Tron: Ares star Greta Lee says some people "may be surprised" by the familial love story at the heart of the new sequel and that it's a "really special thing" to include

There's a love story at the heart of Tron: Ares, and star Greta Lee says that while it might not be the one you expected, it's something special and powerful.

"I think maybe people will be surprised to find that, but it's something that we are so proud of. From the beginning, we wanted to figure out a way for the audience to experience this as if they themselves were on the life cycle, going through this experience," Lee tells GamesRadar+. "And a crucial component of that was creating a character that is human, and yes, very strong and capable, but also very vulnerable. And, obviously, the loss of her sister propels her to stop at nothing and to risk everything in ways that I don't even think that she knew that she was capable of doing. It's a really special thing, I think, to get to be able to inject that kind of story within this world."

Lee plays Eve Kim, the current chief executive officer of Kevin Flynn's ENCOM. After her sister Tess, the co-CEO of Encom, passes away from cancer, Eve decides to complete Tess's work and sets in search of Flynn's Permanence Code. In the world of Tron, things that are created digitally can only exist in real life for 29 minutes. With the permanence code, this makes the digitally created object real – which has the power to change humanity as we know it. Along the way, she encounters a rogue AI named Ares, created by ENCOM's rival Dillinger Systems, and all hell breaks loose.

Though it might be easy to assume that human Eve and AI Ares have some kind of romance in the film (judging by the trailers and the robot/human romance trope we often see in cinema), it's the love for her late sister that drives Eve to change the entire world – both on the grid and off.

Continues Lee: "[Eve] is a person. I really am fascinated by characters that are just regular people who find themselves in an extraordinary circumstance and then have to become superhuman. I find that very interesting and very inspiring just to show what we are all capable of when asked."

The third installment in the Tron franchise also stars Evan Peters as Julian Dillinger, grandson of everyone's favorite villain from the original 1982 film, with Gillian Anderson as his mother, Elisabeth Dillinger, and Jodie Turner-Smith as an AI named Athena. Joachim Rønning directs from a screenplay by Jesse Wigutow (who is also a writer on Daredevil: Born Again).

Tron: Ares releases in cinemas on October 10. For more, check out our list of the most exciting upcoming movies in 2025 and beyond.