Does <em>Tron: Ares</em> Have a Post-Credits Scene? Breaking Down the Surprise Easter Egg.

We're back in the Grid, baby. Some fifteen years after Tron: Legacy, the long-awaited third installment in the series is finally realized with Tron: Ares. Directed by Joachim Rønning, Ares sets the stage for two rival tech billionaires to race for the "permanence code," which grants programs from the digital world—like a 3D printed Jared Leto, starring as the title hero Ares—more than 29 minutes of time in our real world of flesh and blood.

Though Tron: Ares is just the third movie in a 43-year-old film franchise, the movie is intent on grounding the past into the bedrock of a sleek near-future. This includes a massive teaser for a fourth movie tucked away in the middle of the end credits. (It's a Disney tentpole we're talking about here. What else would you expect?) While it's anyone's guess if Tron will get a fourth movie any time soon, the end credits scene at least provides some direction regarding where things are headed next.

For those fresh from the theater and need a little primer on what that scene was all about in Tron: Ares, look no further. Here's what's happening in the end credits scene of Tron: Ares.

Warning: Spoilers for Tron: Ares ahead.

15 years after Tron: Legacy, Tron: Ares brings audiences back to the Grid. But a surprise post-credits scene hints what might happen in a potential fourth installment.

In Tron: Ares, Evan Peters stars as the villainous Julian Dillinger, CEO of Dillinger Systems and grandson to Ed Dillinger, big bad of the original Tron in 1982 played by David Warner. Warner also starred in the '82 film as Sark, who appears in the Grid (then housed on ENCOM's servers) with Ed Dillinger's exact likeness. Sark serves as the second-in-command muscle for the Master Control Program (MCP).

You'll recall that at the end of the original Tron, Sark was killed—sorry, derezzed—after Tron (Bruce Boxleitner) bests him in combat and ends the MCP's stranglehold over the system. Not only does Tron defeat Sark, but he slices Sark's identity disc in half. Though Sark gets a major power boost by the Master Control Program in the endgame, Sark is still defeated with a tag team play by Flynn (Jeff Bridges) and Tron.

Tron: Legacy came and went in 2010 without significant reference to Sark. But now in Tron: Ares, Sark returns. Sort of. At the end of the new movie, Julian escapes to the Grid to evade arrest for all the destruction he caused from bringing programs into the real world and making a mess of Center City. (Which looks an awful lot like Vancouver.)

In the Grid, Julian finds Sark's identity disc, and after making physical contact with it is quickly engulfed in the retro threads of Sark, silly hood and all. In short, Julian is becoming Sark, or some new version of him. But how Sark's identity disc is intact after all these years is a mystery—let alone appear to function, presumably with Sark's memories.

The scene ends right when Julian is fully dressed as Sark, so it's unclear if Julian is now Sark as a title or if Julian is "hosting" Sark in the same way an organism hosts a parasite. Either way, the past has now woven into the present and future of Tron, and where the series will go next is sure to involve Julian/Sark. Let's just hope the filmmakers remember this plot at all, and not leave us dangling like they have with the other unresolved story of this franchise: The whereabouts of Sam and Quorra. Maybe we need a fourth movie after all.