The Entire Matrix Timeline Finally Explained

The mythology of the Matrix franchise is one of the most complicated and dense in all of pop culture. Part of its enduring popularity is the seemingly impossible aplomb with which Lana and Lilly Wachowski synthesized a stew of philosophical concepts cribbed from Jean Baudrillard and others with various pop culture inspirations, including anime, the cyberpunk fiction of Philip K. Dick and William Gibson, club culture, and wuxia films (many, including James Gunn, have speculated that they also borrowed heavily from Grant Morrison's seminal '90s comic book "The Invisibles" as well). While "The Matrix" was game-changing from the start, the Wachowskis' mind-bending 1999 sci-fi film looks downright modest compared to what the Matrix universe has grown into over the last 23 years.

For an original property, the world-building of the Matrix is nearly peerless in its ambition, encompassing a vast transmedia empire of sequels, prequels, one-offs, comic books, and video games that inspired many media properties (and knock-offs) to follow. It can be a lot to keep in your head, but we can at least attempt to make sense of the labyrinthine chronology dreamt up by the pioneering filmmakers. Let's plug in and see how we got here. Here is the entire saga of "The Matrix" from the start of the machine war to its surprisingly emotional and optimistic conclusion in 2021's "The Matrix Resurrections."

Zero-One's capacity for technological innovation makes it a potential world power and an economic powerhouse, but the United Nations refuses its request to be recognized. Zero-One is bombarded with nuclear weapons. Enough machines survive, however, to mount a retaliatory counterattack. As a last resort, mankind initiates "Operation Dark Storm," a chemical attack that blackens Earth's skies and robs the machines of the solar power they primarily rely upon. Under the scorched atmosphere, war rages on.

As the narrator of the "Animatrix" shorts "The Second Renaissance Part 1" and "The Second Renaissance Part 2" puts it, "The machines, having long studied men's simple protein bodies, dispensed great misery upon the human race." The machine race innovates an alternate power source — the bioelectric, thermal, and kinetic energies of the human body. After setting off an atom bomb at the United Nations, the machines enslave the humans in massive factories of artificial wombs. The apparent supreme intelligence of the machines (It's never quite clear how the hierarchy works in their world. Later, it will take the form of a mouthpiece referred to in the script as Deus Ex Machina. In subsequent films, it will be described as a kind of bureaucracy) instructs an AI called the Architect to construct a simulated fantasy world for humanity to keep them placated and none the wiser. He builds for them a paradisiacal prison of the mind in cyberspace. Humanity rejects his too-perfect world.

After the Architect overcorrects with his second Matrix inspired by humanity's worst impulses, it is rejected by the comatose human batteries and crashes. However, his third attempt, an iteration with a more balanced ratio of darkness and light, is successful. This simulation is based on the world in the late 20th century before mankind's hubris would lead to the breakthroughs in artificial intelligence that sparked the apocalyptic war with the machines. This Matrix is a success but with one glaring exception that is essential to understanding the lore.

Even with the Architect's compromises and revisions, a fraction of the population continues to wake up, resulting in a series of systemic anomalies. To counteract these errors, one person is selected at random to function as the "Integral Anomaly," and together with another program called the Oracle (Gloria Foster), whom he refers to as the "Mother of the Matrix," the Architect creates a messianic prophecy around this individual ("the One") to instill in humanity a false sense of hope. It's the Oracle's responsibility to continue stoking these beliefs until the One fulfills their destiny at "the Source." The One is gifted with superhuman abilities unlike anyone else inside the Matrix. The specifics for how the One functions will be explained in depth later, but suffice it to say their existence results in a cascading series of Matrix reboots.

The story picks up six months later after the events of "The Matrix" in the CGI short film "The Final Flight of the Osiris," the ninth and final segment in the "Animatrix" anthology. "The Final Flight of the Osiris" introduces the doomed crew of the titular Zion hovercraft: Thadeus, Jue, and Robbie. After a requisite Matrix dojo fight scene between Thadeus and Jue in the Construct, the Osiris detects a massive swarm of sentinels, the machines' squid-like drone soldiers in the real world, and realize that the machines have erected a series of massive drills on the earth's surface with the intent of mounting a full-force invasion of Zion.

Jue jacks in to deliver a warning to the human sanctuary city and only barely makes it to a drop site before she and the rest of the Osiris are destroyed by sentinels. Osiris' distress call is retrieved by the crew of the Logos (Captain Niobe, Ghost, and Sparks) in the PlayStation video game "Enter the Matrix."

During the attack on the power station, Trinity is fatally wounded while fleeing Agent Thompson, confirming that the nightmares about her demise Neo has recently been experiencing are premonitions. Once inside the entrance to the Source, Neo encounters the Architect, who explains the true nature of the One and the history of the Matrix up until this point. He presents Neo with a classic "train car dilemma": enter the Source and reset the Matrix, ensuring the extinction of all but a handful of people, or return to Zion to mount a defense, essentially a lose/lose proposition. The true purpose of the One is revealed as predestined to choose the former and re-stabilize the Matrix until their eventual successor arrives and makes the same decision, thus ensuring the Matrix will continue to exist in perpetuity.

But Neo chooses a third path and leaves the Architect (Helmut Bakaitis) to save a dying Trinity. His love for Trinity makes Neo unique among Ones in that instead of a generalized love of mankind like his predecessors, his compassion has manifested in the form of a singular individual (a seed the Oracle planted in Trinity's head in hopes of reaching a détente between man and machine). Neo is successful in reviving Trinity, but upon their return to the real world, the Nebuchadnezzar is destroyed by sentinels. The crew survives, and Neo mysteriously manifests his powers in the real world before falling into a coma.

Over the next 60 years, the Matrix once again becomes destabilized. The exodus of humans from the Matrix has led to an energy crisis for the machines and the end of the peace that Neo brokered. A scheming program called the Analyst (Neil Patrick Harris), who can slow time and erase or manipulate the memories of those within the simulation, recovers and reconstructs Neo and Trinity and hides their pods in a part of the machine city called the Anomaleum. He reinserts them into the Matrix with new identities, knowing the power of their yearning for one another will provide the energy needed to keep the Matrix going.

The Analyst becomes the reigning authority of the machines and keeps close tabs on Neo, masquerading as his therapist. He's cursed Neo with a new identity in this Matrix. Although his name is still Thomas Anderson, he is now a famous and wealthy (but haunted) video game developer. In a meta touch, his career-defining triumph is called, naturally, "The Matrix." The Analyst manipulates Thomas by explaining that his doubts about reality are a symptom of his alleged neurodivergence. It's suggested that Thomas has attempted to leap off a building and fly away and been reset by the Analyst on at least one occasion. Smith, somehow, has survived and hides, re-skinned, in plain sight as Thomas' business partner at Deus Machina Games. Meanwhile, Trinity has been given the identity of "Tiffany," a married mother of two.

Inside Matrix 6.0, the Analyst, Neo, and Tiffany converge at "Simulatte," the coffee shop where Thomas first met her. The Analyst has concocted a predicament worthy of the Architect: Neo's awakening triggered a failsafe that will end the Matrix unless he consents to re-enter. Neo counters that if he and the other rebels can successfully free Trinity, the Analyst must promise to leave them be. The Analyst is convinced that Trinity will choose her new life over Neo, but after an initial rebuke, true love prevails – Trinity rejects the falsehood of her fabricated life with her counterfeit family. Ever the wild card, Smith suddenly arrives and distracts the Analyst long enough for Neo and Trinity to flee the agents and a zombified "swarm mode" Matrix copper-tops ("Bots" in the parlance of the film) that are pursuing them.

Neo and Trinity make it to the top of a skyscraper (because what would a Matrix film be without a lobby fight and a crucial rooftop scene). They embrace and take a leap of faith, but there's a twist. While Neo's powers have faded, Trinity appears to have her own One-like power of flight. "The Matrix Resurrections" — and the entire epic series to date — ends with Neo and Trinity confronting a defanged Analyst, promising to remake the Matrix into their idea of utopia. They fly off hand-in-hand into a promising new dawn as the leaders humanity has always deserved.