Spoilers ahead for The Matrix Resurrections.
The Matrix’s first two sequels — The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions — introduced Merovingian, but the character’s return in The Matrix Resurrections was perhaps the film’s biggest disappointment. Lana Wachowski’s The Matrix Resurrections, the first Matrix movie to be directed without sister Lilly Wachowski, saw several of the original trilogy’s iconic characters return. Joining Neo, Trinity, and Niobe was Merovingian, though his comeback proved to be rather unexciting.
Merovingian (aka, The Frenchman) was a program within the Matrix and someone who took great pride in trafficking information. As a crime boss, Merovingian smuggled exiled programs to safety so as to avoid the threat of being deleted. He lived a fancy and powerful lifestyle alongside his wife Persephone in the first two The Matrix sequels. To witness how much he’s changed from the clean-cut, pompous leader to a dirty and downtrodden man in The Matrix Resurrections was shocking, to say the least. In the fourth installment, Merovingian appears, hunched over, disheveled and dirty, no longer sleek and sophisticated as viewers remember him. He’s also muttering largely indecipherable dialogue, screaming at Neo and seemingly blaming him for his fall from power (and for everything else wrong with the world).
The pair fight, but Merovingian’s screen time in The Matrix Resurrections is rather short-lived. For a character whose appearance was hyped ahead of the film’s release, he doesn’t get to do very much while he's onscreen, showing up for just one scene before disappearing for the rest of the movie. Merovingian’s role was ultimately too small to amount to anything, proving to be underbaked. He played a decent-sized role in the previous sequels, so it was expected that he would at least have a far more substantial role in The Matrix Resurrections. His rambling and the general state of his physical and mental being is off-putting and rather confusing. When comparing his role to that of the other returning characters, Merovingian’s appearance is disappointing because the character doesn’t get a fleshed out backstory. He’s still as elusive as ever — even more so here than before.
Merovingian’s deteriorated state does reveal he hasn’t been doing so well since The Matrix Revolutions, but the details of his life and motivations, besides being increasingly irate, remain unclear overall. Merovingian goes from living the high life in power to being at the very bottom of society; the degradation is a stark contrast to The Matrix Resurrections’ predecessors. It makes sense he puts the blame on Neo for the downslide his life has taken, but it's hard to gauge how this version of the character factors into the Analyst's plans. And while his tirade at Neo reveals that not everyone worships or respects his legend, The Matrix Resurrections could have provided a bit more insight into Merovingian's state of mind. His scene feels a touch out of place, his ranting and raving somewhat random.
Merovingian’s true purpose in The Matrix Resurrections seems lost amid the chaos of the fight scene, his shrieking words not necessarily adding anything to the film or to his storyline. Considering how little is gleaned from his reappearance in the franchise, seeing Merovingian again after all this time was more than a bit underwhelming. For all that the character’s return was an exciting selling point of The Matrix Resurrections, his small role and nonsensical dialogue wasn’t really worth the wait.