New Look at MCU Actor’s Role as Tron: Ares’s Villain (& It’s Not Jared Leto)

Tron: Ares has an all-star cast, including several Marvel veterans in lead roles. By now, fans have likely seen Jared Leto in the role of Ares, but he’s not the main villain of the film. Instead, The Dillinger dynasty continues to hold that role, with Gillian Anderson playing Elisabeth Dillinger and Evan Peters as her son, Julian. Anderson spoke about their relationship in the latest issue of Empire Magazine, along with a new image of Peters in costume. The actor is a Marvel star twice over, and he may not be done with the franchise either. First, however, we’ll see him in Tron: Ares, in theaters October 10th.

The Tron franchise has followed the exploits of the Dillinger corporation since 1982, and the latest installment is no different. According to Anderson, in this movie, her character has mostly handed the reigns over to her son, who is eager to prove himself. She also implied that he may be capable of more evil than Elisabeth.

“Having a son that behaves in the way that Julian does, and trying to deal with his actions, both emotionally and logistically — it adds a level of stress and strain to their relationship,” she said.

Peters has experience playing just about every variation of a reckless young man, from well-meaning but cocky to straight-up monstrous. He explored the latter in 2022’s Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, which earned him an Emmy nomination. However, before that he was a key player in the superhero scene from Kick-Ass to the X-Men franchise.

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Peters played Peter Maximoff, a.k.a. Quicksilver in X-Men: Days of Future Past, X-Men: Apocalypse, and Dark Phoenix. He even made an appearance in Deadpool 2, and we now know that this role is technically canon within the MCU. It will be interesting to see if Peters shows up with the rest of the X-Men in the upcoming crossover events, since he also plays a separate role in the MCU shows WandaVision and Agatha All Along — Ralph Bohner.

The MCU will collide with the X-Men franchise by the time of Avengers: Doomsday in December of 2026. Peters is not one of the stars confirmed to appear in that movie, but some of the biggest stars from the franchise will be in it. Judging by the events of Deadpool & Wolverine, the X-Men’s world will likely be depicted as a separate reality from the MCU’s world, Earth-616. Afterward, the two franchise’s won’t be separate anymore, but we don’t know yet how they will be combined nor who might be recast.

We can only speculate about Peters’ superhero prospects for now, but in the meantime, his villainous turn in Tron: Ares is just around the corner. The movie hits theaters on October 10th in the U.S.