You might have seen the Matrix, but can you explain the sixth cycle of
humanity’s enslavement by the machines? We couldn’t either till we made this guide!
In the aftermath of the lengthy Machine War, A.I has conquered humanity,
but they've also become dependent on human's heat and bioelectricity as a renewable energy source.
A program called the Architect is assigned to create a simulated reality called
the Matrix to imprison human minds and keep their bodies healthy.
The Architect first develops a simulated paradise, but the humans discover it's fabricated and
reject it — to their death. A more realistic simulation is then created,
based on Earth's real history, and set at humanity's "peak" in the late 20th century.
However, prisoners still don't properly acclimate.
Enter the Oracle — a new "intuitive" program that analyzes human behavior. The Oracle theorizes
that humans may be more likely to accept the Matrix's reality if given a choice, even a
subconscious one. This function leads to nearly 99% of all subjects accepting the simulation.
This update stabilizes the Matrix for 100 years, but the collective disbelief of the remaining 1-2%
of human minds has the potential to erode the consensus reality and kill everyone inside. To
navigate this issue, the Matrix compiles the anomalies caused by disbelievers until they
reach a critical mass, then dumps them all into a single, randomly-selected human mind.
This individual would have unparalleled control over the reality of the Matrix,
but the machines have a plan to deal with them.
A hundred years after the birth of the first stable Matrix, a human is born who recognizes
they live in a simulation. This person is able to manipulate the simulation at will.
This individual frees minds from the Matrix, and forms a resistance against the machines
in the real world. The freed humans build the underground city of Zion and call their
liberator "The One." What they don't know is that without the reintegration of the extra
code that resides within the One, the Matrix will collapse, killing the majority of the human race.
As a remedy, the Oracle manifests inside the Matrix and positions herself as an ally
who can use her gift of foresight to help the One free humanity and end the Machine
War. The Oracle leads the One to the Architect, who offers them a grim choice — either reinsert
the extra code they carry into the Source and allow the Matrix to reboot safely, or refuse
and guarantee its destruction. To raise the stakes even further, the machines invade Zion and kill
every free human, meaning the death of the Matrix would be equivalent to human extinction.
This leaves the One no choice but to cooperate.
The machines allow the One to free a handful of humans to repopulate Zion
and form a new Resistance. These humans operate under the false belief they were
the first to escape from the Matrix. The Oracle guides this new generation,
telling them the One will be reborn to save the rest of humanity. When they find the next One,
they bring him to the Oracle, and the cycle continues, over and over again.
"No way! No way, this is crazy."
During the sixth cycle of the Matrix, something changes that allows Oracle to
help break the cycle and bring an actual end to humanity's enslavement by the machines.
It's possible that she's tried to corrupt the Architect's system before — after all,
she claims that her role is to "unbalance" the Matrix .
This time, the Oracle is able to influence humans to make a different outcome possible.
The future is created by the choices of individuals and, as she says, no one can see
past a choice they don't understand. The Oracle understands more than most, but not everything.
In a cut scene of the video game Enter the Matrix,
the Oracle says "the path of the One is made by many" and that everyone has their role to play,
including herself. The Oracle isn't certain her plan will work, even in the very end.
Like everyone else, she's forced to act on faith that a peaceful end to the war is possible.
By the sixth incarnation, it becomes commonplace for members of the Resistance to visit the
Oracle to ask her about their purpose. When young Morpheus seeks the Oracle's counsel, she tells him
he's destined to find the One. Morpheus scours the Matrix for signs of the One with great confidence.
The Oracle tells Trinity, a member of Morpheus' crew, that she'll fall in love with a man and
that he would be the One. Trinity reveals this to her cynical shipmate, Cypher. When Morpheus
identifies the hacker Neo as potentially being the One, Cypher ridicules Trinity about her feelings
as she is indecisive. Trinity does indeed fall for Neo but decides to keep this to herself.
After training him on how to survive in the Matrix, Morpheus takes Neo to meet the Oracle
for the first time. Morpheus believes that Neo is the One and that the Oracle will confirm this,
but Neo isn't so sure. Neo speaks with the Oracle privately about his doubts.
Above the entrance to her kitchen reads the Latin phrase "temet nosce", which means "know thyself."
The Oracle tells Neo he's not the One unless he knows he's the One — he
doesn't believe this about himself, so he assumes that he isn't the One.
The Oracle lets Neo run with that assumption. She also tells him that Morpheus will attempt
to sacrifice himself and that Neo can save him, but only at the cost of his own life.
When exiting the Matrix, Morpheus and his crew are betrayed by Cypher, and Morpheus
throws himself at the machine's Agent enforcers to buy Neo time to escape. However, Neo and Trinity
go back and rescue him and Neo is killed in the attempt, just as the Oracle predicted,
but revived shortly thereafter. Trinity admits she loves Neo, and therefore he
is the One. Trinity's belief revives Neo, and the entire party escapes back to the real world.
Neo and Trinity build a romantic bond that becomes key to the future of humanity.
The next time Neo goes to visit the Oracle in The Matrix Reloaded,
he's confronted by her bodyguard, Seraph. Seraph is also a program,
possibly as old as the Oracle herself. Those who seek a consultation with the Oracle
must first fight Seraph, not to defeat him, but to demonstrate their skills.
In the case of Neo, Seraph tests him to determine whether or not he is truly the One.
Seraph says that "you do not truly know someone until you fight them," and while this might
just seem like an excuse for a movie to add an extra fight scene, it's also clever that
a program like the Oracle would restrict access via the martial arts equivalent of a login page.
However, Seraph can also allow people other than the One to visit the Oracle.
In Enter the Matrix, Seraph submits other Resistance fighters to the same test,
and they are each admitted to see her as well. If someone demonstrates
that they're dedicated enough, they can earn the right to speak to the Oracle.
When Neo visits the Oracle in The Matrix Reloaded, he arrives with a much greater understanding of
the Matrix and is able to deduce that Seraph and the Oracle are programs, rather than humans
with special abilities. The Oracle implies she is an exile, hiding so she won't be deleted,
but this might not be true — while she operates autonomously inside the Matrix, she's still a
part of the machines' system of control, since the cycle of the One depends on her cooperation.
And so, the Oracle instructs Neo on how to reach the Source,
telling him this is, quote, "where the path of the One ends."
The Oracle doesn't lie to Neo; she only gives exactly the information necessary.
Neo follows her advice and encounters the Architect, learning the truth about the prophecy
of the One and the Oracle's role in creating the Matrix. Unlike his predecessors, Neo refuses to
participate in rebooting the Matrix since it means the death of his true love, Trinity.
This is the Oracle's design — by pairing Neo and Trinity, she gives the One
something beyond human survival to fight for. He chooses to break the cycle to save Trinity,
ensuring the Machine War ends, one way or another.
"I knew it, he's the one."
The Oracle is played by two different actors in The Matrix Reloaded,The
Matrix Revolutions, and the game Enter the Matrix. The original Oracle,
Gloria Foster passed away before her scenes for the rest of the series could be completed.
She was succeeded by Mary Alice, who co-starred as her sister in the play Having Our Say.
The Matrix Revolutions acknowledges the casting change and provides an in-universe
explanation for the Oracle's new appearance that is fleshed out in Enter the Matrix.
In the game, the Oracle explains that her choice to help Neo has enraged the Merovingian,
a powerful exiled program and the secondary antagonist of the trilogy.
Among the Merovingian's interests is arranging for programs that have fallen out of favor with
the Machine World to hide out inside the Matrix. He agrees to help the young program
Sati reach the Matrix only if her parents, Kamala and Rama Kandra,
deliver him a termination code that can destroy the Oracle's preferred physical appearance.
This is mostly an act of spite, but the loss of her old body does seem to weigh upon The Oracle.
Neo and the Oracle meet again in The Matrix Revolutions. Neo asks the Oracle why she hid so
much of the truth from him, and the Oracle replies "it wasn't time". On this visit,
Neo's has specific questions, and the Oracle has direct answers. The Oracle wants the war to end,
and she's been working toward this goal for a long time. Now, it's within reach and will
require the One to travel to the Source in the real world. The Oracle isn't certain about the
details — everything that's happening now is new, off-track from the repeating course of history,
and clouded by a series of choices that neither she nor Neo can understand.
Another unexpected element is the malevolent program called Smith. Originally assigned
to protect the status quo of the Matrix, Smith has gone rogue and presents a threat to humans
and machines. Smith has gained the ability to rewrite other programs and human avatars, and
is slowly taking over the entire simulation. The machine has no control, and Neo is the only force
powerful enough to stop him. Smith assimilates the Oracle, which grants him her powers of foresight.
However, like the Oracle, he can't see past a choice he doesn't understand.
At the Oracle's request, Neo journeys to the Machine City,
where the mainframe of the Matrix lives and programs are born. The machines are poised to
wipe out all of humanity but are in danger from Smith, who has conquered the Matrix.
Neo offers to go back into the Matrix and defeat Smith. In exchange,
the machines must spare Zion and allow the human minds in the Matrix to escape if they choose.
The machines accept Neo's terms and he battles with Smith, who has foreseen his own victory.
Smith finds himself standing over a battered Neo, ready to deliver the killing blow,
when he becomes flustered. He finds himself repeating a phrase the Oracle once spoke to Neo,
"Everything that has a beginning has an end." This final message from the Oracle helps Neo
understand the choice he needs to make: sacrifice himself to defeat the enemy. He
allows Smith to overwrite his code, which gives the machines a way to burn out the Smith virus.
Smith can't understand this choice and therefore walks into his own doom.
Smith is destroyed, and everything he re-coded is restored — including the Oracle.
The final scene of the original Matrix trilogy sees the Oracle meet with the Architect to discuss
the future of the Matrix. The Architect tells the Oracle she's, quote, "played a very dangerous
game," confirming that, from his view, she's been the mastermind behind the entire revolution.
If the Architect can be taken at his word, the next incarnation of the Matrix will allow for
humans to choose to accept the simulation, and whether or not to remain there. This
change has been the Oracle's goal all along, a hard-won victory in a centuries-long chess
match against the Architect. She may not have known for certain her plan would succeed, but
like everything else in The Matrix, her victory hinged on her belief in the cause and in Neo.
This newfound peace can't be sustained forever, as unrest would eventually return to the Matrix,
both in the video game sequel The Matrix Online and The Matrix Resurrections. What role the Oracle
will play in the future remains to be seen, hidden by narrative choices we don't yet understand.
Check out one of our newest videos right here! Plus, even more Looper videos about The Matrix
are coming soon. Subscribe to our YouTube channel and hit the bell so you don't miss a single one.