The release of “The Matrix Resurrections” is just around the corner, and Neo is all set to return.
But how? Keep watching for a look at The One’s backstory for a refresher on where we left off.
In the 21st century,
the Earth is devastated by a war between humanity and the artificial intelligence
they once enslaved. The machines then begin capturing and eventually growing human beings
and use their bodies' energy as fuel. The war ends with the machines conquering the planet
and humanity becoming essentially livestock, bred by the machines and living their entire
lives in individual tanks to harvest their heat and electrical energy better.
To keep the humans docile, a sentient program called The Architect devises
a simulated reality called the Matrix to keep human minds busy and unaware of their captivity.
The human mind can detect the unreality of the Matrix, so each prisoner is
given a subconscious choice to accept or reject their simulated reality. Nearly 99%
of prisoners choose the illusion, which helps to sustain it as a consensus reality.
The remaining 1 or 2% of humans unknowingly reject the simulation. Most without even knowing it, use
their collective disbelief to create an unbalance known as the Architect's equation. To counter the
imbalance, the Architect allows it to accumulate in isolation. Once this "remainder" from his grand
equation becomes too great to contain, the Matrix randomly selects one human being to embody it.
This person is known as “the One.” An extraordinary individual is born who can learn
to reshape the Matrix at will. This figure awakens and frees a number of humans to the real world.
Once the One meets the Architect and is told the truth about their nature,
they are given a choice to either cooperate in perpetuating this cycle of control
or to allow the Matrix to collapse, killing all of humanity. Given two terrible options,
the One chooses to repair the Matrix so that it can be rebooted safely.
Each set of freed humans believes that they are the first resistance, released by the original One
and destined to discover their reincarnation. In fact, they are playing out a story written
by their enemy, over and over again. All five iterations of the One before Neo chose
to surrender to those machines and restart the cycle. The story of the "Matrix" trilogy begins
with the emergence of The Sixth One, Neo, who is the first to make a different choice.
“As long as the Matrix exists, the human race will never be free.”
Like most humans, Neo is born in a vat in one of the machines' farms. His brain is jacked
into the Matrix from birth, and he is raised as Thomas Anderson. Another unremarkable citizen
of Mega City. He becomes a professional computer programmer and moonlights as a hacker under the
alias "Neo." Neo can sense that there's something wrong with the world he lives in and spends his
nights searching the Internet for clues as to its true nature. This search puts him on the trail of
a wanted terrorist known as Morpheus, who, as it turns out, has also been looking for him.
Morpheus reaches out to Neo via his most trusted disciple, Trinity,
herself a famous and formidable hacker. Trinity offers to help Neo find answers to his questions,
but their meeting attracts the attention of the authorities, who come to arrest him at
his workplace the next day. Morpheus attempts to guide him to safety, but Neo does not have
the courage to manage his escape and is captured by the shadowy group known only as the Agents.
While in government custody, Neo is interrogated by the sinister Agent Smith
for information about Morpheus. When Neo refuses to cooperate, Smith demonstrates a terrifying
influence over reality, literally sealing Neo's mouth shut and implanting him with a strange,
squid-like tracking device. Neo wakes up at home afterward and dismisses
this entire encounter as a dream — until Trinity and her crew show him otherwise.
Hungrier than ever for answers, Neo agrees to meet with Morpheus, who offers him a choice represented
by two pills. If Neo takes the blue pill, he will return to his ordinary life and never hear
from Morpheus again. If he takes the red pill, Morpheus will give him the answers he seeks,
but there can be no going back. Neo chooses knowledge but is completely unprepared for
the terrifying truth. Soon, he wakes up in the real world, a place he's never known.
“This isn’t real?”
“What is real? How do you define real?”
Neo joins the crew of the Nebuchadnezzar, a hovercraft commanded by Morpheus in the
service of the underground human Resistance. In addition to defending Zion, the last human city,
Resistance fighters broadcast their consciousness back into the Matrix
in order to liberate the humans who are still trapped there, one by one.
Re-entering the Matrix as a free mind grants them the ability to bend or even break the physical
rules of the simulation. The Nebuchadnezzar's technology can even download complex skill sets
directly into their brains, making them expert warriors overnight. With practice,
this will allow Neo to return to the Matrix as an impossibly cool action hero like Trinity
and the rest of the crew, but Morpheus has even bigger plans for him.
It's unknown how Morpheus comes to suspect Neo of being the One,
but Morpheus is certain that Neo is the prophesied reincarnation
of humanity's savior. Morpheus brings Neo back into the Matrix to meet the Oracle,
who privately confirms Neo's doubts about himself. Neo doesn't believe he's the One, and therefore he
isn't. Morpheus, however, refuses to hear this, and when the crew comes under attack by Agents,
Morpheus allows himself to be captured, so that Neo can escape. Neo is unwilling to accept this
sacrifice, and he and Trinity embark on a mission to rescue Morpheus from Agent Smith's clutches.
Neo and Trinity shoot, kick, and blast their way through armed security and successfully
return Morpheus's consciousness to his body in the real world. Neo, however,
gets cut off from their escape route and is forced to fight Agent Smith one on one. Smith,
like all Agents, is a program endowed with strength, speed, and endurance beyond even
what a fully-trained Resistance fighter can achieve. Neo wins the hand-to-hand battle and
nearly escapes back into the real world, but it's not enough — Smith recovers and shoots Neo dead.
Back in the real world aboard the Nebuchadnezzar,
Trinity stands over Neo's apparently dead body and whispers a secret into his ear. The Oracle
once told her that she would fall in love with a man, and that man would be the One.
Trinity confesses that she's fallen in love with Neo; therefore, Neo is the One.
“I love you.”
Through the power of this belief, Neo's vitals stabilize, and his projected self inside the
Matrix springs back to life, more powerful than ever. Neo can now see the code behind the Matrix,
move at speeds that are unfathomable even to Agents, and stop a hail of bullets with
a thought. With his newfound understanding of the Matrix, Neo dives into Agent Smith's body
and seemingly destroys his program from the inside.
Six months after Neo's death and resurrection as the One,
a massive machine army approaches Zion. With no hope of winning this physical confrontation,
the crew of the Nebuchadnezzar embarks on a mission to help Neo reach the Source,
which the Oracle tells them will help them to win the Machine War. They are led to The Keymaker,
who creates a backdoor in the Matrix through which Neo can access the Source. In order to
ensure this operation's success, Trinity is forced into battle with an Agent and is mortally wounded.
When Neo steps through the backdoor, meets another program, the Architect. Here,
the Architect reveals the terrible truth that the One is actually part of the machines' plan,
another system of control. The Architect offers Neo the same choice that he's offered the five
previous subjects of the Prime Program. He can return his code to the Source and restart the
cycle for another century, or refuse and allow the Matrix to degrade and wipe out humanity.
Every previous incarnation of the One has been driven by compassion,
a general feeling of love that led them to choose the long-term survival of the species.
Neo, however, is in love with an individual and can't bear to lose her.
Rather than perpetuate the cycle of the One, Neo hurries back to the Matrix and to Trinity,
reviving her moments after death just as she once did for him. Neo's choice means that the Matrix
now has an expiration date, but it also means the fight for humanity's freedom can continue.
Meanwhile, an additional threat grows from within the Matrix that poses a danger to both humanity
and the machines — Smith. After being decompiled by Neo, Smith is reconstituted in the Matrix,
which reflexively recodes him as a counterbalance against the power of the One. Smith gains the
ability to rewrite the digital avatars of other programs or even human beings,
creating countless copies of himself that share a single consciousness.
Smith spreads like a plague across the Matrix.
Smith gains such power in the Matrix that the machines have no counter against his influence.
The Oracle predicts that Smith's rage and thirst for power will eventually
consume not only the Matrix but the real world, even the Source itself.
“Seems like everytime we meet, I got nothing but bad news.”
After Neo resuscitates Trinity, the couple returns to the real world, where they escape from the
Nebuchadnezzar moments before machine sentinels destroy it. To everyone's surprise — even Neo's
— Neo is able to incapacitate a sentinel with his mind. He determines that he can use his newfound
abilities to journey safely through machine territory to the physical home of the Source.
Trinity refuses to let Neo take this dangerous journey alone and accompanies him for the voyage
aboard the hovercraft Logos. However, the Logos also has a third passenger, Smith,
who has stowed away via the hijacked human body of Bane.
He attacks Neo and permanently blinds him with a bare electrical cable.
While his eyes have been burned out, Neo can still see machine code, including Smith. This
allows him to kill Smith's new body and to serve as Trinity's navigator for the rest of the flight.
Sadly, Neo's abilities prove insufficient to protect the Logos from the Machine
City's defenses. The Logos crashes, fatally wounding Trinity. This time,
there's nothing to do but give their tearful goodbyes.
After a final kiss, Trinity dies, and Neo is forced to complete their quest alone.
Neo travels to the heart of the Machine City and confronts Deus Ex Machina,
the machine figurehead. Neo offers to re-enter the Matrix and rid it of the
threat of Smith in exchange for an end to the war. The machine invasion of Zion halts
while Neo does battle with Smith, who has now assimilated the entire population of Mega City.
Smith now has the ability to see the future and is certain that the fight will end with Neo's death.
The battle rages, and Smith appears to get the upper hand. Neo recognizes that the solution
is to allow Smith to assimilate his code. Smith absorbs Neo, therefore allowing Deus
Ex Machina to destroy him and reboot the system. This appears to kill Neo as well,
but Smith is seemingly erased, restoring Mega City and all the programs rewritten during his rampage.
The Matrix is reborn, apparently under new terms that will permit humans to leave if they
so choose. This, as it turns out, has been the Oracle's intention since the beginning
of this cycle. Like everyone else, she placed her faith in Neo, and her faith was rewarded.
As the trilogy closes, the Oracle says that she suspects that she'll see Neo again someday.
Neo is indeed set to return in "The Matrix Resurrections," though the nature of his
appearance in the film remains to be seen. So we’ll just have to wait and see.
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