Tron: Ares Ending Explained

Contains spoilers for “Tron: Ares”

“Tron: Ares” continues the famous sci-fi franchise with a brand new adventure. This time around the sentient programs inside the Grid are coming to our world, and after they figure out how to stay, nothing will be the same again.

“Tron: Ares” is the third story in the franchise, if you don’t count the secret “Tron” sequel that everyone forgot. There might not be many “Tron” movies, but the series’s visual style is unmistakable. The original “Tron” movie was a 1982 CGI marvel, and for all its flaws, 2010’s “Tron: Legacy” masterfully updated the look of the Grid. “Tron: Ares” brings all that neon red and blue light into our world, putting programs and light cycles right onto the streets of American cities. In “Ares,” the doorway between the real world and the digital world has been thrown wide open, and the fate of multiple worlds hangs in the balance.

Check out our review of “Tron: Ares” to see what we made of the film’s combination of epic visuals, pumping music, and philosophically-inclined storytelling. The movie may not have the most well-constructed plot of all time, but it asks plenty of questions about the nature of life and what it would mean for the digital world to become real. If those questions left you scratching your head, we’re here to help with a quick explainer on what went down at the end of “Tron: Ares” and how that will impact the series going forward.

The plot of “Tron: Ares” is all about the battle between ENCOM, led by Eve Kim (Greta Lee), and Dillinger Systems, led by Julian Dillinger (Evan Peters). The two companies have been fierce competitors for decades, and now they are both on the verge of a technological revolution. The companies have discovered how to transport objects and entities from the digital world known as “the Grid” to our reality. The only problem is that any program that comes to the real world disintegrates after 29 minutes.

Eve is attempting to solve this problem by tracking down the Permanence Code once created by Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges). Julian, on the other hand, has created Ares (Jared Leto), a hyper-intelligent defense program capable of besting any enemy. Julian uses Ares to convince his investors that Dillinger Systems is winning the corporate race. Once he discovers evidence that Eve has found the Permanence Code, Julian summons a version of Ares to the real world and orders him to hunt her down.

Ares tracks down Eve, and Julian has her digitized and brought into the Grid. When Julian orders Ares to kill Eve, Ares turns on his creator and leads Eve off the Grid. Together the two of them set out to recover the Code from Flynn’s old systems and stop Dillinger.

After Ares goes rogue, Julian enlists the help of another program named Athena (Jodie Turner-Smith). Julian orders Athena to retrieve the Permanence Code at any cost, and the program interprets her directive to include the use of lethal force. Athena summons weapons, vehicles, and other programs from the Grid to aid her search. When Julian’s mother and former Dillinger Systems CEO Elisabeth (Julian Anderson) tries to shut the search down, Athena kills her.

Eve successfully transports Ares into Kevin Flynn’s old systems, where Ares talks to a program that takes Flynn’s form. The program gives Ares the Permanence Code and sends him back to Earth. Ares and Athena come face-to-face and have a climactic showdown, but their fight drags past the 29-minute mark, causing Athena to disintegrate. Meanwhile some of Eve’s coworkers have been hacking into the Dillinger Systems Grid, and they manage to shut it down once and for all.

At the end of the movie Ares sneaks off and begins exploring our world. He writes Eve a postcard and tells her that while he loves getting to know humanity, he isn’t sure if they’re ready to meet a living program just yet. The police come to arrest Julian, but he manages to escape into a backup copy of the Grid using a laser system. There he finds a new user disc, and, potentially, a new source of power.

The Permanence Code is the big MacGuffin at the heart of “Tron: Ares.” Without it, programs can’t even survive a full half hour in the real world. Ares needs the Permanence Code in order to live, and Eve needs to get it before Julian, otherwise she and her company are likely to die. Eve and Ares get their hands on the Code by the end of the movie, but we barely get a look at just how transformative it really is.

The Permanence Code essentially transforms Ares into a human being. That possibly sets him on a path to meet with Quorra (Olivia Wilde), another program that found a new life in the real world at the end of “Tron: Legacy.” Ares hints at going to meet another program at the very end of the movie, and it’s easy to imagine why a brand-new human would want to seek out someone who’d gone through a similar experience.

The Code changes Ares’s entire existence, but it does something even more important that the movie almost skips right past. With the Permanence Code, ENCOM is capable of creating literally anything in the digital world and transferring it into reality. Eve creates trees full of fruit, while a voiceover narration at the end of the movie explains that her company is also creating new materials and medicines for use all over the world. If there is ever another “Tron” sequel, it will need to address how this miraculous technology completely reshapes the world.

At the end of “Tron: Ares,” the Permanence Code is transforming human society for the better, but a much more sinister transformation is happening in the world of the Grid. The mid-credits sequence in “Tron: Ares” shows what happens to Julian Dillinger after he uses his company’s laser to escape the police.

Julian managed to transport himself to the Grid, but his company’s digital world is in sorry shape. The Master Control tower is still damaged from when Ares and Eve made their dramatic escape from the Grid. The digital city surrounding it is in ruins, but some of its structures are still functioning. The Grid supplies Julian with a new user disc that looks eerily reminiscent of the disc that Sark (David Warner) used in the original “Tron” movie. When Julian touches the disc, digital armor materializes around his body.

While Ares becomes a living program who is “permanent” but mortal, it’s possible that Julian has become the opposite. He’s a digitized version of himself, and now he might have all the abilities, and apparent immortality, that Ares had when he was an ordinary program at the beginning of the movie. The ending of Julian’s story really does seem like it’s laying the groundwork for a brand-new plot featuring an even more threatening villain.

More than any other film in the franchise, “Tron: Ares” feels like the beginning of a longer saga. The ending of the movie sets up a new story, with Ares going to find Quorra and Julian rising to power in the ruins of the Grid. It’s easy to imagine how a new tale might start, and some of the “Tron: Ares” actors have already done just that.

“I could come alive in the Grid,” Gillian Anderson said in an interview with Polygon. She explained that she and Evan Peters have talked about how their two characters might go on living — even though Anderson’s character dies in “Tron: Ares.” The two of them have thought through the possibility that Julian brings his mom back to life in his rebuilt Grid, and it seems like they’re both open to continuing the story in another movie.

Of course, that all depends on how this movie performs at the box office. The first reactions to “Tron: Ares” all say the film has issues, but much like the other movies in the franchise, “Ares” could prove to have a long lifespan. There’s no guarantee that the film will get a direct sequel, but the filmmakers certainly aren’t shy about putting all the pieces in place for the next chapter to happen.