Persephone (The Matrix)
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In the movies The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions, Persephone (played by Monica Bellucci) is the wife of The Merovingian. She seems bored with her existence in the Matrix, and is disaffected from her husband (possibly because of his dalliances).
She is attracted to Neo and offers to help him if he kisses her with the same passion with which he has kissed Trinity. Reluctantly, he complies, and she helps him free The Keymaker.
Perspephone uses a distinctive four-barreled handgun, loaded with silver bullets, to shoot a werewolf who is in her husband's employ. The gun is a COP .357; the same gun was used by replicant Leon Kowalski in Blade Runner.
Persephone also encounters and takes a kiss from both Niobe and Ghost (depending on whose story you follow) in the video game Enter The Matrix. Based on this behavior, as well as her encounter with Neo in The Matrix Reloaded, some fans have speculated that Persephone is some sort of empathic vampire who samples the feelings of others by forcing them to redirect their passion toward her.
In The Matrix Revolutions, Persephone is seen briefly and warns The Merovingian that Trinity would indeed kill everyone in Club Hel to free her lover, Neo, from the Train Station. She apparently bases this on the strong feelings she felt from Neo's kiss alone.
The character takes her name from the Persephone in Greek mythology, who is the daughter of Zeus and Demeter whom Hades took to the underworld to be his queen. There are allusions throughout the movie that The Merovingian works in the Matrix as an analogue to Hades, including his presence in Club Hel, his unhappy marriage to Persephone and his existence as one of the oldest beings in the Matrix universe, and specifically the one in charge of "lost souls."
[edit] Uncertain Fate
There is no clear indication as to what became of Persephone and her cohorts in the Matrix Revolutions. Many fans presume them to be dead. On the contrary, some fans believe that Persephone, her husband the Merovingian, the Trainman, and his other acolytes were absorbed by Smith not long after she and her husband revealed to Morpheus and Trinity Neo's location in the Mobil Avenue Station and were subsequently freed after Neo destroyed Smith for the second time. However, they were recently revealed alive in the MMORPG the Matrix Online, so one could assume that either the latter theory was true or the Merovingian and his lackeys managed to escape Smith's rampage. The Merovingian seemed unconcerned about the pending "reboot" of the Matrix (despite Smith's infestation, which never happened before) and many fans just assumed that the Merovingian knew how to "hide" his Exiles safely during a reboot of the Matrix, as Persephone pointed out to the trio regarding the pair of Vampire henchman (one she shot with a silver bullet). Persephone gave the location of the Assassin's hide-out to Zion operatives in a critical mission relating to the Death Of A Destroyer event.
