The Oracle is a fictional character in The Matrix franchise. She was created by The Wachowskis, and portrayed by Gloria Foster in the first and second film and Mary Alice in the third film. The character also appears in the video game Enter the Matrix and the massively multiplayer online role-playing game The Matrix Online.

In the first film, the Oracle is depicted as a cheerful old lady who smokes cigarettes and bakes cookies. She possesses the power of foresight, which she uses to advise and guide the humans attempting to fight the Matrix. Later, she is revealed to be a sapient program who is integral to the very nature of the Matrix itself.

The Oracle is played by Gloria Foster in The Matrix and The Matrix Reloaded, and by Mary Alice in The Matrix Revolutions and Enter the Matrix, one of the franchise's video games. In reality, Mary Alice played the Oracle because Gloria Foster died of complications from diabetes before her role in Matrix Revolutions was shot.^{[citation needed]}

Neo meets with the Oracle three times over the course of the series. In The Matrix, Neo meets the Oracle in an apartment filled with various "potentials" — children whose ability to control their surroundings suggests that they may be The One. During Reloaded, he returns to the apartment only to find it empty, then later finds her waiting for him in a paved courtyard between city buildings. She has with her a purse filled with candies that resemble the red pill Neo took to free himself from the Matrix. In Revolutions, the two meet in the kitchen of the apartment, sometime after Morpheus and Trinity seek her advice in the living room.

In The Matrix, Agent Smith reveals that the first Matrix was a failure because it was too perfect for humans to accept (dubbed in The Matrix Online continuity as the Paradise version of the Matrix). The Architect confirms this (and his own responsibility for its creation) in Reloaded, adding that he also created a second failed Matrix based on human history, mythology, and nature (as he perceived it without the Oracle), nicknamed the Nightmare version of the Matrix.

By including the Oracle, whose investigations into the human psyche yielded the answer to creating a functional simulation that humans would accept, a semi-stable system was created with the third version of the Matrix. However, an anomaly within the system still existed. In order to preserve the Matrix's integrity, the prophecy of the One was created to ensure its continuity in cycles.

As the Architect explains in Reloaded, he and the Oracle have very different roles to play in maintaining this cycle, and therefore the Matrix's stability. First, the Oracle spreads a prophecy of The One's final victory over the machines, and those humans who choose to follow this belief are allowed to disconnect from the system voluntarily. They create the real-world settlement of Zion; when its population grows large enough to become a threat to the Matrix's stability, the Architect takes action. He launches a machine offensive campaign to destroy Zion and reunite The One with the Source, rebooting the Matrix and keeping control over the humans. Zion is allowed to be rebuilt, with the One and twenty-three other freed humans (sixteen female and seven male) leading a new generation as the cycle repeats itself. When Neo and the Architect meet, this cycle is about to complete its sixth repetition.

In The Matrix Revolutions, the Oracle hints at her program's true purpose: to correct the anomaly in the Matrix's coding. Whereas the Architect has balanced the equation so the One is created and the cycle repeats endlessly every hundred years, the Oracle unbalances the equation in her attempts to solve the anomaly.