With only four months to go until Tron: Ares premieres on the 2025 movies schedule, there’s still quite a bit we don’t know about the long-awaited follow-up to Tron: Legacy. This ranges from the mystery of how Jeff Bridges’ Kevin Flynn is still alive, to knowing… well, really anything about Jared Leto’s Ares. But one thing that we know now is that The Acolyte’s Jodie Turner-Smith is playing a villain in the upcoming Disney movie, and she opened up about this experience, including a little way she went rogue with director Joachim Rønning.
Turner-Smith’s antagonistic turn in Ares comes a year after she starred as Mother Aniseya in the swiftly-cancelled Star Wars TV series. Her character, Athena, is Ares’ second-in-command, so she’ll be joining him as he travels from The Grid to the real world. Here’s how the actress described Athena to Empire:
She is hardcore and fierce and strong and loyal. It’s really fun to play somebody who’s just totally uncompromising and brazenly going about accomplishing their objectives. And I was really willing to take that on right now. I was like, ‘Ooh, villain era, let’s go.’
Given that red usually signifies a malevolent Program in the Tron universe, it shouldn’t be surprising that Athena will be a bad guy in Tron: Ares. What hasn’t been made clear yet is that since this movie is named after Jared Leto’s character, will he also be a villain the whole time as well, or will he switch allegiances during the story? I hope it’s the latter, because it would be fascinating to see Athena fight her former leader since she won’t let anything prevent her from fulfilling her mission.
EXCLUSIVE 🚨 Meet Jodie Turner-Smith’s “totally uncompromising” Tron: Ares character Athena – coming to cause chaos on the Grid and beyond. “I was like, ‘Ooh, villain era, let’s go’,” she tells Empire.Read more: https://t.co/3PtDP4k8Py pic.twitter.com/mSOm72R3IHJune 27, 2025
Exactly what that mission entails remains to be seen, but Jodie Turner-Smith, who also currently stars in the Paramount+ subscription-exclusive series The Agency, also revealed that she decided on an aspect of her character’s appearance. The thing is, she didn’t receive permission to do this, with Turner-Smith recalling:
Joachim actually was not down for that idea. They wanted me to go blonde, so I did, and I also bleached my eyebrows. And then I thought, ‘You know what? It’s gonna look better if the eyebrows are gone. If anyone’s upset, I’ll just tell them the bleach made them fall out.’ It was one of those times of asking for forgiveness rather than permission.
I’m glad it worked out, and it was also wise for her to have a fallback explanation in case Joachim Rønning and any other higher-ups on Tron: Ares didn’t approve of the look. Jodie Turner-Smith finds herself in good company with Christopher Lloyd, who shaved his eyebrows the first time he appeared on the 12 Monkeys TV series. It’ll certainly help make Athena stand out… on top of wearing a glowing red suit.
Tron: Ares comes out on October 10, and its other cast members include Greta Lee, Evan Peters, Hasan Minhaj, Arturo Castro, Cameron Monaghan, Gillian Anderson and Sarah Desjardins. The previous Tron movies, as well as the animated series Tron: Uprising, can be streamed with a Disney+ subscription.
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