Over the last few years, the Terminator franchise has been in a bit of a mess. With all the reboots, prequels and sequels, fans have turned to new ideas about how to fix the franchise. Some have called for director Zack Snyder to reboot the Terminator franchise for Netflix. Others would like to see Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson as a T-800 in a film set in the future after Judgement Day. However, what most fans seem to be forgetting is that we actually did have a good sequel to T2: Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles.
The Terminator Keeps Coming Back
It’s not easy being a Terminator fan. Every time you think you’ve got the timeline figured out, a new movie comes along to retcon the established canon. It’s almost impossible to agree on a single timeline when it comes to Terminator, doubly so if you count the comics and books – though their canonicity had always been shaky.
Now that we know James Cameron is working on yet another secret Terminator project, we have no choice but to brace ourselves for the inevitable retcon. Maybe Sarah Connor was never a waitress this time, or John Connor had a twin sister. In any case, that’s what you usually get when your franchise deals with reality-altering time-traveling: many possible scenarios.
Still, if there’s something we can all agree on it’s that the Terminator series changed drastically after Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines. The film was polarizing with fans, as it was the first entry in the series that deviated heavily from the established canon. That’s also the point where it became clear Terminator peaked with Terminator 2.
However, for Terminator fans, the one true sequel to T2 was just about to come.
Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles Was The Perfect Sequel To T2
Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles was released in 2008, five years after the last Terminator film came to cinemas. This was the first time the franchise released a TV show – and they nailed it on the first try.
For starters, The Sarah Connor Chronicles retconned the events of Terminator 3. The series was a direct sequel to T2, featuring Sarah and John Connor on the run after seemingly destroying Skynet before its creation. Needless to say, that never works, and the machines are still on course to world domination, only this time, Judgment Day takes place in 2011 instead of 1997.
The show stars future Game of Thrones talent Lena Headey as Sarah, while Thomas Dekker plays her son, John, the future leader of the Resistance. In many ways, Headey and Dekker play their characters just like Linda Hamilton and Edward Furlong did, making the show feel even more like a true sequel.
Of course, it wouldn’t be a Terminator show without Terminators. The Sarah Connor Chronicles takes a page out of Terminator 3‘s book and introduces a new female Terminator, Cameron, played by Summer Glau. The show’s main bad guy is a T-888 codenamed Cromartie, predominantly played by Garret Dillahunt.
Judgment Day
The Sarah Connor Chronicles garnered strong positive reviews, but not even that was enough to save it from its demise. The show was released during the heyday of the Writer’s Guild of America’s strike, leading to complications during its production. With viewership dwindling by the end of Season 2, the studio cut the cord before the series could get a proper ending.
That same year, 2009, Terminator Salvation came to theaters. If Terminator 3 was unlike the previous two films, then Salvation was a whole different genre. The film looks more like a Transformers movie than anything else. To make matters worse, it kept the same continuity introduced by Terminator 3, which already made die-hard fans question just how good the plot could be.
Salvation introduced a new era for the world of Terminator – one of continuous rehashes and rewrites of the series’ beloved lore. We’re still trapped in that trend, with films like Terminator: Dark Fate sullying the memory of timeless classics like Judgment Day.
It would be nearly impossible to produce a series like The Sarah Connor Chronicles at this point – as impossible as it would be to create a movie as flawless as T2. For that, it’s safe to say that, as brief as it was, The Sarah Connor Chronicles remains the last great piece of Terminator media.
RELATED: Alien & Predator Have Made Comebacks – Can Terminator Too?
Tell us, do you think Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles ended too soon?
Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles |
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Set after the events in Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), Sarah Connor and her son, John, try to stay under-the-radar from the government, as they plot to destroy the computer network, Skynet, in hopes of preventing Armageddon. |
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| Creator: Josh Friedman |
| Cast: Lena Headey, Thomas Dekker, Summer Glau, Richard T. Jones, Garret Dillahunt |
| Genre: Action, Drama, Sci-Fi |
| Number of Seasons: 2 |
| Streaming Service: Hulu |
