The Matrix is one of the most influential action movies of all time, but by mixing stylish
gun-fu fight scenes with cyberpunk themes, it built to a trilogy that may have left a
few moviegoers a little confused.
Now that we've got some distance from the climactic installment, let's take a look back
at the movies' meaning and break down the conclusion.
Here's the ending of the Matrix trilogy explained.
One major theme that came to the fore as the series reached its conclusion had to do with
the similarities between humans and machines.
In the original, they couldn't seem more different, but by Revolutions, programs in the Matrix
are portrayed as being almost more human than our heroes, loving and happy individuals,
as worthy of existence as any person.
Further, characters from the first film who were firmly human or machine are portrayed
in the sequels as having a little bit of both.
The similarities go in both directions.
Agent Smith, a program, copied his consciousness onto a human form, entering the real world
through the vessel of a resistance fighter named Bane.
Neo, a human, reached the Source to discover that being the One was his destiny because
it was programmed into him.
The humanizing of the Machines and the complimentary mechanization of Neo made for a storytelling
turn that audiences weren't really ready for.
People who saw The Matrix couldn't be faulted for expecting an ending that saw Neo winning
by doing his Superman thing and eradicating humanity’s robot overlords.
Instead, Neo triumphed by becoming a bridge between man and machine, sacrificing his own
life for the sake of securing the future.
"What do you want?"
"Peace."
He also made Hugo Weaving’s head explode, but that wasn’t quite as important.
One widespread but inaccurate theory about the sequels is that the “real world” is
actually a second Matrix.
While the reasons why this isn't true are explained in the movies, they're also relatively
easy to misunderstand.
The real world isn't another level of the Matrix, but it is involved in another system
of control.
As the Architect explains at the ending of The Matrix Reloaded, each version of the Matrix
is propped up in the real world by a controlled rebellion.
With each new iteration of the Matrix, a select portion of the population is freed, allowed
to live in Zion.
There, they help to liberate people still inside the Matrix, searching for the One.
Finding the One, the human rebels rally behind them, supporting them until they reach the
Source.
There, the One discovers that they are not meant to destroy the Matrix, but rather restart
it.
At this point in the cycle, the Machines attack Zion and destroy it, killing the rebellion.
The One, having reached the Source, is made to choose between either reloading the Matrix
and selecting a handful of survivors to build a new Zion, or walking away, supposedly causing
a system crash, leaving the humans inside and outside of the Matrix all dead.
Up until Neo, every One made the choice to restart, perpetuating the system of control.
Because Neo loves Trinity, he chooses to sacrifice everything to be with her.
This is the choice that makes him special.
Proponents of the second Matrix theory support it by pointing to the powers Neo is able to
manifest in the sequels' real world, being able to see without eyes and exert control
over approaching Sentinels.
For a lot of viewers, this breaking of the rules almost felt like a betrayal, with the
audience having been made to believe that Neo could only manifest his "superpowers"
in the Matrix.
But Neo isn't able to destroy Sentinels because he's the One, it's because he reached the
Source.
Prior to the arrival of the Sentinels at the ending of The Matrix Reloaded, Neo explained
that he could "feel them" before he remotely destroyed them with his mind.
By that point, Neo has literally established a connection with everything else connected
to the Source, like the Machines themselves.
He has, essentially, joined their wireless network.
It's why he's able to navigate the Machine City, or see Smith inside of Bane during their
fight, Smith is of the machines, connected to the Source just as Neo is.
Thanks to that handy conduit, he doesn't need eyes to kick Smith's butt.
In the original Matrix, Agent Smith's character was his job description, an agent for the
Matrix who aims to police the populace by stomping down any signs of rebellion.
"A virus.
Human beings are a disease.
A cancer of this planet."
After his encounter with Neo, however, Smith begins to rebel himself and becomes much scarier
and more powerful as a rogue program than he ever was as an Agent.
In the second and third movies of the trilogy, Neo and Smith become mirror images of each
other, with Neo gaining a connection to the Matrix through the Source, and Smith gaining
a connection to the real world through his override of Bane's brain.
If Smith is the Matrix's virus, then Neo is his natural anti-virus, a connection which
the Oracle makes clear during her final talk with Neo.
When Neo blew Smith apart at the ending of The Matrix, he made a massive imprint on the
program.
As a part of the Matrix's attempt to, as the Oracle explained it, "balance the equation,"
Smith gained new attributes, overriding everything in an effort to combat Neo.
The fact that his spread is destructive to the Matrix doesn't matter to Smith anymore.
He's a rogue program now, cut loose from Machine control, with his only purpose being to propagate
himself.
He doesn't know why, and doesn't choose to do it.
It is, quite simply, his purpose.
When Neo arrives at the Machine City, he's met by what is, essentially, the collective
voice of the Machines.
Well, first he watches Trinity die for about 35 minutes, you remember that fun scene.
Anyway, in the Machine City the interconnected hive mind adopts a human face to speak to
the first human ever to set foot inside the city's walls.
Neo approaches the Machines with a deal: He knows that Smith is ravaging the Matrix, corrupting
everything, taking control of the entire system.
The rogue program is a mutual enemy of both species, and Neo offers to handle the problem
in exchange for one thing: peace.
By this point in the story, the Machines' usual plan for the Matrix is in utter disarray.
Neo, having made his choice not to reload the system upon arriving at the Source, is
now in totally new territory.
He's already broken the loop, but still needs to accomplish two goals: saving humanity from
the machines and saving the machines from Smith.
If he fails, everyone dies, there will be only Smith.
When Neo enters the Matrix for his gigantic Super Saiyan battle, he doesn't do it with
the goal of beating Smith to death.
How could he?
Smith is everywhere and everyone.
Neo and the prime Smith battle as Smith's limitless ranks look on, but Neo doesn't best
the program in the fight.
He doesn't even come close.
Before finishing him off, though, Smith has one final question for Neo.
"Why?
Why do you persist?"
"Because I choose to."
Smith, for all his power, cannot comprehend the concept of choice.
He is a creature of purpose, copying himself mindlessly as a force of corruption, a symptom
of the Matrix desperately trying to balance itself out.
It’s Smith, not humanity, that has become the virus.
It's the choice to fight, rather than the fight itself, that makes Neo win the battle.
Neo doesn't succeed by coming out on top, he wins by taking the battle with Smith to
the very end and choosing to sacrifice himself by letting Smith copy over him.
The anti-virus cancels out the virus.
If Smith had a choice, he wouldn't have done it, but Smith doesn't have a choice.
He only has purpose, and he successfully fulfills it, which is why, as he dies, all he can say
is that the outcome is not fair.
The Matrix series ends not on a celebration in the real world, but on a moment of reflection
among programs inside the seventh version of the Matrix.
With Smith destroyed, the revived Oracle sits and waits for the sun rise as the Architect
approaches.
This is what it's always been about, this battle between two programs, a yin and a yang.
The cold philosophy of the Architect and the faith of the Oracle have been driving the
conflict since its beginning, and now they meet in a condition of cease fire.
The series doesn't really explain all the details of it, but Neo's defeat of Smith is
ultimately all the result of the Oracle's intervention.
In the first movie, the Oracle basically serves as matchmaker between Neo and Trinity, telling
them it's their destiny to fall in love.
Is it really, though?
Well, no, if the sequels make one thing clear, it's that nobody is really destined to do
anything.
It's all about choice.
The Oracle's encouragement of Neo and Trinity's romance provides the rogue element that lets
Neo break out of the cycle of control when he reaches the Source.
Instead of reloading the Matrix, he leaves to be with Trinity, forget the consequences.
It was Neo's choice, sure, but it was also part of the Oracle's plan.
"What’s really going to bake your noodle later on is, would you still have broken it
if I hadn’t said anything?"
Did she know it would work?
No, but she believed, and she was right.
The element of love was the one thing the Machines couldn't prepare for.
One of the most curious and under-explained characters in the Matrix sequels is the young
girl, who is treated with much importance without the why of it all really being explained.
The daughter of two programs Neo meets inside the Trainman's purgatory, Sati is a program
without purpose, born as the result of love between two individuals.
In the machine world, such an entity is a novelty, and also useless, subject to deletion,
which is why Sati's parents are trying to shepherd her to shelter.
Thematically, Sati is the representation of love, a new concept to the Machines.
Love, at the end of the series, is ultimately what secures the humans' victory.
Neo's love for Trinity is what drives him to make the choice to reject reloading the
Matrix, and instead fight for a better peace.
The Machines' inability to comprehend love left them with that blind spot, allowing Neo
to go against every logical choice to make his own choices instead.
Sati can be seen as the Machines' way of trying to make sense of love.
At the end of the movie, she is essentially what the Machines have decided to let control
the Matrix, with the Architect and Oracle's conflict being set aside for the system's
seventh version.
This, at least, is pretty much confirmed by the beautiful sunrise Sati said she made for
Neo, and is supported by the new, compassionate approach to the Matrix's human population
in the new version.
"Did you do that?"
"For Neo."
The ending of The Matrix trilogy doesn't see the Matrix destroyed.
In fact, it is renewed, rebooted for a seventh version, this time with new rules.
As audiences learned via the lengthy conversation with the Architect in The Matrix Reloaded,
previous iterations of the Matrix all built on the flaws of the previous one, fine-tuning
the system by which the Machines controlled humanity both inside and outside of the Matrix.
"Ere go, concordantly, vis a vis…
You know what?
I have no idea what the hell I'm saying.
I just thought it would make me sound cool."
With a peace secured and a new compassionate approach at hand, any human who desires to
depart the Matrix will be allowed to leave.
Certainly, some will stay, the Matrix is the ultimate virtual reality game, after all,
but the conditions of enslavement are no more, at least for now.
The end of the movie implies that more cycles may be set to come.
As the Oracle explained, the peace between the warring humans and Machines will only
last "as long as it can."
The peace is not guaranteed, the Architect makes that clear.
Sati's mere existence is proof that the Machines are now working to understand this little
thing called love, letting her steer the ship while they observe and learn.
Maybe, at some point, forces within the Matrix will figure out how to use love against humanity
and enslave them again.
Until then, it's a beautiful morning in the Matrix and beyond.
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