In 2010, 28 years after the world met Kevin Flynn in Tron, Jeff Bridges reprised his character in Tron: Legacy. By the end of the sequel, however, it seemed as though Kevin’s story was finished when he sacrificed his life to save his son Sam and Quorra. And yet, Bridges is somehow back for the 2025 movie release Tron: Ares. How is this possible? Well, Jeff Bridges gave the most Jeff Bridges response when that very question was posed.
Bridges’ casting in Tron: Ares was announced in April 2024, and with four months to go until it hits the silver screen, the details of Kevin Flynn’s reemergence remain shrouded in secrecy. However, Bridges is well trained in not revealing any spoilers. Empire tried get some answers out of him on this subject, and he started off by saying:
Yeah, I was a bit surprised. You know, this is the Grid. The whole digital universe is all up for grabs. It’s all possible in that place. It worked out that I still have some sort of consciousness.
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It was revealed in Tron: Legacy that in 1989, seven years after the events of Tron (both movies can be streamed with a Disney+ subscription), Kevin Flynn was trapped in The Grid, thus missing out on most of Sam’s life. While he was finally able to reunite with his son when Sam was lured into The Grid, it didn’t last long. In order to make sure that Sam and Quorra could escape to the real world in the newly-reopened Portal, Kevin reabsorbed Clu, his digital duplicate, back into himself, and this generated an explosion that wiped out the islands above the Sea of Simulation.
For more than a decade, I, and I assume many other fans, believed that there was no way Kevin Flynn could have survived this, even with all the power he wielded in The Grid. But to quote Kevin in Tron: Legacy, some “biodigital jazz” is apparently at work to explain his inclusion in Tron: Ares. Jeff Bridges is fine with that, as he’s still finding new layers to this character, adding:
As human beings, we seek perfection. And sometimes we miss the whole point of the thing — the idea of the journey being the destination. Flynn originally explored the digital world in the hopes of achieving some sort of perfection for humanity, but now… the plot thickens, you know? As The Dude might say, new shit has come to light.
I am so happy that Jeff Bridges quoted his Big Lebowski character considering how Kevin Flynn was giving off so many Dude vibes in Tron: Legacy. It’s anyone’s guess at this point how Kevin is still kicking after all this time. We don’t even see him in the Tron: Ares trailer; he’s only heard saying, “Ready? ‘Cause there’s no going back.” Right now, I’m betting that The Grid in Ares isn’t the same as the one from Tron and Legacy, hence the red color. So it’s entirely possible that the Kevin is in this movie is somehow a copy of the original.
Tron: Ares opens in theaters on October 10, with Jeff Bridges’ co-stars including Jared Leto, Greta Lee and Evan Peters, among others. Whatever ends up happening with Kevin Flynn, I hope that Bridges has a better opinion of his depiction in this movie compared to what he thought of his digital self in Tron: Legacy.
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