To paraphrase big Arnie himself, Terminator is back, and it’s almost better than ever since Terminator Zero actually manages to solve the franchise’s largest problem.
It’s remarkable the property has any energy left after the staid sequels Genisys and Dark Fate, released in 2015 and 2019, respectively. Critically panned and under-performers at the box office, the sci-fi movies threatened to give Skynet the advantage once and for all.
Alas, in came Netflix and Production IG for Terminator Zero, an anime show removed from Sarah and John Connor and the United States. We’re now in Japan, as Skynet wants to eliminate a potential rival in Kokoro, another burgeoning AI.
It’s one of the best anime of the year and the best Terminator anything since The Sarah Connor Chronicles, not least because of how well it sidesteps the previous muddied storytelling. But rather than completely avoid the myriad sequels, Zero actually justifies them by finally explaining the physics of what’s been happening.
Terminator is an unending time-war
Up to this point, we’ve been watching Skynet and the human resistance send soldiers back in time over and over in an effort to trump one another. The artificial intelligence wants to eliminate the Connor family because John, Sarah’s son, will lead our uprising against the machines. Meanwhile future John keeps sending back muscles to intercept these assassins.
Time-travel seemed to function on the idea they’re vying to influence one singular timeline, looking to instigate change or prevent it. So far, mankind’s defense has held up (go team!).
But this has all resulted in a time-war that’s become totally incoherent. The Terminator and T2: Judgment Day followed some level of logic, but Rise of the Machines, Genisys, and Dark Fate have pushed the action movies into irredeemably convoluted territory. Salvation avoids it all by following adult John in his battle with the machines.
There have been multiple attempts on John’s life, one being successful, and numerous T-models. The timeline is now incredibly knotted, unhelped by abandoned plans for Genisys to start a trilogy, leaving yet more dangling threads.
Zero addresses the nonsensical timeline
Terminator Zero addresses this in a monologue on what it means to travel back to a previous year. The Prophet explains the sacrifice Eiko is making by stepping through to 1997 to find Malcolm Lee before the new T-machine does.
“Time flows in a simple straight line,” she says, in Episode 6, ‘Model 6’. “But time travel sends you back to a past, not the past.”
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Eiko asks to clarify if traveling back means she’s moving into another timeline, and The Prophet confirms as such. “The point in time you’re traveling to and the point you’re coming from are different timelines,” The Prophet explains.
“Every instance of time travel, every time someone has stepped foot into one of those machines, all they’ve really done is manage to swap out one reality for another. It’s an imprecise science, and we’re just swimming in the chaos.”
Terminator is actually a multiverse (sort of)
To wit, the future anyone comes from is written off once they get to the past, where they’re now building a brand new tomorrow with whatever actions they perform. Terminator is now a multiverse, but without the possibility of any of the branching timelines touching (yet).
Here’s the rub: Skynet hasn’t figured any of this out yet. The AI has neither considered nor reckoned with the paradoxes inherent to all the assassins it’s sent out, working on pure survival instinct and the data available. Skynet is “blind to the truth”, as The Prophet says.
The Terminator, T2, Rise of the Machines, every installment is essentially its own present, uninhibited by the future the T-800, T-1000 or anything else comes from, because that tomorrow doesn’t exist anymore. A bit of a headache to comprehend, but the important part is that each sequel is its own particular trench war over Judgment Day and what comes after.
It’s a poetic explanation that finally brings some logic to the garbage heap that’s become Terminator’s internal logic. There’s a little more reason to everything, and the added wrinkle is that Skynet’s working off imperfect information, because AI can only regurgitate data; it can’t discern, hypothesize, or reason with it.
What happens next is up in the air. Terminator Zero’s ending leaves room for another season, though James Cameron’s been threatening to re-enter his hallmark franchise for years now. Just as The Prophet says, tomorrow’s for us to decide.
I can say one thing for certain: I won’t be rewatching Dark Fate or Genisys. If you’d like some anime that’s a bit a less complicated, check our our guides on Dandadan and Dragon Ball Daima.
