From being freed from The Matrix as a child to saving humanity from extinction,
Morpheus has quite the life story. Do you think you know it all?
Let’s review. Like the man himself, all we're offering is the truth, and nothing more.
Like many people freed from the virtual reality prison of the Matrix,
Morpheus is awakened into reality as a child and spends his adolescence in the
last human city of Zion. He grows up preparing himself to do battle against the machines,
eventually joining the Resistance and becoming the Captain of his own hovercraft,
the Nebuchadnezzar. Within the Matrix, Morpheus becomes a formidable warrior and hacker, infamous
even among humans who are still plugged in and unaware that their world is an illusion.
"He is considered by many authorities to be the most dangerous man alive."
Eventually, he visits The Oracle — an allegedly prescient spiritual
leader. According to her prophecy, his destiny is to find The One — a person
born in the Matrix who has the ability to manipulate its simulated reality at will
and is destined to lead the humans to freedom. Upon learning this, Morpheus surrounds himself
with a crew who are all equally devoted to his cause, and sets out to fulfill his destiny.
In "The Matrix," Morpheus finally tracks down the person he believes to be the One, a hacker called
Neo, who is obsessed with the strange feeling that his world is not what it seems. Morpheus sends
Trinity — one of his most loyal crew members — to monitor Neo and eventually makes contact. When
they finally meet face to face, Morpheus offers Neo a choice represented by two pills. If Neo
takes the blue pill, he'll return to his own life and never hear from Morpheus again. If Neo takes
the red pill, Morpheus will show him the truth about the world, but there will be no going back.
Luckily, Neo takes the red pill, and Morpheus and his crew are able to disconnect him from
the Matrix, awakening him to the harsh reality of the real world. Morpheus soon introduces Neo to
the prophecy of the One and begins training Neo to fulfill his destiny. Neo has a hard
time believing that he's somehow the savior of humanity, but Morpheus' faith is unshakable.
"I don't believe it. It's not possible."
"I didn't say it would be easy, Neo. I just said it would be the truth."
He attempts to shake Neo of his preconceptions about what is possible,
showing him that, within the simulation of the Matrix, one can exert their will to bend
or break the laws of physics to become an unstoppable warrior. Neo needs only to believe in
himself as much as Morpheus believes in him, and he can be strong enough to defeat the machines.
During a mission in the Matrix, the crew of the Nebuchadnezzar is betrayed to the machines
and cornered by their Agent enforcers. To ensure that his crew can get Neo to safety,
Morpheus throws himself at the Agents. Since no human has ever survived a fight with an Agent,
Morpheus does this with every expectation that this sacrifice will mean his death.
"The great Morpheus. We meet at last."
"And you are?"
"Smith. Agent Smith."
Instead, he's captured and brought to a government stronghold for interrogation. As a Captain in
the Resistance fleet, Morpheus possesses the security codes for Zion's defense mainframe. The
machines know they'll never be able to coerce this information out of Morpheus by conventional means,
so they inject his avatar in the Matrix with a computer virus intended to break his will.
Morpheus fights their influence for hours, expecting that his crew will make the practical
choice to unplug his body from the Matrix, killing him before the virus can force him to talk.
Neo and Trinity, however, are unwilling to sacrifice Morpheus and hack back into the
Matrix to save him. Their daring rescue attempt is a success, and with their help, he's able to
regain his strength of will and rid his mind of the Agents' influence. Neo also finds his faith in
himself during the mission and accepts his destiny as the One, validating Morpheus' faith in him.
"The Matrix Reloaded" picks up six months after Morpheus's rescue and Neo's ascension
to digital demigod. As Neo's power in the Matrix grows, so does Morpheus' reputation
among the people of Zion. More and more of them put their faith in the idea that
Neo will defeat the machines and end the war. This is a source of frustration for Jason Lock,
Commander of Zion's defense forces, who is not a believer and wants Zion to focus their
efforts on bolstering the city's defenses — as if that wasn't enough, Lock is also
Niobe's live-in partner and is clearly jealous of her former relationship with Morpheus.
"What is it between them?"
"Morpheus and Lock? Niobe."
"Captain Niobe?"
"She used to be with Morpheus. Now she's with Lock."
This conflict comes to a head when it's discovered that a massive army of machine Sentinels is
drilling towards Zion from the surface. Zion will need to rally every ship and every soldier to
have even a chance of repelling the invasion, but Morpheus convinces Zion's ruling council to allow
him and a few other ships to leave the city and broadcast into the Matrix so that Neo can
continue his prophesied path to victory. If Lock were thinking objectively, he'd realize that even
the full strength of Zion's military doesn't stand a chance against the machines and that Morpheus'
gamble, far-fetched as it is, might be their only chance. Lock, however, is too stubborn and too
wounded by the subversion of his authority to see it that way. He fights Morpheus at every turn, but
Morpheus wins not only the faith of the council but also the vocal support of the people of Zion.
Neo meets with the Oracle and returns with a mission
that he's been told will bring the path of the One to an end.
"What happens if I fail?"
"Then Zion will fall."
Neo and company will need to break a program called the Keymaker from a well-guarded dungeon,
sneak him and Neo into a particular building, and disable the power grid of Mega City to disable
its explosive security countermeasures. This mission will require the cooperation of three
separate hovercraft crews, and Morpheus convinces Captain Niobe of the Logos and Captain Soren
of the Vigilant to lend their support. Together, they successfully shepherd Neo and the Keymaker to
their destination, fighting off both Agents and the Keymaker's wardens along the way.
Neo's mission, however, turns out to be another trick put in place by the machines.
The Oracle's prophecy is actually a complicated ruse through which the machines have been
manipulating the Resistance. The war continues, with no clear path forward. Even hearing
about this twist straight from Neo's mouth, Morpheus' faith still can't be fully broken.
"The One was never meant to end anything. It was all another system of control."
"I don't believe that."
He soon bears another blow to his resolve when his beloved hovercraft
Nebuchadnezzar is destroyed by Sentinels. The crew survives,
but the future of the Resistance is left uncertain as the machine army grows ever closer to Zion.
"The Matrix Revolutions" picks up immediately after the destruction of the Nebuchadnezzar,
as Morpheus and his crew are picked up by another Resistance hovercraft,
the Hammer. They're joined shortly thereafter by the Logos, commanded by Morpheus' ex,
Captain Niobe. The three crews decide that their best course of action is to return to Zion to
help them defend against the machine invasion. Meanwhile, Neo has learned that he still has a
chance of ending the war if he can make his way to the machines' capital city in person.
"I can only hope you know what you're doing." "Me too."
Niobe volunteers to pilot the Hammer through a dangerous shortcut back home to Zion and
offers Neo and Trinity the use of the Logos for their trip to the Machine City.
Niobe may never have believed in the prophecy of the One, but she does believe in Neo.
Morpheus acts as Niobe's co-pilot for the rest of the mission as she navigates the
Hammer through a narrow passageway to Zion. The experience draws them closer together,
and it's strongly implied that they'll be resuming their relationship after the end of the war.
"You're a hell of a pilot." "Some things in this world never change."
When the Hammer reaches Zion, its EMP weapon buys the Resistance a few precious hours before the
machines can regroup and resume their invasion. During his debriefing with the council, Morpheus
reasserts his faith in Neo, even though he's not sure exactly how he will be able to save them.
"But I do know that as long as there a single breath in his body, he will not give up."
The Sentinels once again breach the city but suddenly halt their advance.
The rest of Zion's forces are puzzled, but Morpheus knows that this is Neo's doing.
Hundreds of miles away, Neo has negotiated a cease-fire with the machines. A former
Agent called Smith has transformed into a nigh-unstoppable computer virus that
threatens to consume not only the Matrix but the entire machine civilization. Only Neo stands
a chance against him in battle, so Neo offers to plug back into the Matrix and confront him
in exchange for an end to the war. Neo succeeds at the cost of his own life,
and the Sentinels retreat from Zion. Morpheus is the first to understand what's happened. His faith
and a lifetime of struggle rewarded, Morpheus embraces Niobe and sheds tears of joy and relief.
Morpheus is the only main character from the original "Matrix" film to survive the entire
trilogy, and his story has been continued both in the series' original continuation,
"The Matrix Online," and in the much later film sequel "The Matrix Resurrections."
"The Matrix Online" was a massively multiplayer RPG that operated between 2005 and 2009
and dealt with the Machine War's aftermath. One of the game's early storylines reveals
that the machines have not returned Neo's body to Zion. Morpheus is enraged by this and sets
out on a deadly campaign to destabilize the Matrix until his friend's body is released.
Soon after, Morpheus is assassinated by a program presumably working for the sinister Merovingian,
but the mystery is never fully resolved. It's unknown as of this video whether
or not any story elements from "The Matrix Online" will be honored in future stories.
Morpheus will also reappear in "The Matrix Resurrections,"
now played by Yahya Abdul-Mateen II in place of original actor Laurence Fishburne,
though Abdul-Mateen has implied that his character may not be exactly the Morpheus we remember.
For answers, we'll just have to wait until Morpheus offers up the red pill once again.
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