Tron: Ares, the third live-action film in the long-running sci-fi franchise, hit theaters on Friday. This time around, the story brings the digital beings from the Grid into our world. A Program named Ares (played by Jared Leto) leads the charge and is sent on a mission to retrieve a coveted collection of zeroes and ones, a MacGuffin referred to in the movie as The Permanence Code. This hunt turns into a race for survival on multiple fronts.

Leto may lead the call sheet on this one, but he’s backed up by a solid roster of talent: Greta Lee, Evan Peters, Jodie Turner-Smith, Gillian Anderson, Arturo Castro and Jeff Bridges. 

If you read my review of the movie, you’ll know I enjoyed Tron: Ares. Like the previous entries in the franchise, this new movie, which was directed by Joachim Rønning, is fueled by tantalizing special effects and thrilling action sequences. The score by Nine Inch Nails adds a whole other narrative, cinematic quality to things, immersing you deeper into this universe. 

Similar to 1982’s Tron and 2010’s Tron: Legacy, the narrative structure and writing proved to be the weakest links in Tron: Ares’s overall package. That said, plenty of details kept my attention — most notably the movie’s ending and the pre-credits sequence that followed.

It goes without saying that if you haven’t seen Tron: Ares yet, stop here. There are spoilers below.

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Tron: Ares’ ending explained

It’s all about the Permanence Code. Dillinger Systems CEO Julian Dillinger (Peters) wants it for money, power and influence. Dillinger has been able to bring Programs from his Grid into the real world, but they only survive for 29 minutes before disintegrating from our reality. 

With the code, Dillinger would be able to keep Ares here indefinitely, which would be ideal, considering how much he wants to sell the Program to the military as the next generation of weaponry. Eve Kim (Lee), the head of ENCOM, wants the code for good reasons: to discover scientific breakthroughs and cultivate a positive future for humanity. 

Needless to say, Dillinger never expected Ares to break from his programming. Like Tron: Legacy’s Quorra (Olivia Wilde) before him, Ares reveals himself to be a digital being with greater aspirations to become human. This need makes him an additional target for Dillinger, who pits Athena (Turner-Smith), Ares’ second-in-command, after him and Lee, to retrieve the code by any means necessary.

She took the “by any means necessary” part of Dillinger’s directive to heart, killing his mother, Elisabeth, in the process, and generated a Recognizer from the video game Space Paranoids, using Dillinger’s giant 3D printer lasers, and brought it into the real world. 

A final boss battle commenced between Athena and Ares, who took a side quest into Kevin Flynn’s (Bridges) Grid, acquired the Permanence Code (or Impermanence, according to Flynn), and came back a full-fledged human. After a flashy street scuffle, Ares stood victorious with the help of Kim’s ENCOM pals, who planted a virus in Dillinger’s Grid, causing all the digital chaos to end. 

Cut to months later, Kim’s achieved the technical advancements I mentioned earlier — thanks to that code. In the afterglow of success, she receives a postcard from Ares. We see him at a European cafe, living “off the Grid,” with superbly conditioned hair and crisp attire. It’s here that he mentions a new mission to find others like him. 

He looks at an old newspaper clipping of Sam Flynn (Garrett Hedlund) and a picture of Quorra, who, in the final moments of Tron: Legacy, were seen riding off into the proverbial sunset on Sam’s motorcycle. Remember, Quorra was once tethered to the Grid as a Program, only to be set free by Flynn in the 2010 movie. (I’m assuming she found the Permance Code, no problem?) 

What the Tron: Ares pre-credits scene means

After Ares drives off on his motorcycle into his sunset — and after a brief musical snippet of the Nine Inch Nails track, As Alive as You Need Me to Be — things pivot back to Ed Dillinger. 

All the damage on the streets was attributed to him, and a large contingent of law enforcement officers ultimately breached his facility. With nowhere left to go and a huge lack of accountability for his actions, Dillinger activated his big red lasers. As the cops flooded in, with guns drawn, Dillinger gets zapped away into his computer systems’ Grid. 

The final moments of the movie find Dillinger in the building that Ares and Athena previously inhabited. He soon finds a Dillinger Systems disc and, when activated, he becomes digitally zapped. The light-up silhouette of Sark, the original Master Control Program created by Julian’s grandfather, Ed Dillinger (David Warner), former president of ENCOM in 1982’s Tron, appears superimposed on his body.

What could this mean? Well, this sequence, along with Ares’s curiosity about Quorra, alludes to another Tron movie being in the cards. Maybe. It all depends on how well Tron: Ares does at the box office. That said, the notion of a Tron 4, with Ares and Quorra teaming up against Dillinger and the resurgence of the Dillinger MCP, sounds super cool. Fingers crossed, it happens.