Featured Essays Tron The Divine (and Not-So-Divine) Mysteries of Tron A video game world populated by messiahs, angels, gods, and devils. By Robert Repino | Published on October 8, 2025 Credit: Walt Disney Productions Comment 0 Share New Share Credit: Walt Disney Productions Some messiahs are dangerous because they spread lies. But others are far more dangerous because they’re telling the truth. In science fiction and fantasy, the “good” messiahs (or chosen ones, prophets, whatever) tend to represent a religion or ideology that is ultimately real, or demonstrably true. That makes sense. After all, few people want to root for a hero who is dedicating their life to a myth. In the real world, however, it’s rarely that simple. Belief, faith, and a sense of hope, meaning, and purpose are rarely, if ever, verifiable. Trusting a messiah can be as terrifying as it would be liberating and exhilarating. Many would argue that this tension is what makes faith worthwhile, and that the lifelong process of interpretation and discovery are more rewarding than the finality of some testable prediction. The Tron franchise—about to launch its third movie, Tron: Ares—has tinkered with these ideas in some surprising, though at times uneven, ways. Steven Lisberger, director of the original Tron (1982), has framed the movie’s allegory in mostly secular terms, saying that the film “can be considered a metaphor for our world,” with all its conflicts and clashing ideologies. Yet the imagery and language in the film comes across as almost deliberately religious, so much so that many viewers have mapped their own theologies onto the story.   Tron takes place in two connected worlds: the real meatspace where humans live, and a computer network, which is depicted as a futuristic neon city populated with programs that appear as individual people. Typically, a program in the digital world resembles the User who created them. As one human character describes it, “our spirit remains in every program we designed.” But a renegade artificial intelligence called the Master Control Program (or MCP, voiced by David Warner) seeks to control the network by severing the connection between the humans and their electronic counterparts. In this new dictatorship, programs are expected to renounce any belief in the Users, which the MCP’s security forces label a superstition punishable with “deresolution” (i.e., execution). But the MCP has other perceived enemies in the outside world. One of them, a hacker named Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges), is trying to break into the network to find his successful video game design that the corporation stole from him. Using a sophisticated laser, the MCP zaps Flynn into the network, where he materializes as just another program. There, the MCP forces him to join the others in endless gladiator-style matches that mimic some of Flynn’s video games. The champion of these games is a quiet hero named Tron (Bruce Boxleitner), who looks exactly like his designer. Like most programs, he carries a disc with all his memories that can be used as a projectile weapon, like a flying, circular lightsaber. Tron, we are told, “fights for the Users,” and his power is so great that the MCP presumably lets him live so that, one day, Tron can be coerced into service. Flynn, however, may be even more powerful, for his knowledge of the games, and his ability to manipulate the digital world as if by magic, allow him to directly challenge the authoritarian system. In the climactic battle, Tron and Flynn infiltrate the MCP’s stronghold. To help Tron destroy the MCP, Flynn leaps into the nerve center of the system, corrupting it long enough for Tron to deliver the killing strike. This apparent sacrifice tosses Flynn back into the real world, where he collects his stolen data and takes down the corrupt corporation. Meanwhile, the programs celebrate a newfound freedom as the MCP is “derezzed”. This brief summary ticks many boxes for religious themes across various traditions. Depending on how you frame it, Flynn’s initial journey could be compared to an angel descending from heaven, or a soul finding a new body. Later, Flynn’s sacrifice results in a resurrection and a redemption—or maybe an ascension to some higher plane of existence, having proven himself worthy. Another element is revelation. In one of the most beautiful sequences in the film, Tron communicates with Alan, his User (also played by Boxleitner). To make contact, Tron journeys to an input-output tower, which resembles a holy place, guarded by a wise old program. When Tron asks if he may commune with his User, the old one responds: “All that is visible must grow beyond itself and extend into the realm of the invisible.” That strange introduction, along with the wonderful score by Wendy Carlos, gives the setting a mystical feel. Here, one could interpret Tron as performing some ritual, or a prayer. Instead of kneeling, he lifts his disc and watches as it rises into a glowing light. From there, he receives a message from Alan that shows him how to defeat the MCP. A download becomes a spiritual union with the other side. Many observers have described the MCP as a kind of devil character. Like Lucifer, he is a superior angel who nevertheless turns on the creators who made him so special. Despite his immense power, the MCP’s evolution has changed him in ominous ways. He is rendered as a massive, expressionless face, seemingly sealed in place and issuing orders to his demons from the lowest circle of hell. A more humanist take could frame him not as the devil of Western theology, but as one of many failed godlings from around the world. At the end of the film, as the MCP is dying, the massive face gives way to a miserable old man, who almost seems relieved that the end has come, much like the Authority in the His Dark Materials series by Philip Pullman. But it is the messiah figure, and his burgeoning cult, that might be the most compelling religious element in the film, though the story leaves a lot to the viewers’ imagination. First, there remains the question of whether Tron or Flynn should be regarded as the story’s chosen one. Tron has the charisma and the following, but Flynn is the one who sacrifices his life to save the world and is later born again. So, co-messiahs then? I’m not sure. That aside, the film implies that Tron’s devotion to the Users has garnered a following. When Flynn first enters the digital world, the MCP’s henchman Sark (also played by Warner) warns the newly captured programs to avoid “this superstitious and hysterical belief” in the Users. Clearly, there are enough believers to alarm the MCP. However, we meet only a couple of those followers. That absence leaves so much to explore, from the adherents’ everyday rituals and customs, to the authority figures and sacred texts, to the possibility that Tron might one day use his power to become a new version of the MCP. Rather than going into detail about any of that, the film settles for a straightforward battle climax similar to the Death Star sequence in Star Wars, and doesn’t touch the question of what might come next, when one system of belief abruptly yields to another. Maybe I’m asking too much. The exploration of religious themes I’m envisioning would bloat the movie with even more exposition. As much as I enjoyed the very late sequel TRON: Legacy (2010), some critics have argued that it gets a little too heavy-handed with its philosophical and spiritual monologues. Moreover, there is a gentler way that the original movie handles some of the biggest questions it poses. Around the midway point of the 1982 film, Flynn reveals to Tron that he’s a User. Instead of falling to his knees, Tron simply asks a few questions. “If you are a User,” he wonders, “then everything you’ve done has been according to a plan, right?” Flynn scoffs at this idea. For him, morality, identity, and destiny come down to this: “You just keep doing what it looks like you’re supposed to be doing, no matter how crazy it seems.” Tron has some trouble accepting this, but he’s so humble and curious that he continues to ponder its meaning. “Stranger and stranger,” he says to himself, smiling. If you have thoughts on this moment, or a different interpretation, please chime in, but I think Tron’s remarkably chill response is in keeping with the fact that his religion, if we can call it that, is demonstrably real. Whenever confronted with some intractable debate about morality or meaning, I’ve often asked: “Wouldn’t it be great if God (or, the gods) could just show up and tell us what to do?” But for Tron, this is no longer a question that torments him, or drives him to some heroic deed. The gods have descended into his world, appeared right in front of him, and have told him—and shown him—the truth, without the need for exegesis, translation of cryptic texts, trust in an inscrutable god, debates about uncaused causes, or rituals to commune with the other side. For Tron, learning that the Users are regular people like him is simply another discovery among many. In the process, he may lose the wonder and mystery of faith, but he also avoids the cognitive dissonance and the soul-crushing silence. Imagine how different this film would be if Tron never got to know for sure that the Users were real, and if he could never truly “extend into the realm of the invisible.” Imagine the long-term consequences for this world, with rival messiahs speaking for the humans on the other side, and skeptics declaring the Users to be dead, or to have never existed at all. Those deep personal conflicts with the unknown and the spiritual are difficult to depict in a tale of adventure, and their outcomes often remain deeply personal, which is why, I suspect, so many stories understandably avoid them. As intrigued as I am by that possibility, I’m grateful that the deities of this world went easy on Tron by revealing themselves. With a god in his ear, and a mission that he has freely chosen to undertake, there is no need for him to experience some existential crisis, nor to demand some ultimate, objective meaning to his quest, as if his creators would owe him such a thing. In this interpretation, the messiah is knocked down a peg, from a divine being to a regular person just doing what it looks like they’re supposed to be doing, with the tools and the information at hand. Hoping to find meaning and purpose, while trying not to get derezzed. When the gods turn out to be less than you’d hoped for, sometimes that’s the best you can do. What are your thoughts? Do you have a different read on the religious elements in Tron? Let me know in the comments…[end-mark] The post The Divine (and Not-So-Divine) Mysteries of <i>Tron</i> appeared first on Reactor.