The Matrix Explained. What Is The Matrix?

Updated:

02 May 2024

What is the Matrix?

In a virtual reality known as The Matrix, sentient machines enslave the human race. The malicious machines wage a relentless war against those who have unplugged themselves from the system. In this Battle for freedom, a determined team of rebels embark on a quest to find The One, a man they believe holds the key to their salvation.

Like many of us, Thomas Anderson leads a double life. He works a monotonous, unfulfilling day job but becomes Neo, the computer hacker, in his free time. A sense of unease haunts Neo. Something feels out of place in the world, but he doesn’t exactly know what.

Neo's life takes a dramatic turn when he decides to follow a white rabbit, a path laid by the Resistance. Trinity awaits to bring him to Morpheus, who gives him a choice: the red pill, which is truth, or the blue pill, to maintain his blissful ignorance. If only disconnecting from reality were that easy.

Neo swallows the red pill and soon learns the horrible truth of the real world: humans are nothing but batteries. That little red pill was just the beginning of his journey.

They unplug Neo from the system because Morpheus believes he is The One: a man prophesied to destroy The Matrix, end the war, and bring freedom to the human race. Is that all? No pressure, Neo.

“I must get free.”

The red pill of truth and the blue pill of ignorance.

Unable to return to blissful ignorance, Neo learns to free his mind. His new family aboard the Nebuchadnezzar wires combat training programs into his mind like we wire money into an account. Jiu-jitsu, Karate, Kung Fu - you name it. Within hours, Neo is rich with Grandmaster skills.

Now with wire-fu capabilities, Neo spars Morpheus to prep for the real fight against the machines. And no one has ever survived a fight with Agent Smith. Why didn’t he choose the blue pill? Oh, right - truth and freedom for all humankind.

But Neo quickly loses faith that he is The One when the infamous Oracle gives him lousy news. And everything she says comes true. Before he can even decipher her message, the team walks into an agent ambush set up by one of their own: Agent Smith will give Cypher the blue pill if he gives them Morpheus.

Morpheus is the only one with a key to the last human civilization of Zion. Smith tries to hack his mind, but Neo and Trinity rescue him with lots of guns. If Smith destroys Zion, he will be free from the Matrix…isn’t that what Morpheus is trying to do? It seems no one wants to live that Matrix life.

“He is The One.”

It's bullet time.

Not only does he save Morpheus, but he is killed by Smith and comes back to life just in time to stop bullets with his mind. And he moves in bullet time now - that cool backward ninja move we’ve all tried as our friends shoot at us with finger guns.

If you haven’t guessed by now, Morpheus found The One. But the movie is over, and the war against the malevolent programs rages on. Let’s hack into part two: The Matrix Reloaded.

The Matrix Reloaded

Trinity, falling in action.

Get ready to plug into The Matrix with a bang! While infiltrating a building, Trinity faces an agent, and for a moment, you think she dies a horrible but super cool death. Don’t worry; it’s just Neo’s recurring nightmare.

Neo and Trinity boo’d up, and the Nebuchadnezzar heads for Zion, where you can finally feast your eyes on the city of metal bunkers and flame-filled caves packed with people who wear earth tones and ankle bracelets. They throw one hell of a party, too.

Since Neo’s transformation from dead to The One, he’s gained the ability to fly and developed a “Peter Tingle” for detecting nearby agents. Most profoundly, he’s freed more minds from the Matrix than the Resistance has in years. But it won’t matter if they can’t stop the 250,000 machines headed their way - one for every man, woman, and child in Zion.

No one can agree on a strategy to defeat the machines, and no one has heard from the Oracle. What’s worse, the agents upgraded their fight code. But Morpheus stays calm and carries on regardless of being outnumbered by peers who don’t believe in the prophecy of the The One.

When the Oracle finally calls, the crew prepares to enter the Matrix. Before they board the Nebuchadnezzar, a Zionite named Bane charges Neo from behind with a knife but stops when he loses the element of surprise. Neo is never the wiser.

It’s About Choice

Neo, topping bullets like a professional in The Matrix Reloaded.

Neo learns his nightmares are, in fact, visions and he must choose whether Trinity lives or dies. The Oracle tells him first to find “The Source.” But to open the door, he must get the Keymaker from the dangerous Merovingian program - should be a piece of cake.

Meanwhile, Agent Smith goes rogue, duplicating murderous versions of himself all over the Matrix. And remember Bane? Smith plunges his hand into Bane’s chest, transferring his new disobedient virus. When Bane zaps back to Zion, Smith’s consciousness is downloaded, not Bane’s.

The Merovingian denies their request to the Keymaker but is betrayed by his wife, who leads Neo straight to him. In an effort to retrieve his loss, the Merovingian sends the Twins, resulting in a martial arts motorway face-off. The twins die a fiery death as Neo does his superman thing and flies the team to safety.

Afraid to choose, Neo asks Trinity to stay out of this next fight. Without her, Neo set out on his mission to The Source. But when he arrives, it isn’t the prophecy that awaits him; it’s the Architect - the program that designed the Matrix.

Neo is not the first One, but the sixth, in an inherently flawed system that needs to be rebooted. Neo has a choice to make: reload the Matrix - destroying Zion and rebuilding it with a limited number of people, or choose to save Trinity, allowing the system to crash and exterminating the entire human race. Bummer.

Choosing not to be complicit, he saves Trinity from the nightmare of death. They unplug only to encounter sentinel attacks in the real world, but the increasingly powerful Neo stops them like bullets. It takes all his strength, landing him in a coma.

Back in Zion, the machines slaughter their first round of defense, leaving one survivor: Bane, who is right next to Neo in the hospital. Gasp! Let’s jack into The Matrix Revolutions to find out what happens next.

The Matrix Revolutions

A Merovingian mind prison.

Neo’s choice to save Trinity is coming to a head while his mind istrapped in a Merivogian prison. More machines head to Zion, and Smith is on a rampage to destroy Neo, who must find a way to save the human race and everyone in the Matrix.

Trinity and Morpheus show up guns blazing at the Merovingian’s Club Hel to arrange for Neo’s release. Moments after being rescued, Neo decides to visit the Oracle, and this time, he’s asking the questions.

Third is time is not the charm. Yet again, the Oracle has difficult news. Smith’s self-duplication can only be stopped by Neo’s ever-increasing power. He must go to Machine City to stop Smith, but before he can, Smith infects the Oracle, her protector, and everyone else around him.

While on their way to Machine City, Bane attacks Neo and Trinity from the shadows of their ship Confused at Bane’s motives, Neo soon realizes he is battling a Smith-infiltrated mind, his virus spreading like malware. Before they killSmith’s duplication, Bane burns out Neo’s eyes with an electrical cable. Didn’t see that one coming.

New Code, Who Dis?

Neo and Smith in the final showdown.

No longer able to see the real world, Neo sees the brilliant orange code of the machine world.. Meanwhile, thousands of sentinel calamari swarm together like insects, decimating Zion’s second counterattack.

Crashing in Machine City leaves Neo to carry on alone and devastated, an impalled Trinity behind him. He makes it to their leader, who plugs Neo into the Matrix with the promise that he will destroy the disobedient Smith once and for all. Upon his success, the Macines vow to let the humans be.

Epic blow after epic blow, Neo and Smith throw each other around like ragdolls. Neo realizes the only way to beat Smith is to join him. Once the duplication is complete, Neo use the strength of The Source to explode Smith from the inside out, killing himself in the process.

Zion rejoices at the machines’ retreat from slaughter, and for the first time, the human race can see a future without war.

A Happy Ending?

A new sun sets on a free Matrix.

A new sun rises over a peaceful world. The Architect is skeptical that peace will last, but the Oracle is hopeful. For now, those in the Matrix are reloaded into an upgraded reality, while the Architect grants freedom to any soul who wishes for it.

Sounds like a happy enough ending, right? Then why does the Oracle say they will see Neo again? How many lives does One man have? Let's launch the fourth and final installment of The Matrix to find out.

The Matrix Resurrections

Get sucked into the Matrix.

Nearly two decades later, The Matrix is resurrected: green code trickles down the title screen and sucks you into where your eyes settle on a blinking cursor. Nostalgia pours in as you watch the familiar opening scene: it’s the same opening scene from the first movie, but something's not quite the same.

Once again, Thomas Anderson is enslaved by the machines, but in this reality, he is a video game developer who built a fantasy series called, The Matrix. Similar to the first film, something feels out of place, and it haunts him. Using old Matrix code, he creates a modal simulation of his subconscious memories as The One, manifesting his desire to escape.

Don’t worry! Trinity’s here, too. She just goes by Tiffany now and has a husband and kids. She often runs into Neo at the cafe, each encounter more heated than the last. Their longing for one another is the foundation of the new Matrix because it generates more power than any other humans combined. More on that in a bit.

Neo’s therapist works to convince him his Matrix fantasies aren’t real, then refills his prescription of blue ignorance pills. But he’s not really a therapist, he’s the Analyst. After resurrecting Neo and Trinity to serve as powerful sources of energy, he replaced the Arcitect. Oh, and Neo’s business partner…is Smith reincarnate. Just a bit of deja vu.

Again?

It feels like I'm trapped in the Matrix. Again.

Sixty years later, in the human civilization of Io, Commander Bugs stumbles upon Neo’s modal cry for help. But his deja vu code is all wrong: Modal Morpheus, Smith, and Trinity are different people and the details are all off. Bugs meets modal-Morpheus and they work to extract Neo from The Matrix, where deja vu is the least of their worries.

While Neo’s sacrifice in Matrix Revolutions was not in vain, it created a different set of problems. Some machines learned to coexist with humans, but others fought over power outages caused by the lack of human batteries.

The Analyst solved the problem of the inherently flawed system. Neo and Trinity’s passion for each other is in the new source code, the Matrix now built around their love for each other. Because they are never able to reunite, all other humans remain docile and obedient.

Unfortunately for the Analyst, Bugs and modal-Morpheus rescue Neo and reunite him with Trinity, threatening to bring the whole system down. Trying to stop them, the Analyst turns every citizen into an agent, but it’s too late: Trinity freed her mind.

It’s been twenty-five years since The Matrix stole the hearts of Sci-Fi and cyberpunk lovers, action connoisseurs, and anyone rooting for truth and love. Peace, man. Our beloved characters finally gain their freedom, and what connects it all is their humanness.