Harper Kingsley blog

OG Terminator franchise—

I’m a big fan of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. They’re totes part of my headcanon and you can no nevermind.

In case you don’t know, the premise of T:TSCC was that future!John, faced with a life where his mother died before Judgment Day due to breast cancer, sends back Cameron to save his mother’s life. The solution as presented is to send people back to the past where they will work and gather parts that will later be assembled into a time machine built into a bank vault someone they sent back in time helped build.

Cameron jumps Sarah and John from 1995/1997 to 2007.

So there’s John and Sarah soon after Terminator 2: Judgment Day, completely bypassing Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines.

Future!John made the cold-blooded decision to wipe his own marriage and the daughter it produced out of existence. Remember she was pregnant in Terminator: Salvation?

I didn’t watch the following movies, and they are firmly listed as Non-Canonical in my head library.

So I accept the idea that Marcus Wright exists somewhere in the future.

He was executed and his body was donated to science in 2003.

That’s the kind of thing that "Super lets blow ’em up!"-aggressive Sarah Connor would have handled in a timeline she lived through.

So in the Rise of the Machines timeloop, Sarah died from leukemia in 1997. She lived to see Judgment Day pass by–thinking that she’d been successful in averting the apocalypse–but really she’d just pushed it back.

John lived a kind of vagabond life, angsting that he can’t settle anywhere in case the robopocalypse happens. He doesn’t want to leave a paper trail anywhere.

He spends his time going here and there. Ends up getting hurt, resulting in him breaking into the vet clinic that belongs to Kate Brewster. A girl he happened to go to school with a long time ago, and whose father is U.S. Air Force Lieutenant General Robert Brewster.

Kate is the woman he would have married in the future. And who reprogrammed the Terminator that killed him and sent it back in time to protect them both.

So maybe she was trying to save her dad and give them a leg up in supplies for the future. Or maybe they would have re-met that night in the vet clinic in Kate’s original timeline.

Whatever happened, Kate arranged it so she and John would survive the bombs dropping. It wasn’t exactly happy-go-lucky times, but it was much better than the misery that everyone outside of a nuclear bunker was enjoying.

I haven’t seen the movie in a long time, but I remember that both young!Kate and young!John were horrified as they found themselves locked in the bunker. While the rest of the world exploded.

At some point in the Rise of the Machines future timeline, John is going to send a Terminator or a person back in time, creating another timeloop.

I just imagine that every time they go back to pre-John times, they keep causing her to give birth to a different John.

Like, the original John that started the whole timeloop mess was probably the son of someone she met while partying.

Kyle Reese being John’s father is why the machines can never be completely defeated.

The only way Kyle Reese could be John’s father is if there was a reason to send Kyle Reese back in time: the robopocalypse.

Somewhere outside of the timeloop they’ve created, Sarah Connor finished her education and went on to have whatever kind of life she was going to have. Or maybe she got pregnant and her life got a bit derailed for a while and she needed her parents to help her out.

Whatever happened, the original!John did not live a life on the run. His mother did not arrange all kinds of survival training for him. His history is a mystery.

It’s likely that the first Terminator movie is set multiple timeloops in, as Kyle has the polaroid of the young!Sarah. She’s pregnant and recording messages for the future savior of humanity. She’s already preparing him for the future war.

Honestly, the most important character of the Terminator franchise is Sarah Connor.

Unless someone in the future sends someone back in time to before Sarah was born. And that’s why all the Sarah’s are different looking.

Anyways, allow me to reiterate:

> Future!John made the cold-blooded decision to wipe his own marriage and the daughter it produced out of existence. Remember she was pregnant in Terminator: Salvation?

I don’t know if I could see the John Connor from Salvation making the decision to sacrifice his family… but I don’t know.

Maybe Salvation John is the one that was dying when Kate reprogrammed the Terminator and sent it back to create Rise of the Machines.

In that case, that John would know how coldblooded Kate can be. And he was kind of "angsty, possibly reads sad poetry"!John Connor.

He went through a lot of stuff, and there’s pressure to like and love Kate because her future self loved him so much.

Maybe enough pressure to ruin whatever relationship they would have had?

Like, in the Salvation-timeloop they might have met in the vet’s office and he would have changed his life. No more vagabond, but someone living their life. Maybe they would have re-met up again after the end of the world and he would have saved her and been heroic. Whatever. I see that Kate Brewster as being capable of sending a Terminator back to save him.

Except in the saving of him, she lost him.

Because Rise of the Machines-John grows to resent her. Enough that it’s not such a sacrifice to reprogram Cameron and send her back to save his mother.

And Cameron arranges for people to go back in time and live whole lifetimes there preparing things for future plans. And one of those plans is to build the bank and do their part to build the time machine. All things that have to happen before even Sarah was born.

And I would suppose that each of those future people would create ripples in times. Micro-changes imperceptible to those within the timeloops, but really obvious to anyone chasing continuity.

By the time events happen in TSCC, the setting is supposed to be 1997, and Sarah was supposed to die from breast cancer in 2005 (instead of leukemia in 1997).

Jumping to 2007 should give her the chance to get good medical care and early diagnosis. Thus saving her from dying, and having her be there to help avert the robopocalypse.

And it’s shown in TSCC that the things they’re doing in the past are effecting the future.

Derek Reese survives Skynet to help raise his little brother Kyle. Which brings into question whether the Kyle TSCC!Sarah met had had Derek in his life growing up, or if that was a change.

Derek and Jesse lost a baby that he doesn’t remember.

Which means the people sent back in time are popping in from different timelines. If they come together, they share the same canon history. If they come back because of things happening in the active timeline, they have different memories due to the changes Sarah and co. are making.

So like, I figure Sarah or John, there’s only time moving forward for them. Even if they jump forward in time, it’s still forward momentum. To try to back in their own timeline would be impossible… because past!self was never in the original timeline.

A future!John can travel into the past… but it would be an alternate version of his own timeline.

Every time traveler would be creating an alternate timeline.

So, yeah. I’m a big fan of Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles being part of my personal fandom headcanon.

And I’m still sad there’s not more.

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I also enjoyed the Minority Report TV show.

There was only one season and things pretty much wrap themselves up while still leaving things wide open.

I would have liked more… DEFINITELY by a different network/studio.

Agatha weaponizing her precognition was pretty bad ass. Just saying.