The actor recalled Lana Wachowski telling her sister Lilly to &34;'just lie to him, and we'll kill him anyway.'&34; Matrix star Joe Pantoliano says the Wachowsk

The actor recalled Lana Wachowski telling her sister Lilly to "'just lie to him, and we'll kill him anyway.'"

Matrix star Joe Pantoliano says the Wachowskis 'f---ing lied' to him about Cypher's fate

The actor recalled Lana Wachowski telling her sister Lilly to "'just lie to him, and we'll kill him anyway.'"

By Emlyn Travis

Emlyn Travis is a news writer at **. She has been working at EW since 2022. Her work has previously appeared on MTV News, Teen Vogue, and *NME*.

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October 14, 2025 6:48 p.m. ET

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Joe Pantoliano in 'The Matrix'. Credit:

Joe Pantoliano says the Wachowskis "lied" to him about Cypher's fate while shooting *The Matrix*. **

The 74-year-old actor was asked whether or not his character really dies at the end of the beloved 1999 sci-fi film during a recent *Matrix* reunion panel with costar Laurence Fishburne at New York Comic Con. **

"They lied to me!" Pantoliano shouted. "They f---ing lied!"

Joe Pantoliano speaks during New York Comic Con 2025's The Cast of 'The Matrix' panel on October 12.

Craig Barritt/Getty

As Pantoliano tells it, he made the "mistake" of telling the film's writer-director siblings the story of how he once convinced *The Fugitive* director Andrew Davis not to kill off his character in the 1993 thriller, which he relayed to panel attendees.

"Harrison [Ford] was saying, 'It's great when you get killed. They'll feel sorry for you.' And I said, 'What if there's a sequel?' Harrison just smiled, he said, 'It's not going to be a sequel, because I won't do this piece of s--- again,'" Pantoliano recalled. "And I said, famously, 'Well, f--- you. We'll just chase some other $20 million a--hole through the woods.' And then Harrison came out, 'You're doing it! You're doing it!' So I told that to the Wachowskis." (And, to his point, Pantoliano *did* reprise his role in the film's 1998 sequel,* U.S. Marshals*.)**

Pantoliano went on to explain that he floated the idea of Cypher potentially surviving the film while on a phone call with Lilly. **

"I said, 'Hey, you can't kill me, right? You're not gonna kill me?'" he said. "And Lilly said, 'Hey, Lana, he doesn't want us to kill him.' And I heard Lana off camera, knowing that I could hear this, and she said, 'Well, just lie to him and we'll kill him anyway.'"

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The panel's moderator, Josh Horowitz, quickly came to Pantoliano's defense, noting that it's "not definitive" that Cypher dies in the film because his dead body is never actually shown onscreen. Instead, the character is last seen getting blasted backwards after being shot with a lightning gun by Tank (Marcus Chong) for betraying and killing almost all of their crew.

And, honestly, Pantoliano still isn't happy about his supposed death. "Don't get me started, all right? They brought f---ing Agent Smith back," Pantoliano groused, referring to Hugo Weaving's character. "It's *The Matrix*!"

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So it's safe to say he's very much still holding out hope that Cypher is still alive out there, somewhere, and could make a potential return in a future *Matrix* installment.**

"It's not too late," he added. "It's never too late."**

Joe Pantoliano as Cypher in 'The Matrix'.

When asked what Cypher would be doing if he was still alive, a fan in the audience suggested that the character would be a successful actor with an Oscar by now.

"Yeah, you should've played Cypher," Pantoliano quipped back.

Despite Pantoliano's dreams, Cypher has never returned in any of the subsequent *Matrix* sequels; however, the actor is still plenty busy without having to dip back into the Matrix, appearing in celebrated shows like *The Last of Us* and confirming at the panel that he has an undisclosed role in the upcoming Marvel television series *Wonder Man. *

When asked if he enjoyed his time filming the Yahya Abdul-Mateen II superhero series, Pantoliano riffed on his costar's name as he replied, "Yahya! And Sir Ben Kingsley. Just to hear him say my name: *Joe Pantoliano*."

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Source: "AOL Comic-Con"

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