Terminator recap: the story so far

No. 01 · 1984 · Film

The Terminator recap

In 1984 Los Angeles, two time travellers arrive from 2029: the Terminator, a cyborg assassin with living tissue over a metal skeleton, and Kyle Reese, a soldier of the human resistance. The Terminator starts killing every woman named Sarah Connor in the phone book. Kyle finds the right one, a waitress, and saves her at a nightclub. He tells her that machines will start a nuclear war and nearly wipe out humanity, and that her future son John will lead the fight back; the machines sent the Terminator to stop John from ever being born, and John sent Kyle to protect her. The police think Kyle is mad, and the Terminator attacks the station and kills dozens of officers. On the run, Sarah and Kyle fall in love and sleep together.

How The Terminator ends

Kyle blows up the Terminator's tanker with a pipe bomb, but its metal skeleton rises from the flames and chases them into a factory. Kyle dies blowing it in half, and Sarah crushes what is left of it in a hydraulic press. Months later, Sarah, pregnant with Kyle's son John, drives into Mexico as a storm comes in, recording tapes for her son.

Post-credits scenes

No. There is no post-credits scene.

No. 02 · 1991 · Film

Terminator 2: Judgment Day recap

In 1995, John Connor is a troubled ten-year-old living with foster parents in Los Angeles, and Sarah is locked up in a psychiatric hospital for trying to blow up a computer factory. Two Terminators arrive: the T-1000, an advanced model made of liquid metal that can take any shape, and a reprogrammed T-800 sent by the future John to protect him. The T-800 saves John from the T-1000, and they break Sarah out of the hospital. They learn that Skynet will be built by Miles Dyson at Cyberdyne Systems using the chip and arm from the first Terminator. Sarah sets out to kill Dyson, but cannot do it. Dyson agrees to help destroy his work, and they blow up the Cyberdyne lab; Dyson dies in the explosion.

How Terminator 2: Judgment Day ends

The T-1000 chases them to a steel mill, where it is frozen with liquid nitrogen and shattered, then reforms, until the T-800 fires a grenade into it and it falls into molten steel. The T-800 has a chip in its own head, so it asks Sarah to lower it into the steel too. With the chip gone, Judgment Day may not happen, and Sarah says the future is not set.

Post-credits scenes

No. There is no post-credits scene.

No. 03 · 2003 · Film · optional

Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines recap

Judgment Day did not come in 1997, but it has only been delayed. John Connor, now in his twenties and living off the grid, is drifting since Sarah died of leukaemia. Skynet sends the T-X, a female Terminator with a liquid-metal skin over an armed skeleton, to kill John's future lieutenants, including the veterinarian Kate Brewster. A T-850, sent back by Kate in the future, protects them. Kate's father, General Robert Brewster, oversees the military's Skynet project, and a computer virus is spreading across the internet. The Terminator tells John that Judgment Day will happen today. The group tries to stop Skynet from being switched on, but Brewster activates it to stop the virus, which is actually Skynet itself. The T-X mortally wounds Brewster.

How Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines ends

Brewster sends John and Kate to a bunker he says is Skynet's core, and the T-850 destroys the T-X with a fuel cell, sacrificing itself. The bunker is a fallout shelter for officials, and there is no core: Skynet is software spread across the world. The missiles launch, and John takes command by radio as the bombs fall.

Post-credits scenes

No. There is no post-credits scene.

No. 04 · 2008 · Series · optional

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles recap

The show ignores T3 and picks up after T2. In season 1, Sarah and her teenage son John are on the run in 1999 when a T-888 named Cromartie finds them. Cameron, a reprogrammed Terminator disguised as a teenage girl, protects them and takes them through time to 2007, eight years later. Sarah learns Judgment Day is now set for 2011 and hunts for the Turk, a chess computer that could become Skynet. They team up with Derek Reese, John's uncle from the future. The FBI agent James Ellison chases them. In season 2, Cameron is damaged in an explosion and her programming glitches. The Turk ends up with Catherine Weaver, CEO of ZeiraCorp, who is actually a T-1001; she builds an AI, John Henry, inside Cromartie's body. Jesse, a resistance fighter from an altered future, kills Riley, John's girlfriend, and Derek is killed by a Terminator.

How Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles ends

Weaver reveals herself to the Connors and says John Henry was built to fight Skynet. Cameron gives John Henry her chip, and he escapes to the future through Weaver's time machine. John follows Weaver into the future, leaving Sarah behind, and finds a world where nobody knows him and Derek and Kyle Reese are alive. The show was cancelled on this cliffhanger.

No. 05 · 2009 · Film · optional

Terminator Salvation recap

In 2003, Marcus Wright, a convicted murderer, donates his body to the scientist Serena Kogan before his execution. In 2018, after Judgment Day, John Connor is a resistance soldier, not yet the leader, and Skynet is collecting humans for its research. Marcus wakes up in the ruins with no memory and befriends a teenage Kyle Reese, who is captured by the machines. Marcus saves a resistance pilot, Blair Williams, but is caught in a minefield at the resistance base and revealed to be a cyborg. John, who knows that Kyle must live to become his father, makes a deal with Marcus to rescue Kyle from Skynet's headquarters in San Francisco. Inside, Marcus learns he was designed to bring John there. He tears out his own chip.

How Terminator Salvation ends

Marcus and John rescue Kyle and destroy the base, though a T-800 badly wounds John's heart. Marcus gives his human heart to John and dies. The resistance survives and John leads the fight on.

Post-credits scenes

No. There is no post-credits scene.

No. 06 · 2015 · Film · optional

Terminator Genisys recap

In 2029, John Connor's resistance defeats Skynet, and Kyle Reese volunteers to go back to 1984 to save Sarah. As he travels, he sees John attacked by a Terminator. In 1984, he finds the timeline has changed: Sarah has been raised since age nine by an older T-800 she calls Pops, sent by someone unknown, and they quickly destroy the original Terminator and a T-1000. Kyle has memories of a new future, where Skynet is a program called Genisys due to launch in 2017. Sarah and Kyle jump forward to 2017, where John appears and is revealed to be a new kind of Terminator, the T-3000, made of nanomachines; he is Skynet's agent, guarding Genisys.

How Terminator Genisys ends

Sarah, Kyle and Pops destroy the Cyberdyne building and the Genisys core, and Pops traps John in a magnetic field. Pops falls into a vat of liquid metal and comes back stronger. Kyle meets his younger self and gives him a message about Genisys.

Post-credits scenes

Yes. In a mid-credits scene, a protected Genisys core survives the wreck of the building, showing that Skynet is not finished.

No. 07 · 2019 · Film

Terminator: Dark Fate recap

In 1998, after Terminator 2, a T-800 sent back before Judgment Day was averted kills the young John Connor in front of Sarah. In 2020 Mexico City, two figures arrive from the future: the Rev-9, a Terminator that can split into two bodies, and Grace, an enhanced human soldier, sent to protect Dani Ramos. Sarah, who now hunts Terminators after anonymous tips, joins them. In Grace's future, a different AI, Legion, starts a war, and Dani will be its target. The tips come from the T-800 that killed John; with no further orders, it has built a family in Texas and calls itself Carl. Carl joins them, and they fight the Rev-9 on a military plane and at a dam.

How Terminator: Dark Fate ends

Grace, mortally wounded, has Dani take her power source, and Dani drives it into the Rev-9 while Carl holds it; both machines are destroyed. Dani is not the mother of a future leader: she is the leader. Dani and Sarah watch the young Grace play, and prepare Dani for the future.

Post-credits scenes

No. There is no post-credits scene.

No. 08 · 2024 · Series · optional

Terminator Zero recap

In 2022, after Judgment Day, the resistance fighter Eiko is sent back in time to August 1997 in Tokyo, the day before Skynet launches its nuclear war. Her target is Malcolm Lee, a scientist building a rival AI called Kokoro that he hopes can stop Skynet. A Terminator follows her to kill Malcolm and his three children, Kenta, Reika and Hiro, who live with their housekeeper Misaki. Kokoro, once activated, questions whether humanity is worth saving. Eiko and Reika are chased through the city, and the Terminator reveals that Misaki is an android. As Skynet's missiles fall, Malcolm activates Kokoro, and robots take control of Tokyo. Malcolm admits he is from the future and built Misaki. The Terminator kidnaps Kenta.

How Terminator Zero ends

Malcolm is killed and reveals that Eiko is his mother in his timeline. Kokoro decides to defend humanity. The Terminator tells Kenta that in the future, he will send it back to destroy Kokoro, before Kokoro's robots destroy it. Kenta chooses not to switch Kokoro off and goes into hiding with his siblings, Eiko and Misaki. The series was cancelled after one season.