrix has never been about simple narratives, so this information helps make the complicated story more accessible and comprehensible.

Additionally, the information about the Machine Civil War helps explain why Neo had been brought back in a new version of the Matrix, which is something that fans had been endlessly theorizing about before the film’s release. Despite The Matrix Resurrections’ low critics’ score, there’s some extremely rich and vivid world-building in the sequel that helps localize this story within the broader context of the franchise. The Machine Civil War is a very brief but effective example of this, providing audiences with all the information they need to understand why this story is slightly different from those that preceded it.

Why A Machine Civil War Would’ve Made For A Great Matrix Movie

There’s So Much Potential To Explore

That being said, the Machine Civil War could have still made for a brilliant spinoff in the Matrix franchise. It evidently wasn’t the focus of Resurrections, but that doesn’t mean there’s nothing to explore there. The gap between Revolutions and Resurrections is one of the emptiest periods on The Matrix’s timeline, and this global conflict is the perfect catalyst for the Wachowskis to map out these years. It would allow the franchise to move away from its focus on Neo (which is necessary if it’s going to continue into the future), as his character wasn’t around during this period.

The Machine Civil War would also be an excellent opportunity for the Matrix franchise to return to its action-packed roots, leaving behind the metatextual melodrama that didn’t really work in The Matrix Resurrections. This has always been an action franchise above all else, but it’s been many years since it’s truly felt innovative within the genre.

Additionally, it’s widely accepted that Revolutions is the worst movie in this series, and much of that comes down to the underwhelming treatment of the war on Zion. This conflict had been built up so effectively in the first two films, but the third movie didn’t give audiences much reason to care about what happened. Exploring the Machine Civil War could retroactively make this period of The Matrix’s history more interesting, or at least give the franchise another chance to get machine warfare right.

The Matrix Can Still Show Its Machine Civil War (And Not In Matrix 5)

There May Be An Opportunity For An Exciting Spin-Off

Thankfully, there’s still plenty of time for The Matrix to explore this ᴅᴇᴀᴅly period of its timeline – even if The Matrix 5 isn’t the right place for it. With the huge cultural shift to streaming in recent years, particularly with regard to limited series, there are endless opportunities for studio franchises like this to tell their stories through interesting spinoffs and side projects. The Matrix has even done it before, through projects like the Animatrix and its popular story “The Second Resistance.”

This would be much more effective than incorporating the Machine Civil War into The Matrix 5, primarily because general audiences won’t care that much about such distant parts of the franchise’s timeline. The next sequel has to be fresh, original, and exciting if it wants to bring audiences back after generally disappointing them with The Matrix Resurrections. There are many possibilities for the story of The Matrix 5, but it has to be something that doesn’t require such an in-depth knowledge of the franchise’s lore.