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Matrix Revolutions: How Agent Smith Gets to Real World
How does Agent Smith enter the real world in The Matrix Revolutions? After a seminal, era-defining debut and an underwhelming follow-up, The Matrix Revolutions rounded off its original trilogy by concluding both the war between Zion and the Machines, and the ongoing battle between Neo and Agent Smith. Memorably played by Hugo Weaving, Smith was the arch villain of the entire Matrix trilogy and gained iconic status thanks to his famous suit-and-shades getup and cold, clinical persona. Smith doggedly pursued Mr. Anderson whenever Neo plugged into the Matrix.
Created as a program within the Matrix, Smith's role is essentially that of a policeman, removing any potential threats to the digital peace the Machines' alternate reality is upholding. Smith originally pursues Mr. Anderson because of his questioning reality, but later targets the red-pilled Neo because he's now part of a human uprising intent on taking down the framework Smith was designed to guard. After Neo defeats Smith at the end of the original Matrix, the villain returns as an exile program, now free from the bidding of Machines and allowed to pursue his core function - the establishment of order and the eradication of all who threaten it. To this end, Smith becomes less like the antivirus he represented in the original film and more like a virus, spreading and infecting the Matrix. In The Matrix Revolutions, Smith enters the body of a human called Bane while he's plugged into the Matrix, and then uses Bane as a vessel to escape into the real world. But how does a digital creation like Smith manifest into a real human?
Like many secrets of The Matrix, an explanation for Smith's trip to Zion isn't explicitly laid out, but some working theories can be drawn from information the Wachowskis' do provide. Firstly, Smith in The Matrix Revolutions is a free program. The Machines would never design something that could move from the Matrix into the real world because, as revealed later in the movie, a being that powerful would threaten Machines as much as the humans. This at least explains why Smith never ventured into the real world previously. Furthermore, Smith spends most of The Matrix sequels absorbing other programs, creating clones and growing in power. He almost certainly couldn't have possessed Bane without this added influence.
However, the workings behind Smith's possession of Bane are perhaps more to do with the duality between the Agent and Neo, who are often presented as exact opposites. When Neo enters the Matrix, he can bend reality to his will, and as his evil counterpart, it's only natural that Smith can do something similar with the real world. When someone plugs into the Matrix and fights Smith, the Agent has the ability to turn them into a copy, overwriting the code that person uses to enter the Matrix. As established very early on, dying in the Matrix isn't without real-world consequences - a digital death also kills the real, plugged in mind. However, if a mind was overwritten, rather than destroyed, it naturally follows that the same would be true of the jacked brain back in the real world. Whatever happens to the mind in the Matrix follows through to the real world, so when Smith becomes powerful enough to alter that code, problems arise for the good guys.
As for how Agent Smith can physically exist within Bane once he makes it to Zion, there are several possible options. It's possible that Smith isn't really "inside" Bane at all, but merely rewrote Bane's mind when they were in the Matrix together, and then sent him out reprogrammed to act as another Smith clone. Therefore, Bane is still Bane but with a rewritten mind, rather than a bottle for Agent Smith to travel in. Alternatively, many Matrix fans have suggested that Smith could potentially exist within the tech that citizens of the real world have implanted in them from birth. The bodies of Neo, Trinity and many others are riddled with machinery. When a powerful, liberated Smith possessed Bane, it's possible that he traveled like a virus through Bane's connection and infected those implants, via which he was able to control Bane entirely.
This creates an interesting philosophical discussion. If mankind one day created a machine that could turn brainwaves into computer code, and then a computer was allowed to rewrite that code and turn it back into brainwaves, would that computer have altered a person's mind? The Matrix sure has a lot to answer for.
The Matrix 4 (2021)
Release Date: May 21, 2021
