10 Strongest Characters In The Matrix Franchise, Ranked

Anything is possible inside the Matrix, if you are capable of seeing the lines of code that create the false reality around us. That is the power fantasy at the heart of "The Matrix" as a franchise, in which an ordinary computer hacker like Thomas Anderson (Keanu Reeves) can transform into the trenchcoat-wearing revolutionary Neo; armed with a pistol, a comprehensive collection of kung-fu moves, and the world's coolest sunglasses on a quest to free humanity from digital enslavement.

Across the timeline of the four Matrix films, including the original 1999 classic, its two immediate sequels "Reloaded" and "Revolutions," and the misunderstood denouement "Resurrections" (which our Looper reviewer called a hard pill to swallow), the series has given us countless fighters capable of high flying stunts and epic brawls. In this list, we'll count down the 10 strongest characters inhabiting the machine world of the Matrix, and the human world of Zion. So buckle up and plug in, because things are going to get wild.

We start our list with Niobe (Jada Pinkett Smith), one of Neo's strongest allies in the second film, who steps up to take Neo on his journey into the machine city where the other pilots are too afraid to travel. Her ship, the Logos, is one of the fleet's smallest, which allows her to show off her skills as a pilot, navigating the subterranean passages with ease.

Inside the Matrix, she's no slouch either. While only a minor character in the films, Niobe is one of the playable characters in the forgotten video game "Enter the Matrix," allowing the player to see first hand how capable she is of fighting her way through the digital world. The game's story runs parallel to "The Matrix Reloaded," which shows Niobe saving our heroes on multiple occasions.

If that all wasn't enough, in the wake of the original trilogy, "The Matrix Resurrections" shows us that Niobe has become the new leader of humanity, a society that has now sought to find balance with the machine world. So, even in her old age, Niobe remains one of the most powerful characters in all of "The Matrix."

While the Architect (Helmut Bakatis) boasts a robust vocabulary, don't let his elderly appearance fool you into doubting his power. As the creator of the original Matrix, and the program responsible for keeping all of humanity docile inside their energy pods, the Architect wields control over each and every human within the digital realm — and he's the key to some of the franchise's biggest themes.

He may not be a fighter, more comfortable facing off with Neo while seated inside his surveillance control room, but his power comes from his near total mastery over every aspect of the Matrix. Even Neo, the latest One who can manipulate the Matrix around him, is still bound by the binary choices presented to him by the Architect, and his hero's journey is prescribed to him by the apex program as a means of providing order to the system as a whole. 

The Architect creates a prophecy so that humanity will seek out the aberrant mind of a messiah, bringing him to the Architect where he will be forced to choose between the elimination of all humanity, or to be returned to the Matrix source code in exchange for allowing a small portion of humanity to repopulate the city of Zion after it is destroyed.

The Architect's plan is so thoroughly perfected that this cycle has been resolved countless times by the time our Neo becomes the first to defeat his grand scheme, which tells us just how powerful this program really is.

Of all the fighters in the Matrix, one of the only programs to really make Neo sweat is Seraph (Collin Chou). He's first encountered in "The Matrix Reloaded," when Neo is searching out the Oracle (Gloria Foster) for information on how to stop Agent Smith (Hugo Weaving). But instead of finding the Oracle, Neo meets Seraph. Serving as the Oracle's bodyguard, Seraph quickly engages Neo, testing his abilities like a sentient CAPTCHA to ensure their visitor really is human.

Neo succeeds in passing Seraph's test, and in the process, Seraph proves how capable he is in a fight, adept at avoiding Neo's blows. From then on, Seraph is a valuable synthetic ally on the side of humanity, joining Neo and Trinity on their quest to stop Agent Smith.

While he is not successful in his job to protect the Oracle, with both programs eventually succumbing to assimilation by the rogue Agent Smith (Hugo Weaving), Seraph still proved himself to be one of the Matrix's strongest programs.

What's the only thing stronger than one killer program? Two killer programs!

Known only as the Twins (Adrian Rayment and Neil Rayment), the pair are dreadlocked assassins working on behalf of the Merovingian (Lambert Wilson). Hailing from an earlier, more frightening and supernatural version of the Matrix, the two exiled programs are not just adept fighters. They're also capable of turning into ghostly apparitions that can pass through walls and even objects at a moment's notice.

Impossible to keep track of with the naked eye, the two work in tandem to take down their opponents. And even if you land a shot on one of them, they can quickly reset the damage by flipping back and forth between their two forms. Thanks to these elusive abilities, the Twins are nearly successful in eliminating Morpheus (Lawrence Fishburne) in the climactic showdown at the end of "The Matrix Reloaded." That is, until Morpheus is able to trap them in an exploding truck. It turns out even a ghost is still vulnerable to a fireball.

The Oracle (played by Gloria Foster in the first two films and succeeded by Mary Alice for the third) may be the most soft-spoken character on this list, but she is still one of the most powerful. A benevolent program capable of seeing the future and ushering the One toward his destiny of leading humanity, the Oracle plays a crucial role in both keeping the Matrix operational, and freeing humanity from the Matrix itself.

Serving as a counterbalance to the Architect, her goal is to unbalance his perfect equation, in the hopes of understanding the nature of human consciousness. This role makes the Oracle a key ally to humanity, and her insights allow Neo and his crew to successfully triumph against the machines that programmed her.

Even though she is ultimately assimilated by Agent Smith as he takes over the Matrix, she still succeeds in her goal of creating an unbreakable bond between Neo and Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss) that serves to break the simulation and create a new future for humanity and machines alike.

When the Architect failed to maintain order at the end of "The Matrix Revolutions," the Analyst (Neil Patrick Harris) stepped up to rebuild the Matrix in his own image. Similarly to the Oracle, the Analyst was created by the Architect to understand humanity. But where the Architect valued structure and predictability, the Analyst understood that humanity is fundamentally irrational, and he uses this fact against us as the new ruler of the Matrix in "The Matrix Resurrections."

When Neo died at the end of the original trilogy, the Analyst used the machine world to revive both him and Trinity, plugging them back into the Matrix in order to use their love to power the Matrix and to lead his faction to take power in an unusual civil war. This new version of the digital world is one powered by yearning, using our emotions against us to keep us enslaved in a prison made from our own depressions. This alone would make the Analyst one of the Matrix's strongest characters (even if he sells himself out with an early plot hole), but he also has near total control over the digital world. He's even capable of using Neo's "bullet time" ability against him, bringing the world to a standstill while he's able to move about unencumbered.

The Analyst nearly succeeded in his elaborate plan to build the perfect system, but was ultimately undone by the very thing he had hoped to harness: the love between Trinity and Neo.

Pretty much every character in the original "The Matrix" is the coolest person you've ever seen. But one person wears their leather jacket and black shades better than all the rest, and that's the one and only Morpheus.

Named after the Greek god of dreams, Morpheus approaches our hero Neo in messages and visions at first, beckoning him towards the truth about the artificial reality around him, then offering him a binary choice that remains one of the finest monologues in cinema history — and a potent parallel to the Architect: "You take the blue pill and the story ends. You wake in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill and you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes."

Having dedicated his life to discovering the One, Morpheus has become one of the most powerful people both inside and outside of the Matrix. Inside, he's capable of wielding katanas and withstanding Agent Smith's torture techniques. Outside, he's the captain of the Nebuchadnezzar, and one of Neo's strongest allies in the war against the machines.

Whenever Neo needs saving, Morpheus is the first to jump to his rescue, even willing to sacrifice his own life for Neo's. His faith in Neo fuels him toward true heroism, and his faith is so unshakeable that he is easily one of the strongest characters in the entire series.

Agent Smith was designed to be one of the strongest programs within the Matrix. One aspect of a security program built to destroy any human who sought to undermine the hold of the machines on the rest of humanity, these programs were feared by every freedom fighter who took the red pill.

But Agent Smith was the most fearsome of them all, ironically building himself an identity while leading the fight against Neo in the original film. He appeared to be defeated by Neo once he realized his true power, but instead became an exile. Free from his programming, Smith transformed into a computer virus who sought to replicate himself throughout the Matrix, making him into a force to be reckoned with.

If Morpheus used his faith in humanity as his source of power, then Agent Smith used his hatred as he tore through the Matrix on his crusade against Neo, assimilating every single entity, both human and program alike, into himself as he sought to destroy Neo — and all of reality. His hatred even allowed him to do what no other program could: escape the Matrix, taking over the body of a human named Bane (Ian Bliss) to try and kill Neo in the real world.

Despite his best efforts, Neo was able to defeat Agent Smith. That is, until Smith was reborn by the Analyst to keep guard over the imprisoned Neo within the new simulation in "Resurrections." If Agent Smith hated humanity, his newfound servitude became the fresh subject of his hatred, and Smith became an unlikely ally to Neo and Trinity, ultimately proving he was still the most powerful program in all of the Matrix.

There's no doubt that Trinity was one of the strongest characters in "The Matrix" from inception. The first film in the series opens with Trinity taking down a veritable army of cops and escaping the grasp of the villainous agent programs, and she only gets more powerful from there.

Trinity is one of Morpheus' strongest soldiers, serving as the first mate aboard the Nebuchadnezzar. But unlike Morpheus, Trinity is skeptical of Neo's potential as the One. Over the course of the film, Trinity develops feelings for Neo, and when he is killed by Agent Smith at the climax of "The Matrix," her love resurrects him.

From this point, Trinity and Neo become inseparable, and together they form the Matrix's most powerful duo. Whether she's piloting the Nebuchadnezzar in the real world, zipping through traffic aboard a motorcycle, or blowing up a nuclear power plant, it's safe to say that Neo would never have succeeded in his quest without her help.

If all that from the original trilogy wasn't enough, she became even more powerful in "The Matrix Resurrections," which reveals that the Analyst brought her back to life to fuel his new iteration of the Matrix. Trinity was the one to unplug Neo in the original film, but this time it's Neo who has to help Trinity wake up. And when she does, she becomes more powerful than we've ever seen. Neo may have lost his ability to fly, but now Trinity can do it, and the two escape the Analyst's grip as they begin their quest to redesign a better Matrix for everyone.

Could there be any other answer here? As soon as you clicked this article, you had to know that no one but the One himself could be in the number one spot when discussing the strongest characters in the "Matrix" franchise.

While he starts as one of the weakest, barely able to comprehend that everything in his life is an illusion manipulated by the machines, Neo eventually proves himself to be the One, thanks to the teaching and powers instilled in him by Morpheus and Trinity. By the end of "The Matrix," Neo also proves himself to be able to bend their programmed reality to his whims, dodging bullets and killing Agents, which few had done before him — in this iteration, anyway.

Capable of mastering every form of martial art, taking on Agents, flying through the air, unraveling the Architect's master plan, saving Morpheus and Trinity's lives multiple times, and even bringing Trinity back from the dead, Neo is nearly unstoppable. Yes, he occasionally loses a fight, but he always gets back up and back into the fray. There's no argument he's the strongest character in the entire franchise. Because he is the One (and because he's played to utter perfection by Keanu Reeves), he's the example of humanity the Matrix needs to destroy — and the one others are inspired by.