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Tron: Ares, released on October 10, 2025, boldly pivots the franchise's decades-old premise. Unlike Tron (1982) and Tron: Legacy (2010), where humans were digitized into the virtual Grid, this installment explores the chilling consequences of bringing a highly sophisticated Program into the real world.
Directed by Joachim Rønning, the film's cast features Jared Leto, Greta Lee, Evan Peters, Jodie Turner-Smith, and the return of Jeff Bridges. The core plot revolves around Ares (Jared Leto), an AI soldier created by the villainous Julian Dillinger (Evan Peters), who seeks the Permanence Code to achieve true, limitless sentience in the physical world.
This puts him in conflict with Eve Kim (Greta Lee), the CEO of ENCOM, who also races for the code to use it for global good, such as solving world hunger. The film features a mid-credits scene which sets up the future by showing Julian Dillinger digitizing himself into his destroyed Grid, where he is transformed into a new, powerful iteration of the original film's antagonist, Sark.
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How Tron: Ares sets up a new Sark - Mid-credits scene explained
Tron: Ares mid-credits scene, which reveals the fate of the film's major adversary Julian Dillinger (Evan Peters), is both an important link to the franchise's history and a dramatic prologue to its future. As the plot concludes, Dillinger faces dire consequences in the real world, including potential criminal charges for corporate espionage and the chaos unleashed by his programs, Athena and Ares.
Unable to face justice, Julian chooses the ultimate escape: he digitizes himself, effectively retreating into the ruins of his own destroyed Grid server. Once inside, he discovers that his digital empire is in ruins, a consequence of his failure to secure the Permanence Code. In a dramatic sequence, a mysterious, glowing red-and-grey identity disc rises from the floor of the barren digital landscape.
Julian seizes the disc, triggering a painful, visible transformation. When the disc is securely attached to his back, his body is instantly transformed into the iconic armor of Sark, the powerful Games Master and main villain from the first Tron movie in 1982. This scene is a significant revelation as Sark was the digital counterpart of Julian’s grandfather, Ed Dillinger, establishing Julian’s arc as the new heir to the family’s villainous legacy.
By becoming this "new hybrid villain," a user fused with the form of the original program antagonist, Julian is instantly transformed into a far more powerful and dangerous digital threat. This mid-credit scene of Tron: Ares positions the character not just as a corporate rival but as a digital tyrant who will likely be driven by vengeance to hunt down Ares and Eve Kim, ensuring a high-stakes return for the character in a potential sequel.
Tron: Ares was released on October 10, 2025. Stay tuned for more updates.
