The casting for the unexpected Matrix sequel has been interesting, with Keanu Reeves, Carrie-Anne Moss, and Jada Pinkett Smitth set to return and newcomers Neil Patrick Harris and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II joining the human resistance, but there have been some particularly intriguing teases about what directing Lana Wachwoski might be planning for her return to the series. For one thing, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II might be playing a young version of Laurence Fishburne’s Morpheus, and now Deadline says that Iron Fist’s Jessica Henwick is in talks to play a character who is “like Neo” in some way.
One of the big reveals later on in the original trilogy was that the cycle of humans finding a savior and sending off that savior to destroy the machines had happened before, with the machines orchestrating their supposed doom every time because humans make better batteries when they think they have hope (or something like that). Of course, Neo supposedly broke that cycle because—unlike his predecessors—he had the power of love on his side, but there are still threads established in the original movies to explain how and why there might be someone else who is “like Neo.”
On the other hand, maybe Deadline means “like Neo” in the sense that she’ll be kind of a blank protagonist who drifts through the movie in a permanent sense of bewilderment?