Tron: Ares Ending Explained: The Real Reason Jared Leto’s Ares Hunts a Legacy Hero
Jared Leto dives into the Grid in Tron: Ares, racing to seize Kevin Flynn’s fabled Permanence Code—the key to crossing from code to reality—as he hunts for the missing mastermind Jeff Bridges.
Spoilers ahead for Tron: Ares. If you care about going in clean, bail now. For everyone else: yes, Jared Leto plays an AI, yes, he makes it into the real world, and yes, the ending tees up more movies in a pretty loud way.
What Ares is actually chasing
The movie centers on a piece of code called the Permanence Code, a backdoor cooked up by Kevin Flynn that lets a digital being make the jump into reality and stay there. Leto plays Ares, an artificial intelligence built to retrieve that code. Instead of the usual Tron setup where humans get zapped into a neon maze, this one runs it in reverse: a program crosses over into our world.
The road to that ending
Early on, Ares drops into a retro, classic-style Grid to track down Jeff Bridges' Kevin Flynn. From there, things get messy. Ares is pointed at Eve Kim (Greta Lee), a high-level programmer, and told to eliminate her. He flips the script: rather than kill Eve, he tries to bargain for the Permanence Code so he can exist physically, not just as lines of code.
He outmaneuvers Athena (Jodie Turner-Smith) by using the Permanence Code to blow past a 29-minute countdown that would have cut off his time in the real world. He also takes down Julian Dillinger (Evan Peters) by hacking into Dillinger's digitized domain and seeding it with a virus. After that, Ares splits from Eve and heads out on his own, clearly in the mood for some existential soul-searching.
The final scene, and who Ares is hunting next
The last moments are Ares on a Ducati, alone and very much in think-about-your-life mode. But he has a new mission: find Quorra and Sam Flynn from Tron: Legacy. He even has an updated image of what Olivia Wilde's Quorra would look like now, which is a pretty direct bridge to the 2010 movie.
The theme the movie keeps poking at
Ares is a literal program trying to carve out his own choices, and the film leans hard into that: is free will real for him, for humans, for anyone? The ending has that bittersweet 'ride off into the night' energy, like freedom is possible but fragile. Also: very sequel-friendly.
Mid-credits scene: meet the next problem
Stick around and you get the villain setup. Julian Dillinger digitizes himself to hide out in his own corrupted Grid rather than deal with the fallout in the real world. In that wrecked landscape, a glowing disc rises from the floor. When he grabs it, armor forms around him that looks a lot like Sark, the Games Master and MCP enforcer from the original 1982 Tron. Given that the original Sark came from the Dillinger line, this is Julian leaning into the family legacy in the worst way. Call it Sark 2.0.
So... sequel?
No official word yet, but the pieces are obvious: Ares on a collision course with Quorra and Sam, and a newly minted Sark brewing in the Grid. The table is set for a bigger follow-up.
Quick facts
- Director: Joachim Rønning
- Cast: Jared Leto, Greta Lee, Evan Peters
- Year of release: 2025
- IMDb: 6.4/10, Rotten Tomatoes: 53% (at the moment)
- Studio: Walt Disney Pictures
- Status: Now playing in US theaters