Mara

Mara is a supporting character in TRON: Uprising, voiced by Mandy Moore. She is one of Beck's best friends and his co-worker at Able's garage. Mara specializes in making deadly weapons and vehicles. She has also expressed admiration for Beck's renegade program disguise, completely unaware of his true identity.

Profile
Biographical information

Status: Alive

Physical description

Circuitry Color Primary: White

Secondary:Yellow

Gender: Female

Other information

Functions: Vehicle maintenance

Equipment: Identity Disc Umbrella Allies: Beck Zed Bodhi Able Moog Rasket Out of universe information

Actor: Mandy Moore

Appearances: TRON: Uprising

Biography
Beck's Beginning

Mara had worked at Able's garage for much of her life. She specialized in working on the deadliest vehicles and weaponry on the Grid. Then Clu's forces took control of Argon City, and Mara's friend Bodhi was derezzed before her eyes by a guard. Mara was upset but did nothing. A short time later, a new statue of Clu was destroyed by a mysterious program who, unknown to Mara, was her friend Beck in disguise. Talking about the incident with her friends at the garage, Mara expressed admiration for the program's bravery, and also commented that he looked handsome, though Zed noted in exasperation that he was wearing a mask. This was the first of what would be many clashes between them about whether the Renegade was a blessing or a curse.

General Tesler began to have programs seized and forced to fight in the Games, hoping to draw the Renegade out and capture him. Mara and her friend Zed were among the captured programs, and were taken by light rail toward the city's new Coliseum. En route, the train's beam supports were sabotaged, causing it to crash, and the Renegade freed the trapped programs. As the prisoners fled in all directions, Mara wanted to stop and greet or thank their rescuer, but Zed took her wrist and pulled her onward.

The Renegade

Unaware of the crush that Zed had been secretly nursing for her, Mara accompanied him and several of their other coworkers to the 0001001 Club, their most frequent hangout. Zed, too embarrassed to take the initiative and ask to dance with Mara, sat alone at a table and enviously watched her dance with the others. By the time Mara rejoined him, he had been approached by a program named Perl; Mara asked him to dance, but Zed, disappointed that she had asked out of friendship, departed with Perl.

During their next workshift, Mara noticed Zed was acting strangely. She realized what was wrong when Able walked in, looking for the missing baton of his rare ENCOM-786 light cycle. Zed started to make up a story, but Mara pulled him away with an excuse, using a tracking device to help him find the stolen baton.

Together, Mara and Zed confronted Perl and her criminal gang; Perl taunted Zed, but Mara punched her, saying that nobody insulted her best friend like that. Zed grabbed the missing baton and the two sped off. They accidentally led the pursuing gang straight into Paige, who had been fighting the Renegade, and in the confusion Mara and Zed escaped. Mara later reassured Zed when he complained that he'd never be worthy of a girl like Perl.

Blackout

Mara was present during the start of the Argon Race, supporting Zed, who was taking part. She was also present during Tesler's speech, disapproving of the general's message even as Zed cheered for it. Beck later told Zed that Mara had informed him what happened at the race, in order to avoid revealing that he had been there himself as the Renegade.

Identity

Speculating on the Renegade's identity, Mara decided she hoped he actually wasn't Tron, as she liked his air of mystery; she disapproved when Zed scoffed that the program was simply afraid to show his face.

When Zed excitedly showed her his new invention, a weapon that could derezz a light cycle by hitting its light ribbon, she pointed out in dismay that the weapon wouldn't just stop the Renegade but derezz him. Zed tried once again to convince her that the renegade was the bad guy and he was only trying to do the right thing by inventing a way to stop him, but she expressed her disappointment that he had fallen in with Bartik and Hopper, saying that she hadn't expected him to be like them. Nonetheless, she showed up for his first official test of the invention, and her presence influenced him to sabotage the device so that Paige's anti-Renegade taskforce wouldn't use it.

Price of Power

Mara interrupted Bartik and Hopper when they arrived at the garage to harass Zed and the other workers. When Hopper said that they were there to see that her "pretty little hands" worked as fast as possible on Tesler's new battle tank, she said that her "pretty little fists" worked much faster, and, slapping a fist into her palm, offered to demonstrate. However, Able intervened before she could finish the threat. After the two threatening programs left, Mara offered to help Zed with the light cycle they had knocked over, but Zed, embarrassed to have been seen in a bad light, brushed her off and rolled it away.

Later, she saw Beck breaking up another confrontation between Hopper and Zed by twisting Hopper's arm and throwing him to the ground. When Beck drew his disc, Mara ran forward to stop him, shocked that he had come close to seriously hurting another program. However, when she later learned that Hopper and Bartik had instigated the arrest of the garage crew by Tesler's guards, she said that if her hands were free she would derezz them.

When a fight broke out in the garage between Pavel and the Renegade, Zed broke free during the chaos, and freed Mara as well. Mara ran to save another coworker, but Zed saw that a detached light jet was about to fall on her, and leaped to throw her clear. The fall knocked her out and left her with a wound on one arm; Zed carried her to safety and left her with Able while going back into the garage to rescue Hopper and Bartik.

After the battle, Mara used her identity disc to edit a patch over the wound on her arm, and said she wished she could have thanked "Tron" for saving her. Beck, however, broke in and told her it was Zed who saved her; astonished, she took Zed's hand and thanked him.

The Reward

When General Tesler offered a reward for the capture of the renegade, Mara, among the crowd gathered in the Coliseum, was grabbed in a headlock by Zed, who joked that he had the Renegade right there. Mara, however, was more excited that Argon City's curfew had been temporarily canceled, and she, Beck, and Zed would be able to have a carefree night on the town, just like the old days. However, their evening at the 0001001 Club was interrupted when Pavel marched in to arrest Hopper as the Renegade. Knowing that she and Zed could prove that Hopper had been present when Pavel was fighting the Renegade at the garage, the two brought their information to Paige; but Tesler, predisposed to believe Pavel and offended that Mara had reached out to touch his cloak as she pleaded to be heard, sentenced Mara and Zed to die with Hopper.

The three programs were bound in the center of Argon Square, with Occupation light cycles ready to take off and tear them apart. As the ropes were slowly tightened, Zed told Mara that it would be okay, and that she should close her eyes. Mara replied that he was her best friend, but that there was something she had always wished had happened; but before she could finish, the Renegade arrived in Link's new light roadster and rescued them.

Driving away with the Renegade, after Zed, at Mara's instigation, booted an ungrateful Hopper out of the car, Mara expressed glee at the exciting rescue. She scolded Zed for remarking that the trouble they were in was the Renegade's fault to begin with, and wished that Beck could have been there with them, saying he would have loved this. The Renegade, not wishing to reveal his identity, told them to remember that Tron lived, and separated the roadster into two double-seater lightcycles. Mara drove away with Zed in the seat behind her; Zed asked her, as he had several times before, what she had intended to say in the square, but she evaded the question.

Grounded

Mara's planned ring game with Zed and Beck was canceled due to sentries hogging the playing field. Later, in the garage, Zed was supposed to keep an eye on Beck but wandered off to help Mara with her work instead, nearly allowing Beck to sneak out against Able's orders.

Mara was later in the crowd at Argon Square, watching the Renegade battle Tesler.

We Both Know How This Ends

Arriving at the garage before the start of her shift, Mara criticized the state in which the second shift had left their workspace. Her ruminations were interrupted by Able, who, taking a day off to complete a task, put her in charge for the shift, responding to her surprise with, "What other choice do I have?"

Mara's shift started off on a sour note when Beck and Zed came in late. They were surprised to find her in charge and agreed to back her up, but soon proceeded, along with Copper and Dash, to slack off as much as they could, brushing aside her entreaties. Things took an even worse turn when Pavel arrived with twelve tanks which had been sabotaged by the renegade, threatening the entire shift with the Games unless the tanks were repaired by the time he returned. When Mara tried to rally her coworkers to work together and thus finish sooner, Dash scoffed that there was no time and that listening to her would get them all derezzed. Overriding Mara's protests, he convinced the team to scatter and work by themselves, throwing the garage into chaos.

As the time limit approached, Mara discovered that Link had inadvertently and briefly reset the tank he was working on, and extrapolated a way to fix all of the vehicles. Beck, fearing that there wasn't enough time for the team to finish, attempted to sneak off to his locker for his Renegade disguise in order to stall Pavel somehow, but Mara followed and sternly informed him that his slacking might have been okay with Able but it was not with her, and that he needed to spend more time working on not getting derezzed. Back on the floor, she called the team to attention, telling them she'd made a mistake trying to act a friend when what they needed was a leader, and saying that if they failed to fix the tanks, she would take all the responsibility herself. She then showed them Link's fix, and the team managed to implement it on all twelve tanks just in time for Pavel's deadline.

When Able returned, he told her he was pleased he hadn't made a mistake with her. Surprised, she said she'd thought he had no choice, and he clarified that that was because she'd been his first and only choice.

Tagged

Mara recruited two programs, Moog and Rasket, to help her spread the message that Tron lived by tagging buildings all across Argon City with free code. When a program in a red-circuited disguise captured the masked trio, Mara stubbornly insisted that she believed Tron lived. The program then revealed himself to be the Renegade, and Mara unmasked herself after her teammates did, delighted to meet her hero and immediately pledging herself to "Tron"'s cause, unaware all the time that the Renegade was really Beck.

When the Renegade gathered the three together to plan a raid on Tesler's ship, Mara understood immediately that she and her teammates were meant to provide a distraction while the action took place. She sought approval from the others, but they were disappointed with the lack of fun and notoriety for them in the plan. Disappointed, the Renegade turned to leave, but Mara called him back, and roundly scolded the others for focusing on trivial things while the Renegade was risking his life for them. She declared that whatever they did, she would be on his side, and after a moment's reflection, they agreed.

The raid went off without a hitch, but Moog and Rasket separated from Mara instead of accompanying her to the meeting place afterward, though she tried to call them back. She met the Renegade alone and told him that the two had decided to tag Tesler's ship by themselves; when the Renegade asked what they thought they were doing, she retorted that they hadn't been thinking and that she'd been accustomed to doing the thinking for them. The Renegade told her to wait while he went in after them, but she refused, boldly citing her knowledge of her teammates and their ways and stating that he'd never find them without her. Reluctantly, he agreed to bring her along.

Mara and the Renegade discovered Rasket and Moog being tortured by Pavel, and broke the torture device to rescue them. While the Renegade held Paige off, Mara tried to reopen the door of the ship, which was steadily closing, but there wasn't enough time. A recognizer loomed overhead; Moog and Rasket ran from it, but Mara snatched Rasket's free-code tool and corrupted the craft with TRON LIVES graffiti, obscuring its viewscreen and causing it to crash. Worried about the Renegade, she hung back as her friends bailed out of the ship, and was stunned and jolted from its platform by light copter fire. When she came to, the Renegade had caught her in mid-air, and she put her head trustingly on his shoulder and closed her eyes again as his light jet carried her back to the meeting point.

After her teammates quit, she turned to the Renegade, renewing her commitment in determined tones, unknowingly echoing Beck's own early words to Tron -- "I'm ready for this!" -- but he brushed her off, using the excuse that she was no use to him alone in order to mask his concern for her safety.

Later, a crowd gathered around yet another monument defaced with the "TRON LIVES" code. Mara, letting her rebel mask retract under a concealing hood, observed her handiwork and smiled.

State of Mind

While driving to work, letting her vehicle operate automatically, Mara skimmed through potential new hair colors on her identity disc, asking her Bit which one would express her commitment to the revolution. When a drone tanker drove off a bridge ahead of her and caused an accident in her lane, she switched her truck to manual to avoid the pileup, but her truck swerved out of control and crashed. Injured and semiconscious, she was taken to a medical facility along with the other crash victims and unknowingly used as a test subject for an experimental pathogenic code before being released again.

The effects of the drug soon became apparent: first with her uncharacteristic admiration of all things related to the Occupation, then with her violent reaction to Zed's mention of the Renegade and changing her hair from blue to orange. Expressing disgust at the Renegade and admiration for Clu, Mara behaved violently toward Zed when he interrupted her meeting with Bartik and Hopper at the 0001001 Club, and eventually left with them to attend an Occupation party in Argon Square.

Later, Zed found her at the party, dancing with the rest of the hypnotized programs, and managed to draw her away, but she again reacted violently when they came across another building marked with the "TRON LIVES" tag, hacking at the V until it read instead, "TRON LI ES". Zed tried to stop her, but she counterattacked and pinned him down with her identity disc poised menacingly above him. Just then, Beck destroyed the control tower that was controlling all of the programs infected with the mind control drug, and Mara was returned to her senses, unable to remember what had happened while the pathogen was working. Just to make sure that she was really herself, Zed asked her about the Renegade, and she, believing the question to be a prelude to another one of his anti-Renegade tirades, exasperatedly told him that she thought the masked program was doing some good.

Later, in her quarters, she returned her hair to its normal shade of blue, a change heartily approved by the Bit.

No Bounds

Injured by an explosion, Mara, lying on a gurney as a medic worked on her disc, explaining to Beck and Zed in dismay that an eyewitness had implicated the Renegade. Though still believing in him, Mara was unable to deny the evidence of the witness's identity disc. Her account was interrupted by the medic, who, brandishing a long set of pincers, extracted a large shard of glass from her injured leg; Mara did her best to control her pain, but Zed, watching, collapsed in a dead faint at the sight.

Mara and Zed were later met at the 0001001 Club by Cyrus, who, as part of his plan to revenge himself on Beck and Tron, introduced himself as an old friend of Beck's and became an instant hit with both of them. Cyrus had begun to spread a rumor that Beck had quit his job, and Mara confronted Beck with the news when he arrived, but he assured her -- unable to publicly reveal that Cyrus had somehow learned of his quitting his job as the Renegade -- that whoever had been spreading such rumors should be locked up. She was eager for details about the friendship Cyrus had professed, but her favorite song started playing and she jumped up and hauled Zed out to the floor to dance with her, making Beck promise not to reveal any juicy backstory tales until they returned. While they danced, Cyrus, who had been taunting Beck with his inability to protect his friends against a threat he couldn't warn them about, spoke about Mara with creepy intensiveness, further unsettling Beck.

Cyrus later managed to incapacitate Mara and Zed and lock them in a crane with time bombs strapped to their backs. When they came to, they found Able attempting to remove the bombs. He was eventually successful, but when he tried to tell them who had been responsible for their predicament, the bombs began to sizzle, trapping him in place. He shouted for them to run; Mara held back, but Zed pushed her out of the crane, and they both plunged into the water below as the crane exploded, with Able perishing in the blaze.

Zed helped Mara climb onto the docks, and they found themselves in a ring of confused programs as the Renegade arrived. Furious, grieving, and influenced by the damage Cyrus, in the Renegade's disguise, had done to the masked program's reputation, Mara accused him of killing Able, and he was forced to flee.

Mara later turned off the lights in Able's office, and the Bit followed her out, hovering next to her and Zed as they leaned on one another and gazed up at the wanted poster for the program they thought had killed their beloved mentor.

Personality and Traits
Mara is an upbeat program who enjoys dancing, music, and relaxation. She values her friends and strives to keep a cheerful attitude, but has little sympathy for programs who threaten others. She is also an excellent strategist, quick-thinking, cool under pressure, and thriving in dangerous situations. For the most part, Mara believes that the Renegade -- "Tron" -- is the hero the Grid needs most. She is one of his staunchest followers, though she is unaware that the masked program is actually her friend Beck; she is willing to do whatever it takes to support him, and expresses annoyance at Zed's constant criticism of his methods. After an imposter's campaign to discredit the Renegade, Mara's opinion changed so far as to blame him for Able's death, but finally concluded that the city's residents couldn't expect one program to fight all their battles, a decision that prompted her to launch the first true resistance movement in Argon City.

Trivia
#Mara does not appear in Isolated, Scars: Part I or Part 2, The Stranger, or Rendezvous. #Mara is one of the few Basic programs who does not seem to be named after an aspect of computing history.

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