While theTerminatortimeline isn’t very clear to the uninitiated, it is possible to work out every canonical fate that befell Sarah Connor after the ending ofTerminator 2: Judgment Day.TheTerminatortimeline is a messthanks to endless revisions, reboots, and outright retcons. Few blockbuster franchises have been rewritten as aggressively as James Cameron’s killer robot saga, with everyTerminatorproject after the first two movies offering another different version of the franchise’s timeline.
No matter what orderviewers watch theTerminatormovies in, it can be hard to understand the fate of Resistance leader John Connor and his action heroine mother Sarah Connor. In 1984’sThe Terminator, Sarah is an unassuming heroine who is saved from the titular android assassin so she can someday bring John into the world. InTerminator 2: Judgment Day, she is a battle-hardened survivor doing everything she can to ensure that John survives until after the eponymous event so he can save the world.Terminator 2: Judgment Day’s ending is where things get confusing.
Sarah Connor Originally Died Of Leukemia At Some Point Between 1997 And 2003
Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines Originally Explained Sarah Connor’s Death
Terminator 2: Judgment Dayends with Sarah driving John Connor down the highway, unsure of her future fate. The T-1000 has been destroyed and John has survived, but this came at the cost of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s now-heroic T-800 sacrificing himself too. While aversion of theTerminatorseries without John Connoris harder to imagine, 2003’s sequelTerminator 3: Rise of the Machinesoffered viewers the first installment in the series that dropped its original heroine, Sarah.
1984
1991
Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines
2003
2009
2008–09
2015
2019
Terminator Zero
2024–Present
InTerminator 3: Rise of the Machines, Nick Stahl’s older version of John Connor is the movie’s hero. In this timeline,John’s mother died of leukemia somewhere between 1997 and 2003, and he is alone in the world. Although he does pair up with Claire Danes’ Kate Brewster, John is unable to stop Skynet from taking over in this sequel’s bleak ending. After Skynet launches a nuclear attack that wipes out much of the human world, John begins the hard work of leading the Resistance from an underground bunker.
Sarah Connor Was Still Alive In 2027 In An Alternate Terminator 2 Timeline
Terminator 2: Judgment Day’s Ending Depicted An Older Sarah Connor
Shockingly,Sarah Connor survives well into the future inTerminator 2: Judgment Day’s alternative ending, with the director’s cut completely changing her canonical fate. While the laterTerminatormovies explained Schwarzenegger’s aging Terminatorwith an excuse about organic exteriors on T-800 models, Cameron needed to do the opposite to make the young Linda Hamilton look like a grandmother in the director’s cut ofTerminator 2: Judgment Day. In the deleted ending ofTerminator 2: Judgment Day, Sarah is seen as an elderly woman watching her grandchild playing in the park.
When The Sarah Connor Chronicles jumped to 2007, Sarah’s death was postponed.
This ending takes place 30 years after the events ofTerminator 2: Judgment Day, and it completely rewrites the franchise’s broader canon. Here, Skynet never began its war on humanity, John became a Senator, and Sarah is living happily as a seemingly healthy grandmother. Sadly, none of the other spins of her canonical fate were so unambiguously positive, as evidenced byThe Sarah Connor Chronicles.
The Sarah Connor Chronicles Stuck To Sarah Connor’s Original Cause of Death
Although TV’sThe Sarah Connor Chroniclesdid recast Sarah Connor, the show still stayed relatively close to the original story established inTerminator 3: Rise of the Machines. According to the version of events seeninThe Sarah Connor Chronicles, Sarah had cancer and was going to die in 2005.The show’s story started in 1997, meaning this made sense for a while. However, whenThe Sarah Connor Chroniclesjumped ahead to 2007, Sarah’s death was postponed. That said, her cancer was still there and her time was implied to still be limited.
Terminator: Dark Fate Rewrote Sarah Connor’s Story After Terminator 2
Terminator: Dark Fate Completely Changed Sarah Connor’s Fate
WhileTerminator 3: Rise of the MachinesandThe Sarah Connor Chroniclesstill share a relatively cohesive timeline,Terminator: Dark Fateoffered viewers the worst of both worlds. The reboot refused to recast Schwarzenegger’s original T-800, bringing him back for the umpteenth time, but brutally killed off John Connor and totally rewrote the story of the series as a result. Here, John was killed shortly afterTerminator 2: Judgment Day’s ending, so Sarah kept fighting for revenge in this take on the timeline.
Why Dark Fate Never Answers Carl’s Terminator Secret Plot-Hole
Few fans bought Schwarzenegger’s Terminator as a curtain salesman and family man in 2019 Dark Fate, and the twist caused a major plot hole.
Sarah Connor doesn’t die of leukemia inTerminator: Dark Fate, but her young son is mercilessly gunned down in front of her in his early teens. Since he is both her only child and the last hope for humanity, it is hard to say which timeline Sarah herself would prefer to be in. AlthoughTerminator Zero’s story offered yet another versionof the franchise’s timeline that spun off in a new direction altogether, this anime’s plot mercifully didn’t involve Sarah. However, there are more versions of her storyline to recount within the canonical timelines.
Other Versions Of Sarah Connor In The Terminator Universe
Terminator 2’s Novelisation and Terminator Genisys Feature Completely Different Sarah Connors
In theTerminator 2: Judgment Daynovelization, Sarah dies during a car ambush when John is a young adult. Readers can assume that this event takes place around the time ofTerminator 3: Rise of the Machinesor earlier, so although the mechanics of her demise are different, it is at least consistent with the rough timeline of bothTerminator 3: Rise of the MachinesandThe Sarah Connor Chronicles.
The Sarah Connor Chronicles and Terminator: Rise of the Machines align relatively well, while Terminator 2: Judgment Day’s novelization slightly alters Sarah’s death but keeps the same timeline.
In contrast,Terminator Genisysrecast Sarah Connorand introduced an entirely new version of her story to justify this change. Here, a whole different version of the character played by Emilia Clarke has been protected by a T-800 since her childhood, and she ends up traveling through time with a similarly recast Kyle Reese and trying to stop a now-evil John Connor from helping Skynet take over the world.Terminator Genisys’ version of Sarah Connor doesn’t die, but her story radically reshapes the fate of John Connor.
Similarly,Terminator: Dark Fate’s surviving Sarah Connor effectively ends up taking over John’s role in stopping Skynet. In contrast,The Sarah Connor ChroniclesandTerminator: Rise of the Machinesalign relatively well in their versions of her sad fate, whileTerminator 2: Judgment Day’s novelization slightly alters her death but keeps the same timeline. Thus, it is onlyTerminator 2: Judgment Day’s alternate ending offers a totally different, and uniquely upbeat, ending to theTerminatorfranchise heroine’s story.
