Yahya Abdul-Mateen II admits he’s playing Morpheus in The Matrix 4

This week, Warner Bros. dropped the trailer for The Matrix Resurrections, which sees Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss back in the roles that made them action stars way back in 1999’s The Matrix.

Reeves and Moss were two of the legs of the tripod that propped up the original Matrix trilogy. The third was Laurence Fishburne as Morpheus, who acted as a guide for Reeves’ Neo as he came to understand that he was living in a complex computer simulation.

For whatever reason, Fishburne isn’t back for the new movie…but Morpheus is. But this time he’s played by Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, who made his mark in stuff like Watchmen, Aquaman and Candyman — anything with the word “man” in the title and he’s your guy. And even though Warner Bros. hasn’t actually confirmed that Abdul-Mateen II is playing Morpheus, we know it’s true because the actor himself confirmed it on Instagram:

Why isn’t Laurence Fishburne is The Matrix Resurrections?

In some ways, this raises more questions than it answers. Why are Neo and Trinity still played by Reeves and Moss but Morpheus has a new body? Switching bodies is something the series has done before; Gloria Foster played the character of the Oracle in the first two Matrix movies. Unfortunately, Foster passed before she could finish filming the third and final film, so the role was recast with actor Mary Alice. The movies explain the casting change by saying that the Oracle’s outer shell was destroyed by a villainous program called the Merovingian, after which she rebuilt herself in a new visage.

Of course, the Oracle was a computer program and Morpheus is a human guy. Maybe the new Morpheus is a digital construct, or maybe perception in the Matrix has been skewed; just in the trailer we see Neo’s psychiatrist go from being played by Neil Patrick Harris to Jonathan Groff. Anything is possible in the Matrix!

Another question is whether director Lana Wachowski cast a new actor as Morpheus because that’s the way the story was always supposed to go, or if her hand was forced because Laurence Fishburne wasn’t interested in returning to the role. Perhaps we’ll find the answers when The Matrix Resurrections drops into theaters and on HBO Max on December 22.

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