I said in the previous post that The Matrix Revolutions was the quintessential trilogy ender. Some come close, but others fail when trying to piece together a trilogy. I believe that the ones who succeed or that come close are the projects where it was designed to be a trilogy in the first place. Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi is one that comes extremely close, if it wasn’t for the fact that Lucas’ plan included the Death Star battle that found its way into A New Hope because he didn’t know if doing sequels would be possible, but I’ll forgive him.
The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions were written with the first film, and it was clearly the intention of the filmmakers to make the trilogy as is. Thus, while the films were completely misunderstood by the mass public, this third entry is powerfully conceived and executed and is one amazing piece of work.
As stated previously, The Matrix is about birth- as we see the birth of the One code implanted upon Neo. The Matrix Reloaded is about life- either it be finding ways to remain alive in a period of the Matrix where some of the programs are aware of a reboot, to the human’s quest for the salvation of Zion. The Matrix Revolutions is about death- Neo’s return to the Source and the cycle leading to the installation of Matrix 7.0. The theme of death is shown immediately after the film begins. The lines of code panning down across the screen are telling us something; the first design we see is a chalice – a Holy Grail. Therefore, the remainder of the film is the story for the Quest of the Holy Grail and the Ascension of Christ.
Continuing on the creation stories of Genesis that is of high importance in Reloaded, the third film focuses on the transition from the sixth day of creation (Matrix 6.0) to the seventh.
Choice
A major theme in The Matrix Trilogy has been choice, and it once again becomes a heavy and layered subject with this conclusion. The Merovingian went to great lengths to tell Neo and company about cause and effect, choice, and causality. The Oracle says pretty much the same thing, although her focus is on understanding the choices we make.
What constitutes a choice? Our free agency allows us to make choices, but are the choices we make really choices, or are they merely causalities of our upbringing, our environment, or our directives?
To understand the concepts and the meanings behind choice, then we have to understand them. Part of that isn’t just making a simple justification on why we do what we do. It’s a matter of complete understanding. You have to release everything, and pass between the pillars of fear and desire, above the blackened sky of the world, out of the world and into the timelessness of being, so that nothing can make you do what you do. There becomes only will; the will to go back down below the clouds into the painful realm of time and act.
We see Neo go to that place. No purpose. No fear, nor desire. Only will. The gift, the sacrifice, maybe by will alone, and it overcomes everything. There is no higher why. In the final battle of Revolutions, Smith asks of Neo, “Why, Mr. Anderson, why do you persist?” And Neo’s reply is, “Because I choose to.”
That response is powerful. It’s hard to think of another franchise that has that much meaning into a response. Jedi, I feel is equal, with Luke’s statement to the Emperor, “I am a Jedi.” Boom. Smack. It hits you like a ton of bricks. Powerful in every sense of the word- and it saddens me that moments like these are missed frequently by the common film audience.
Ascension
“And you will see the Son of Man at the right hand of the Mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven” -Mark 14:62
In order to understand the ascension of Neo, it’s important to start at the end and make your way back to the beginning; the fight between Neo and Smith comes to an apparent standstill. Neo is close to enlightenment, whereas Smith, who cannot understand why makes a speech. He lists every possible motivation he can think of, and of course the answer is none of the above.
How else would this film end? Neo landing a blow to Smith’s face that nearly takes it clean off, proclaiming that Neo was acting by will alone and the ascends into the heavens as a glorified hero. That doesn’t happen. Would it have occurred in that manner, it would have been like Ghandi mowing down his opponents with an AK-47.
The mighty cross to Smith’s jaw didn’t mean Neo was going to beat Smith with kung fu. In his hands Neo held Godlike power. He could fight as he chose to, but his choice was to lay down that power voluntarily. Smith, the dark side, cannot lay down the sword. Neo can, and by doing so chooses the path between light and dark; between desire and fear. He is like Jesus going willingly with the Roman guards. Surely the Son of God could have roasted his persecutors alive with but a nod. The followers of Jesus believed he was The One who would “end the war”, and they were extremely confused, like Morpheus, when the prophecy didn’t come true. They didn’t understand the way he seemed to give up the fight and waste all the momentum he had built up.
This sequence is almost always misinterpreted. The tendency seems to be toward a “Smith won” kind of explanation. Obi-Wan Kenobi did not lose the lightsaber duel. It was choice.
After Neo’s statement of “Because I choose to,” Agent Smith himself becomes a mess. The way Smith delivers his next line indicates he has very little idea what is happening now- or why. You can’t see past the choices you don’t understand, and Smith clearly doesn’t understand that concept because he can’t. That’s what separates him from Neo. Not only does Smith fail to understand Neo, his own understanding of his own choices unravels quickly.
What’s important to point out in Smith’s and Neo’s final conversation is that Smith finally refers to the One as Neo. Throughout the entire trilogy, Smith has only called Neo by his human name; Mr. Anderson. After uttering the words Neo to his enemy, he begins to fall apart. He is completely baffled by his own behavior. Smith finally realizes what’s to come; the merge. What began with a merge will end with a merge. And Smith is afraid of this. Neo, on the other hand, is clear headed and certain.
The beginning and the end coming together. The dark and the light coming together. Smith begins to absorb Neo. While this happens, Neo is as calm as hindu cows. Immediately after, Smith speaks with a shaky, unsure voice, “Is it over?” Smith doesn’t know. How could he know? He is completely lost at Neo’s sacrifice- a choice made that Smith just doesn’t understand. The light and the dark are one. The One.
In the real world, there is a cross of light upon Neo’s body, the sign of his sacrifice, the choosing of the Holy Grail, the way between the pairs of opposites. Streams of energy course out from neo along mechanical veins, gifting his divinity. And he ascends, he returns home, to the Source, where the path of The One ends.
The End
There is a personal discussion going on between Neo and God in the final scenes in addition to the superficial deal-cutting. This is not the Creator God, ala The Architect. The Infinite God, the Source from which finite Gods like the Architect have sprung. God asks of Neo, “What do you want?” On the surface it looks like God is negotiating with Neo, and that they are making a deal to call of the sentinals if Neo can defeat Smith. This was not demands from the human side in Zion. This was, what does Neo want?
To which his response is, “Peace.”
Neo is asking for rest, for balance. He wants to end. The purpose of life is to end. At-one-ness. The One’s personal ascension brings gifts to the entire world- Peace. Peace for Neo is the first gift of ascension. Peace for Zion is the second of the gifts. The third gift is the rewriting of the Matrix. The fourth gift, for the machines, is the birth of new programs with more human emotion; in this particular case it is Sati, The One codes first real gift to the machine world: Love for programs.
But what happens to Smith? How was the merger able to destroy the Smith virus that has run rampant throughout the Matrix? First, we have to give up the notion that Neo and Smith can be represented as +1 and -1. That’s much too simple. Instead of saying that Neo and Smith merged, we can say that the Light One and the Dark One merged, just like the annihilation of a proton meeting an antiproton. Neo and Smith could fight each other to a standstill as the Light One and the Dark One, and if that’s all there was to it they might have ended up killing each other and that would be that. No elevation. No transcendence. But the reality is you have the Light One on one side, the Dark One on the other, and Neo in the middle.
Neo lays his power down. He steps away from his role as the Light One and goes into the middle path between the opposites. Smith cannot go there. Smith cannot, and will not lay his power down. Ans so Smith obliterated in the merging of the Light and the Dark. The most basic level to Smith’s devise is that he got himself connected to the Source. We know that when Smith copies himself upon another program, that individual can command the power of all the other Smiths and know what all of the other Smith’s know. Power and information shift freely within the horde. The Smith who copies himself upon The Oracle understands this, as The Oracle, through Agent Smith gives Neo information that she had previously given him, “Everything that has a beginning has an end.”
By this level alone, Neo is still very much apart of the Smith copy, and as they have merged, Neo is able to connect to the Source; the path where the One Ends, wiping out Neo’s code from the Matrix, and by association Smith as well. Connecting to the Source equals deletion for programs. Smith tells us this in Reloaded. So does The Oracle.
Additionally, after Neo is absorbed, we see the code view of the real world, a single pulse of orange light goes into Neo’s body (Orange light is code in the real world, green light is code in the Matrix). Some piece of code travels from machine city, presumably from the Source, into Neo. This is a reason why the machines need Neo. The Oracle understands this. It is by Neo’s choice and sacrifice that leads to Smith’s deletion. Neo is in his divinity. He has claimed the Holy Grail, the way between two opposites, and walked back into the Garden. It is the connection between Neo and the ground of all being. It is the taking of the fruit of the second Tree and the beginning of the ascent into Nirvana. The Buddha, sitting under the World Tree, was challenged by a thousand-armed god of Death and his legions. The Buddha reached out his hands and placed his fingertips on the Earth, which is the Source, and drew into himself the essence of the Infinite God. The death God and all his armies were shattered.
Neo is basically becoming a conduit for the divine. “Thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven.” The surgeon’s hands become God’s hands, the birthing mother’s body becomes God’s body, the Word of God flows from the pen of the author. The power of God flows into and through such people. When the surge goes into Neo, he acts as the door through which the Light of God enters the World.
Neo
Throughout the trilogy, the theme of tension between pairs of opposites is constant. It underpins everything else, and lack of understanding this theme leads to a basic lack of understanding the trilogy. It is obvious that Neo and Smith are to be regarded as opposite sides of the same character, but the theme of opposites goes far deeper. It is absolutely critical to understand the symbolism of creation stories. Creation stories are inevitably about splitting things apart. At first there is only singular. Then there is division. In the beginning, there was God. He separated light from darkness, the sea from the sky and the land. He is the weilder of the cosmic sword, cutting what was one into two.
Creation stories are the key. They are what get you started toward the big picture of the spiritual cycle. First, there is creation. Second is the exit from the Garden. Third is the Quest for the Holy Grail. Fourth is Reunion.
Then it starts over again. Then you have opposites. Exiting from the Garden is the opposite of the Quest. Reunion is the opposite of creation. Creation is birth. The moment of creation in the first film is the start of the One code, where Neo resurrects and consumes Smith, shattering him. Then comes the division. Smith tells Neo in the second film that something from Neo was imprinted onto him. In other words, the creative act is the dividing of The One- part continues as Neo, and part continues as Smith. Reloaded is the story of the Exit from the Garden. Leaving Revolutions as the story of the Quest for the Holy Grail.
Part of understanding the Holy Grail concept is that the Grail itself is not a thing. The Grail is a State of Being. The Holy Grail in Revolutions is Neo allowing Smith to absorb him. The Grail is a way- it is the doorway back into the Garden. Christ talks about himself as “I Am the Way,” and his blood is often used symbolically in Grail stories but remains the same; the blood of Christ, the sacrifice of the Christ, is the way.
A lot of perceptions are that of the Grail being a way towards immortality. That is a reference to the Tree of Life. Adam and Eve didn’t eat from that tree, and the ideas is that, with the Grail, you can get back into the Garden and chow on some immortality fruit. We need to read this as a story, however- these are metaphors. The tree and the Grail are both metaphors for a transformation in you. You obtain the Grail (the Royal Blood, your kingship, your divinity) by choosing the way of Christ. That way is the middle way between the pairs of opposites and the reuniting of the divided self.
The Quest is the journey to the World Tree, the sacrificial cross, and the gifts to the world. This is Neo’s journey to the machine city and to the Source. Neo chooses the way of the Christ when he stopes off the Mjolnir and onto the Logos. Logos is symbol-speak for Christ. This transition has another meaning; it is the laying down of the war-power of Thor’s hammer and the choosing of the word-power of Jesus or the Buddha. Before the Buddha was born, his mother was told her son would either be a great warrior-king or a great teacher. He choose teacher. Likewise, Jesus is offered dominion over the kingdoms of the world, which is taken to be mutually exclusive with continuing as a teacher.
On the Logos, Bane (an avatar of Smith) attacks, in which Neo’s eyes are scorched out of their sockets. Blind, he is mocked by Bane. This is identical to what happened to Jesus on his way to the crucifixion- he was blindfolded and beaten by the soldiers, who challenged him to use his second sight to identify his attackers. And we see that this is in fact Neo’s full awaking to his second sight. His first words after being blinded are, “I can see you.” The spiritual journey, the Quest for the Holy Grail begins, on the road that can be seen only with the inner eye.
As with creation stories and the talk of being divided, Neo is divided in another way, too.
The Merovingian
Going back to the Grail legend, the entrance back into the Garden is guarded by fiery angels. In the legend, there is a line of Frankish kings called the Merovingians, who are descended from Christ. They protect the Grail by their keeping of the bloodline of Christ. It makes perfect sense that on the Quest for the Grail one would encounter its protector.
There are two kinds of protection. The first kind is protection against evil. What evil? That is the second kind of protection; seeking to prevent anyone from attaining the Grail. The legend says that there are angels in favor of mankind, and those against mankind. This is the basis of the War in Heaven, the result of which is the casting out of Those Opposed, led by Lucifer. Casting out is part of the history of the Matrix, and it means to be “cast out from the machine city into the Matrix.”
We know that the “Merovingian” is a protector of the Grail, and we know that there are two protectors. The first protector is The Merovingian himself. The fact that his wife is Persephone makes it absolutely clear that he is Hades, who is analogous for Lucifer. The other protector is the fiery angel who calls himself a protector: Seraph.
Merovingian is opposed to mankind. He is also opposed to God, by which I mean the Architect and the Oracle. And the Merovingian will strike at them every chance he gets out of pure hatred, for being cast out, which is definitely not his idea. He hates the Oracle, because this “Age” of the Matrix is very much her creation. The One code was certainly not the Merovingians idea.
What does The Merovingian do? He guards the Grail- the return to the Source. There is his motivation for imprisoning the Keymaker- the route to the machine city and because the Merovingian cannot go, he forbids others to go as well by controlling the Keeper of the Doors.
With the Merovingian properly set up as the Devil, his introduction scene in Revolutions is in a club notably named Club Hel. The events at the club are tightly connected to the events at the Mobile Ave. Station, and it all gets its start when Neo halted the sentinals at the end of Reloaded and fell into a coma.
The coma is compared to death, and his transformation after waking up is larger than anticipated. In the Apostle’s Creed, Christ descends into Hell after his death on the cross. The Creed doesn’t really say any more than this, but it gets heavy interpretation in the Catholic Church, so there are several variations on the whole story. At the moment of his death, Christ’s soul and body separated from each other- his body stayed on Earth and his soul went down into Sheol, the place of the dead, or sometimes in varying stories Hell, and sometimes Limbo.
Trinity and Neo are the same person. If something happens to Trinity, we can just as well say it happened to Neo. This occurs after Neo resurrects Trinity- they are One. Therefore, Trinity’s trip to Club Hel counts as Christ’s descent into Hell, accompanied by Morpheus and Seraph.
When this trio approaches the main doors of Club Hel, the bouncers recognize Seraph and call him “Wingless.” Inside the club, the Merovingian calls Seraph “L’ange sans ailes” (Wingless Angel). This reveals a depth and complexity about Seraph that is very intriguing. He has had his wings clipped. Seraph, too, must be some kind of exile from the machine city, and his protection of the Grail may be work of atonement.
Also present in Club Hel is the Trainman, similar to the Boatman or Charon who serves Hades. Then the deal is proposed: The Merovingian will give them back their savior, in exchange to turn against God (The Oracle) by giving him her soul- The Eyes of the Oracle. Yet Trinity gets to the point and aims a gun at his head; Deal-making is out of the question with Christ towards the Devil. Hades was never good for letting the dead return to the world of the living. He always had to be coerced somehow.
At this very instant, Neo at the Mobil (ie, Limbo) station says, “You got yourself into this. You can get yourself out.” And that’s exactly what happens.
Mobil Station
This scene is severely misunderstood. The two mots important scenes in Revolutions are Mobil Station and the final showdown with Smith. Mobil Avenue tells us exactly what’s going to happen to happen at the end of the movie.
Mobil is an anagram for Limbo. Whereas Trinity (one with Neo) descends into Hell, the other half descends into limbo.
In Mobil Station with Neo is the program family. Mobil Station is the place between the machine city and the Matrix (the river styx). At first it seems they are smuggling their daughter out of the Matrix, but rather the opposite. The program family is from the machine city and they are smuggling their daughter into the Matrix, where there are plenty of exiles who have no purpose. As long as an Agent doesn’t find her, the daughter will be safe.
With Mobil being Limbo, this is the place were purified souls go to await the ascension of Christ into heaven. Now, what are they waiting for?
Because Mobil Avenue leads to machine city, Neo will ascend to heaven in the machine city. Going back to The Architect and the creation of the Matrix, this particular version is 6.0, or the sixth day. Neo represents genuine human beings, the human being eats the apple and leaves the Garden. Also in the Reloaded post which I said would come back to later, the trinity of the Matrix is Brahma (The Architect), Shiva (The Oracle), leaving Vishnu.
Neo’s coma is metaphorical death. The sixth incarnation of Neo didn’t make it past the Architect’s chamber in Reloaded, but at least something of him survives to Mobil. This is the end of him. Neo 6.0, who is the serpent, who is Parashurama in Hindu-Vishnu spirituality, never leaves Mobil Avenue Station. The Neo that rides the train out at the end of the sequence is the seventh incarnation; Neo 7.0.
This is explained throughout the scene in detail. The first thing we hear spoken is “Good Morning,” by Sati. That means, “Welcome to a new day.” Neo is a new person. His opening shot in the film is him opening his eyes, symbolic to a “new day.”
Like good fiction, we are having the entire movie explained to us in the first few minutes. Sati means “Self-immolation.” More generally, willing self-sacrifice. This points directly at the final moments between Neo and Smith. It is intersting that Sati knows Neo’s name already. It isn’t that Sati recognizes Neo, but her father surely does, because they are they same person, and in that Sati knows what will come.
The part about being lost is important. This is about why Neo is at Mobil. If he was there intentionally, he wouldn’t be lost. As we learn from the Oracle later, Parashurama isn’t prepared to go into the machine city. He cannot touch the Source and survive. He pops into Limbo entirely by accident.
Frequently in these films there are lines of dialogue that seem to carry a particular, superficial meaning but in fact are deep wells of symbolism. In Reloaded, when neo and the Oracle talk in the park, Neo asks the Oracle why she is here. “Same reason as you,” she says. “I love candy.” What this really means is that the Oracle delights in disobedience, she loves the eating of the apple. When Neo says, “I know you” to Sati’s father, Rama Kandra, it’s the same thing. Yes, he recognizes Rama Kandra from the restaurant, but what it really means is that Neo recognizes Rama Kandra like a mirror image. Neo is meeting himself. The Neo-in-black is Parashurama, the Serpent. Rama Kandra is Ramachandra, the seventh incarnation of Vishnu, the Christ.
In the Vishnu stories, Parashurama actually meets Ramachandra and there is a “passing of the torch”, so to speak. There is no way the meeting between Neo and Rama Kandra is a coincidence. After Parashurama cedes to Rama, Parashurama goes off to live in the mountains (between Earth and Sky) to await the next age of the world. Welcome to Mobil Avenue Station: Parashurama (Neo 6) stays in Mobil; Ramachandra (Neo 7) leaves.
In Hindu mythology, Kamala is really the wife of Ramachandra, who is present with Sati and her husband. Taken their names alone, the meaning here is that from divinity springs perfect sacrifice. In the discussions with Neo and Rama Kandra, the framing of the film is rather important; standing between them is Sati- meaning Neo’s self immolation will lead to his transcendence. The Grail.
Rama Kandra’s job as a program is to oversee feeding the liquefied dead humans to the living humans in the power generation pods, as explained in the first film. This is life. This is the Oroboros.
Rama is in charge of recycling. He encompasses not just the glory of the Divine but also the gritty, earthly orobos- the world snake eating its own tail. This is a lesson. You do not achieve the Grail by eliminating or leaving behind your animal self. It is as much a part of you as the divine. This is directly referenced in the blinding of Neo by Bane, who after revealing he is Agent Smith, goes on to state that he finds humans disgusting. He cannot accept both the animal side and the divine side.
After Neo leaves Mobil Station, Link admits that Neo’s code was reading different as before. This is because it’s not the same Neo. Good morning, Neo. Today is the seventh day.
Sati
Explained in the Reloaded post, there are gifts of the divine that make their way into the Matrix with Neo’s sacrifice. Neo’s gift to the machines was programs with the ability to have emotion.
There are two separate parts to the ending. The first part is what see of the humans, the second part is what we see of the machines (or programs). With the climax over and Neo’s ascension complete, the first human who speaks is Lock, and we are informed of all the human ramifications of Neo’s actions.
Lock states, “It doesn’t make sense.”
The defeat of rationality is central to transcendence. You cannot grow into your true humanity by rational means. It’s a non-rational journey. This is why Neo could have not simply pummeled Smith into submission; why the Christ has to irrationally allow himself to be sacrificed; why Ghandi cannot simply shred everyone with a machine gun. To Lock, the only thing that would have “made sense” would be for Neo to come blasting through the hordes of squiddies with some kind of super power. The unraveling of the rationality puzzle is tied up with exploring Neo’s powers, especially why he has powers in the real world. This applies to Sati.
Morpheus, an opposition to Lock asks if the end of the war is real. In the first film he asks Neo, “Have you ever had a dream you were so sure was real..,” therefore Morpheus is waking from a dream and into the seventh day (Nirvana). This is shown in the Matrix as well, as the first program we see is Sati, walking up from being asleep. Her first line is “Good Morning.” This puts Sati directly into the center of all meaning as far as the machines are concerned.
A new age has begun for humans. A new age has begun for machines. A new age has begun for the Matrix. Sati is the new machine. Sati represents willing sacrifice. The programs of old are perfectly rational. Sati is the opposite. She is set apart from earlier machines. She is the new; the Oneness of Neo (new) ascended to the Source and imprinted onto the program mind. This is Neo’s gift to the Matrix.
We then meet The Oracle and The Architect once again…. this time approaching one another in a lush, green park, ala The Garden, after creation. Their conversation is short but complex, with the two talking of playing dangerous games as to The Architect, playing an irrational game is not something he understands but The Oracle does. That was her purpose.
They also discuss peace, but they both know this time will be short. Resumed conflict is imminent, but it will be along different axes. The machine/man conflict is truly over, but there are still things to work out, e.g. to unplug or not to unplug.
The Architect can’t see past any choices. The Merovingian will not want to give up his kingdom. There is still a threat, obviously, and enough of a basis to bring about a fourth film. Both are the old programs, the old way. Sati shows up next, the new program, the new way.
There are two things to note about the final set of lines spoken in the film. First, Sati apparently makes the sunrise. She had no directive to make it. She says, “I made it for Neo.” Nothing more, nothing less. It’s because it was what she wanted to do for sentiment. She cared. She has emotion.
The second thing is that the Oracle says she did not know things would work out as they did, but she believed they would. This displays that The Oracle has human weakness, to hope. The Architect is the primary route for humans to get back to the Source. Humans needs the most machine based program to get to the Source. The opposite is true for machines. Getting to the Source means going through the Oracle, who is the most human like program. That is why Smith’s path took him to The Oracle.
This connects with Neo’s real world powers and moots the battery question (why don’t the machines just use cows?). The human’s path of ascension leads them to the machines. The Machines path of ascension leads them to the humans. Now that the age of ascension has arrived, these gateways are unnecessary. It is Sati’s time. The time of gift.
The Four Ages
It should be noted that these ages are exactly like the steps of the “spiritual cycle” when talking about the Holy Grail. These Ages are a cycle. First is the Perfect Garden and the wheel turns once again. This is why the Oracle says that Neo will be back. The second age is The Wasteland. The third age is the Return to the Source, and the fourth age is Nirvana.
Each of these are the grand re-writes of the Matrix that Smith and the Architect tell us about. Even Persephone talks about a much older version of the Matrix, one which vampires and werewolves were part of the design world. The third age is what the trilogy is all about. The first film starts near the end of the Third Age, and the last film closes with the dawning of the Fourth Age.
The big theme of these films is choice. The humans and the Oracle talk about choice and understanding, whereas The Architect and The Merovingian believe that choice is an illusion. It all pertains to growth. Growth requires the cycle- the exit and the return- and the cycle requires making a genuine choice. Neo makes it abundantly clear that nothing at all is moving him except his own will to move.
Nirvana: In the fourth age, the Matrix as an entity remains. It is fundamentally different Matrix, however. The Matrix of the fourth age is a voluntary construct. If a human wants to leave or enter the Matrix, he will be free to do so. If a program wants to enter or leave the Matrix, it will be free to do so. This is essentially the lifting of the machines’ draconian insistence on purpose. The consequence of the freedom to come and go and to know the truth is that the Matrix of the fourth age will be adjustable to the wishes of its inhabitants. It will be an age of Gods, human and machine.
Outside the Matrix, in the real world, humans will continue to live underground and machines will continue to live in their city. Emissaries from each group will eventually be welcome by the other, and the groups will gain from each other. It will be an Age of Gods, human and machine.
This cycle will break and the Age of Gods will end. But to go back, the first stage is The Perfect Garden, and will repeat itself with the new incarnation of the Matrix.
In the beginning, the Architect had to design and implement a world for humans to live in. Naturally, that world would be perfect in all its aspects, and ever need of its population taken care of.
We can perhaps imagine that everyone is beautiful, healthy, and serene. No one ages and no one is ever injured. It is an absolute Utopia. There would have been some mechanism for dealing with the actual death of humans outside the Matrix, to prevent still-connected people from noticing that someone was no longer around and getting sad about it, but I admit I cannot think of a very good way to do that. And that might be the crack in the armor. At some point suffering is going to creep into the picture, if only because of the passage of time. I don’t suspect it would take that much, though, to get people chafing at the perfection. In order to be perfect, everything must be predictable. Most, if not all people will do almost anything to avoid being predictable. The more the environment succeeds at prediction, the harder they will try to disprove the environment. In other words, they will try to wake up from the Matrix. In mythic terms, we are at the equivalent of eating the apple. We want to know, no matter the cost. Like Neo, we are compelled to take the red pill.
So suffering enters into things. Smith says, “No one would accept the program. Entire crops were lost.” The First Age enters a period of time (probably a very short period of time) when everything is in crisis. The idea that something is wrong with the world is spreading. Clearly the Matrix is going to have to be rewritten. And that is a point of division among machines. There is a disagreement. Smith says, “Some believed that we lacked the programming language to describe your perfect world.” That seems to suggest that the machines are divided about what to do next.
At the time of the First Age the Merovingian is a program in the machine city (not the Matrix). He does not think humans are worth the trouble and advocates that the machines should abandon them and figure out a way to live alone. Much of what Smith says about humans in the first movie is applicable to the Merovingian’s opinion at this time. A number of other programs in the machine city also believe that the failure of the Matrix proves humans are ungovernable and their entire species should be scrapped. The division among machines regarding humans is older than even the first Matrix, however. The decision to enslave humanity rather than terminate it was not a unanimous one. All those who were opposed then are opposed now. The old differences resurface, and the Merovingian attempts to “fork” the machine world. A machine civil war followed, fought entirely in codespace, and eventually the Merovingian and all the dissenters were brought back into conformity. Now dawns the Second Age.
The Second Age is The Wasteland. After the machine civil war is over, the Architect remakes the Matrix into a wasteland. It is no less perfect, but rather than a blissful Utopia the Matrix of the Second Age is a world of Mad Max-style hedonistic excess. We see what it was like in Club Hel. The entire world was that way. It is the age of vampires and werewolves. The Second Age is the Kingdom of the Merovingian.
The Merovingian was expelled from the machine city into the Matrix. His purpose as a program in the Matrix is to control the traffic between worlds. This is a job he shares with Seraph, who is also a gatekeeper. Together they guard the way back to the Source, and the Keymaker and the Trainman are their servants. For a time Seraph and the Merovingian are partners, although they interpret their duties very differently.
We already know from the Oracle that the Merovingian desires power. He probably had this urge all along, and asserted it from time to time, culminating in the disagreement over the failure of the First Age. Constrained by his purpose in the Matrix of the Second Age, he seeks power related to controlling the traffic of data (i.e., “a trafficker of information”). He uses his guardianship as a means to gain influence over other programs — you can move data for a price, he says, taxing everything that passes through his fingers. The currency he demands is loyalty and debt; deletion codes are his prized winnings. He gains exclusive control of the Keymaker and the Trainman, and he ensnares Persephone. The vampire and werewolf programs come under his control as well, as do the Twins and other such creatures. Not too long after the Second Age Matrix is created, the Merovingian is its master — he is the King of the Wasteland.
But all is not well in the Matrix. As before, some humans accept the program. Many others do not. The terms of expression in the Matrix were remade, but the essential premise was the same — humans are still commanded to do what they are told, to accept their world without question. The urge to take the red pill remained, and a growing number of people refused to believe in the Matrix. So a second crisis was looming for the machines. At the same time, the tension between Seraph and the Merovingian was growing. It is likely that Seraph met the Oracle during the time of crisis, and saw a way to fulfill his purpose through her.
The Oracle was a program from the First Age Matrix whose job it was to help predict what humans might do, and thereby allow the Matrix to function as a fully predictive construct. Her job was the same in the Second Age. By the time she meets Seraph, her predictive powers are quite good, and she knows how to rewrite the Matrix yet again so that humans would accept the program fully.
Of course, the Merovingian is not in favor of rewriting the Matrix again. He tries to destroy her, but Seraph intervenes and protects the Oracle. That is the nature of the “betrayal” and the bad blood between Seraph and the Merovingian. And that is also how Seraph came to protect the Oracle full time, and how the Merovingian came to hate the Oracle obsessively.
Eventually, despite the Merovingian’s efforts, the Matrix was rewritten to the Third Age. The Merovingian’s influence was enormous, however, and he was able to take a substantial part in the rewriting process. He preserved himself, Persephone, a host of henchmen, and much of his kingdom. He also preserved his old job: he still polices the route between worlds.
The Seven Incarnations of Neo
There were two Ages of the Matrix that failed. Then the Architect introduces us to the Third Age, the design “stumbled upon” by an intuitive program (i.e., the Oracle). It is this design of the Matrix that permits The One and allows humans to grow — to disobey now and then — yet that disobedience is still under control.
The first of The One would undoubtedly arrive at the start of the Matrix 3.0, and continuing through each reboot of the same programming for 6 variations of Neo.
The sixth version of Neo is quite different than all who came before him. The Architect confirms this by stating that his “Five predecessors were, by design, based on a similar predication: a contingent affirmation that was meant to create a profound attachment to the rest of your species, facilitating the function of the One. While the others experienced this in a very general way, your experience is far more specific, vis-a-vis love.”
Is it possible that each of the previous Neo’s looked different? I think so. My own personal suspicions and not based upon fact from the subtext of what is The Matrix Trilogy makes me believe that Seraph was at one point, a previous incarnation of Neo.
Now regarding Neo’s special abilities: the functioning of the Matrix is the way to understanding these. It’s quite a popular opinion that the abilities in the Matrix correlate exactly to strength of will. The idea is that Neo is just willing himself over these obstacles. I think that ignores the facts. Neo’s powers in the Matrix manifest when he feels deep bonds with other human beings, most of all Trinity. As his relationship with Trinity grows, so does his power in the Matrix. The Matrix is powered by human bio-electricity. What is that? It’s thoughts and feelings, impulses and urges of the body. Therefore, everything in the Matrix is the result of human emotion, or more accurately the ebb and flow of the aggregate emotion of the entire human race.
Neo is genetically designed to tap into this aggregate bio-electrical circuit, and he focuses and amplifies that energy. The extent of that amplification is tied to his personal emotional level. In his previous incarnations, Neo’s generic feeling toward the rest of humanity afforded him a certain amount of power in the Matrix. But this time around, because of Trinity, the depth of his emotion is incredibly multiplied. As a result, so is his power in the Matrix.
It’s not a very big leap from powers in the Matrix to Neo’s powers in the real world. All the human bio-electricity flows from the pod fields to the Source, and then it is redistributed back to the Matrix along well-defined channels. The humans plugged into the Matrix then have experiences, from which they have emotions, and their emotional energy flows back to the Source.
It isn’t power that the machines need from humans, it’s feelings, belief, and hope. The electrical power angle is just the metaphor. What makes the machines go on day after day? Why do they continue? What reason do they have to exist?” Aside from ringing all the symbolic bells in the entire story, it spotlighted the exact nature of the machines’ power source. The machines go on because the humans go on. The will to live and to grow and to feel and to experience is what they do not have and cannot invent. The power they get from human beings is the power to hope.
Neo’s — humanity’s — path is toward reunion with The Source, with God. At the same time, the machines’ path is toward reunion with another God, the human beings who created them. They are each other’s path to the divine. As the Oracle said, the only way forward is together.
