Aquaman star Yahya Abdul-Mateen II lands lead role in The Matrix 4

CAUTION: SPOILERS FOR THE ORIGINAL MATRIX TRILOGY BELOW

Not long ago, we learned that Warner Bros. and Village Roadshow Pictures were getting the band back together to make a new Matrix movie, with Keanu Reeves returning as Neo, Carrie-Anne Moss coming back as Trinity, and Lana Wachowski back in the saddle to write and direct. How has humanity been doing since they unplugged themselves from the dystopian computer simulation designed to rob them of the electrical charges running through their bodies? Well over a decade since 2003’s The Matrix Revolutions, we’ll find out.

Maybe. This is The Matrix we’re talking about; the original movies were famous for screwing with the audience’s heads, and we don’t know where the fourth movie will go. The fact that Reeves and Moss are returning at all is a little puzzling, since both of their characters died in Revolutions. But again, this is The Matrix. Maybe they’ll appear in a computer simulation. Maybe they were brought back to life with advance future technology. A lot could happen.

Also curious is that while Reeves and Moss are returning, we’ve heard nothing about Laurence Fishburne coming back as Morpheus, the third Very Important Character from the trilogy and the only one of the trio to actually survive to the end. However, today, Variety now reports that Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, recently seen as Manta in Aquaman and soon to be seen on HBO’s Watchmen show, has landed “one of the lead roles” in the movie.

Could Abdul-Mateen II be playing a younger version of Morpheus? That’s where my mind went first, anyway. Maybe we’re looking at a prequel. Maybe there’s time travel involved. So many maybes.

Then again, if Abdul-Mateen II is playing a “younger” Morpheus, it’ll just be a little younger; Abdul-Mateen II is only six years younger than Fishburne was when the first Matrix movie came out in 1999. Maybe he’s playing a brand new character. One more time, it’s hard to be sure of the direction of the plot when the movies were so consistently twisty.

The Matrix 4 will hit theaters…I dunno, let’s say 2021-ish.

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h/t The A.V. Club