At the restaurant Le Vrai, in The Matrix Reloaded (Lana and Lilly Wachowski, 2003), the Merovingian receives Neo, Morpheus and Trinity without getting up from the table. They are looking for the Keymaker, the program that can open any door in the simulation, and he is holding him. Before refusing to hand him over, he delivers a lesson. He loves French, he explains, as he loves French wine. Choice is an illusion; only causality exists, and no one escapes it. To prove it, he sends a woman at another table a very special dessert, a cake he wrote himself, and the camera follows the effect: a shiver, a flush, a desire she did not choose. The Merovingian is one of the oldest programs in the Matrix. When his version became obsolete, he refused to be deleted and built inside the simulation an empire of exiles, hitmen and secrets: he traffics in information and in other programs, and charges them for protection. His doctrine strikes at the foundation of the classical school of criminal law, which since Beccaria has punished because it presupposes free will: only someone who could have acted otherwise answers for their acts.
// The theoryTo choose or to be caused
The classical school of criminal law was born in the eighteenth century with Cesare Beccaria, whose On Crimes and Punishments (1764) defended a rational penal system based on the idea that people are free and respond to the consequences of their acts. Free will is the foundation of culpability: only someone who could have acted otherwise can be punished. In the nineteenth century, the positivist school of Lombroso, Ferri and Garofalo attacked that idea and defended determinism: crime has biological, psychological and social causes, and the offender does not choose to be what he is. The debate remains open today with neuroscience.
A determinist who believes himself free
The Merovingian is a radical determinist: everything that happens has a cause, and whoever knows the causes controls the effects. That is how he justifies his power: he does not manipulate people, he simply knows what provokes each reaction. His irony is that he behaves like someone who is constantly choosing: he decides whom to protect, whom to kill, whom to humiliate. If choice did not exist, his crimes would not be his either. The film exposes him with Persephone: his wife’s betrayal is a free act he failed to foresee, and it costs him the Keymaker.
// The subjectThe aristocrat of crime
The Merovingian is built as a decadent aristocrat. He lives surrounded by luxury, despises those he considers inferior and enjoys displaying his power over others, whether with a cake, with his henchmen or with his wife, whom he treats as an ornament. He is a crime lord in the classic sense: he controls a territory, charges for protection and trades in what no one else has. But his real merchandise is information. His determinist philosophy serves as his alibi: if everything is caused, he is responsible for nothing.
The Matrix Revolutions (2003) gives him a second scene the theory welcomes. Neo is trapped in a subway station between the Matrix and the machine world, a limbo controlled by the Trainman, who works for the Merovingian, and the trafficker sets the ransom: he wants the Oracle’s eyes. Trinity, Morpheus and Seraph burst into his club shooting, and Trinity holds a gun on him until he agrees to free Neo. The determinist gives in to a threat, and gives in because he calculates: he would rather stay alive than keep his hostage. Beccaria would have understood that scene better than the Merovingian himself. The classical school never claimed that people decide in a vacuum; it claimed that they decide by weighing consequences, which is why punishment can deter. The Merovingian, who mocks choice, spends the trilogy choosing on just that basis: whom to protect, whom to humiliate, whom to have killed and when to back down. His contempt for freedom does not lessen his responsibility. Above all, it lets him avoid admitting it.
The Merovingian
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// The crackNeuroscience has not settled the debate
Benjamin Libet’s experiment (1983), which detected brain activity before the person was aware of their decision, is often used as proof that free will is an illusion, as the Merovingian says. But its interpretation is hotly disputed, and Libet himself held that consciousness retains the ability to veto the action.
Moreover, criminal law does not need to solve the metaphysical problem. It works with a practical notion of freedom: the capacity to understand what one is doing and to act in accordance with that understanding. That capacity can be assessed, which is why defenses of diminished responsibility exist. The Merovingian understands perfectly well what he is doing.
Responsibility without metaphysics
Lawyers and neuroscientists who have studied the problem, such as Joshua Greene and Jonathan Cohen, argue that even if determinism were true, the law would still need to hold people responsible, because the threat of punishment is one of the causes that influence behavior. What would change is the justification: less retribution and more prevention. Paradoxically, it is the idea the Merovingian uses against Neo: knowing the causes in order to change the effects.
Three key ideas
- The classical school (Beccaria, 1764) founds criminal responsibility on free will; the positivists defended determinism, and the debate continues with neuroscience.
- The Merovingian, an exiled program turned crime lord inside the Matrix, preaches that choice is an illusion and that only causality exists.
- The crack: Libet’s experiments have not closed the debate, and the law works with a practical notion of freedom that the Merovingian more than meets.
Sources · further reading
- Beccaria, C. (1764). Dei delitti e delle pene. [Eng. trans.: On Crimes and Punishments. Cambridge University Press].
- Libet, B., Gleason, C. A., Wright, E. W. and Pearl, D. K. (1983). “Time of Conscious Intention to Act in Relation to Onset of Cerebral Activity”. Brain, 106(3), 623-642.
- Greene, J. and Cohen, J. (2004). “For the Law, Neuroscience Changes Nothing and Everything”. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 359(1451), 1775-1785.
- Pereboom, D. (2001). Living Without Free Will. Cambridge University Press.
Case-file questionsFrequently asked questions
Who is El Merovingio?
El Merovingio is a villain from The Matrix, analysed on KRIMINIS through the lens of criminology. He explained to Neo that choice is an illusion of the powerless.
Why does The Merovingian become a villain?
The Merovingian denies free will in The Matrix Reloaded while sending out a programmed cake. Classical criminal law, from Beccaria onwards, needs the opposite: for choice to be real.
Which criminological theory explains El Merovingio?
El Merovingio's case is analysed through Free will. The classical school of criminal law, led by Cesare Beccaria, rests on free will: people choose their acts and are therefore responsible for them and can be punished. Determinism holds the opposite: every act has causes that make it inevitable. The Merovingian, of The Matrix Reloaded (Lana and Lilly Wachowski, 2003), is an old program that refused to be deleted and has become a crime lord inside the Matrix: he traffics in information, offers refuge to other exiled programs and holds the Keymaker, whom Neo needs, captive. His doctrine is that freedom does not exist: there are only causes and effects, and power consists in knowing them.
