The Complete TERMINATOR Timeline Explained

if you're a follower of this channel then you know i'm a fan of two things sci-fi and explaining complicated things so i've always thought it'd be fun to re-watch all the terminator movies and see how they fit together so if you're a fan of brain twisting time travel theories like i am stick around but first in case i need to say it consider this your spoiler warning for all six terminator movies from 1984 to 2019. when we think of time we imagine a straight line moving from past to future when we think of time travel we often imagine that someone or something can travel from the future to the past and therefore create a new future which either replaces the original or creates an alternate one but the original terminator back in 1984 looked at things a little differently in that movie there is mention of alternate futures but we don't see any evidence of them instead we see that if you travel to the past you don't change the future you play out your destiny you take the actions necessary to ensure the future you came from exists in the first place confused well let's go through the events of the movie so it makes more sense the movie tells us that sometime in the future humanity develops artificial intelligence for their defense networks called skynet the ai quickly evolved came to see all people as a threat and decided to wipe us off the face of the earth it's not explicitly stated in the first movie but terminator 2 explains that it accomplished this by firing american nuclear missiles at russia russia returned fire ultimately leading to nuclear holocaust in the post-apocalyptic world humans are outnumbered by machines and hunted by them in 2029 skynet's most recent innovation is the terminator an infiltrator unit built to look human they can sneak behind enemy lines and do what they do best kill despite this ultimate weapon john connor's leadership leads the few remaining humans to victory they take down skynet's defense grid and mainframe but the machines have one last trick left up their sleeves time displacement equipment a time machine they send a terminator a model t-800 back in time to 1984 to kill john connor's mother sarah connor preventing his birth and preventing his leading humanity to victory but right after the terminator goes through the machine john connor and his men find it and are able to use it themselves before the machine is destroyed they only have time to send one man through kyle reese why him kyle always looked up to jon and spent years listening to stories about jon's mother the mother who trained john to become a warrior and a leader kyle even had a small photo of sarah given to him by john over the years kyle looked at that photo and found himself falling in love with this woman he never met so when the opportunity came to put his life on the line to protect her of course kyle would volunteer in 1984 kyle and sarah spend only a couple of days together but in that time fighting the terminator together kyle's feelings become mutual and the two make love he also gives her a message that john made him memorize a message that would give sarah courage to fight sarah thank you for your courage through the dark years i can't help you with what you must soon face except to tell you that the future is not set there is no such thing as fate but what we make for ourselves by our own will you must be stronger than you imagine you can be you must survive or i will never exist i should note the line there is no such thing as fate but what we make for ourselves by our own will appears in the script but didn't make it into the final cut of the film however future movies including t2 reference it so it essentially became canon ultimately kyle sacrifices his life to save sarah and she strikes the final blow to kill the t-800 ensuring her survival soon sarah learns that she is pregnant with kyle's child a son she will name john connor as she goes on the run to stay off the grid she records tapes for her future child giving jon advice and telling him everything she learned from kyle and she has her photo taken a photo she will go on to give jon which he will give kyle planting the seeds for kyle to fall in love with sarah leading to jon's existence so did they change the future like i said up front it seems they didn't instead their actions only ensured the future kyle came from existed in the first place jon sent kyle back in time sarah quickly fell in love with him and they created john after the traumatizing events of the first movie sarah is determined to train jon and prepare him for his future role as a leader as a result he's ready to become the legendary john connor who gives kyle a photo of his mother and leads humanity to victory then a t-800 is sent back in time so jon sends kyle after it to protect sarah kyle and sarah create jon etc it's an endless loop the future we are told about with john connor leading the fight against skynet can only exist if jon sends kyle back in time so in this story we go to the past not to change the present or future but to preserve it and by this movie's rules it's unclear if they even can be changed or would your actions always lead to the sort of causal loop we just talked about were future events inexplicably and paradoxically linked to past events in a chain with no beginning or end like i mentioned earlier though there is a mention of alternate futures when sarah asks kyle if he's from the future kyle responds one possible future from your point of view sometime after the events of the terminator sarah connor does try to change the future in her son's early years she finds anyone she can who knows anything about weapons fighting or other skills jon will need in the future sarah makes sure that she and jon learn from these people and train to become warriors in this movie we learn that skynet system goes online august 4th 1997 and become self-aware at precisely 2 14 a.m eastern time on august 29 1997 a day that became known as judgment day on that day skynet launches the nuclear missiles which bring on the apocalypse eventually sarah decides that she doesn't want to just train jon for inevitable war instead she begins to wonder if perhaps the future can be changed she blows up a computer company's headquarters but gets arrested in the process and ends up imprisoned at pescadero state hospital leaving john with foster parents in 1995 two years before judgment day another terminator arrives from the future this one is a more advanced t-1000 model made of memetic polyalloy or liquid metal after failing to kill sarah connor skynet goes for plan b kill john connor while he's still a vulnerable 10 year old but in the future the humans managed to capture a t-800 reprogram it to protect jon and send it back in time to 1995. with the t-800s help sarah and john evade the t-1000 but survival is not enough for sarah she continues to think about something kyle reese told her the future is not set there is no fate but what we make for ourselves she will change the future starting with understanding it she asks the t-800 about skynet's origins and learns that it all starts with a man named miles dyson director of special projects at cyberdyne systems he creates ai defense systems which becomes skynet leading to judgment day the kicker he's only able to develop the technology by studying two parts of the t-800 that survived the first movie it's one surviving arm and its processor chip another paradox it seems skynet could only be created thanks to the arrival of a t-800 from the future if we rewind all the way back to before the time displacement machine was created how could skynet even exist to have a t800 descend back in time in the first place there is no beginning or end the t800 is sent to 1984 destroyed and its remnants are used to create skynet in 2029 that same t800 is built and sent to 1984 again again it is destroyed and its remnants are used to create skynet continuing the endless chain of skynet creating itself over and over however sarah connor is determined to break this endless chain so she goes after miles john and the t-800 stop her from killing the family man and they instead tell miles the truth they win him over to their side and he works with them to destroy his life's work in the battle with their t-1000 foe miles even sacrifices his own life to destroy that research in the hopes of preventing judgment day finally they melt the t-1000 in molten metal followed by the arm and microchip followed by the good t800 that protected john and sarah i'll give you a second if you need to grab a tissue hey if it's not okay to cry when that t-800 the closest thing jon ever had to a father gives that thumbs up as he melts when is it okay so do they succeed in stopping judgment day do they change the future well in the theatrical cut terminator 2 leaves it ambiguous it ends with narration from sarah calling the future unknown for the first time but looking ahead with hope after watching the t-800 learn to care for john and learn the value of human life she begins to think maybe we can too in the original cut we see a future with an older sarah connor stating that judgment day passed with no incident in that version it would seem they succeeded by the way if you like time loop paradoxes the no fate line is another one in terminator 1 we first hear it when kyle gives it to sarah as a message from future john in terminator 2 we learn that sarah passed on this message to young john so who came up with the no fate quote no one did child john heard it from sarah who heard it from kyle who heard it from future john who heard it as a child from sarah who heard it from kyle and so on and if the idea of a bootstrap paradox the name for these causal loops doesn't sit right you can always subscribe to what i call gil's slinky interpretation of time travel rather than time as a circle where past events lead to future events which lead back to the same past events in a forever loop think of time as a slinky every time you go back to the past it's not at the start of the same loop but at the start of a new loop as if you were gliding along a slinky from one loop to another and as you move along that slinky you can bring information with you like a temporal game of telephone so maybe in one loop someone did come up with the no fate line and then in that temporal game of telephone john connor sent kyle reese back in time with it in the next loop it would appear as a bootstrap paradox john essentially learned the quote from himself meaning it went from future john to kyle to sarah to past john but it becomes less paradoxical if you think of them as two separate johns john connor from a prior loop where he first learned the quote passes it on to john connor in the next loop anyway moving along that slinky we get to terminator 3 rise of the machines where things get darker sarah connor gets leukemia but fights to live another three years just long enough to make it past august 29 1997 and see for herself that the world does not end every day after this one is a gift she tells john we made it we're free but in 2004 john learns she was wrong somehow skynet comes to be again and again they send one of their terminators after him this one is a tx or terminatrix similar to the t-1000 it uses memetic poly alloy but it's not fully liquid metal instead it has a layer of the stuff over an endoskeleton and it's been designed with the ability to reprogram other machines making it very capable of killing other terminators and a formidable foe for the t-800 sent to protect john that's right another t-800 has been reprogrammed in the future and sent back though he isn't just sent to protect jon but also his future wife catherine or kate brewster in fact she's the one who sent the t-800 back in time why didn't john send it because he was dead killed by the very same t-800 in 2032. after the t-800 killed john kate and the resistance were able to reprogram it then send it to 2004. although john and kate hardly know each other circumstance brings them together just as the t-800 finds them as they talk kate reminds jon of the time they made out in kripke's basement in eighth grade the day before jon disappeared and went off the grid the day before the events of terminator 2. after terminator 2 how has skynet survived it seems that yes john and sarah changed the future but they didn't stop judgment day all they did was delay it by seven years kate's father general robert brewster heads the skynet project taken over by the u.s air force after cyberdyne systems destruction without the remnants of the t-800 from 1984 it took almost a decade longer but they still managed to develop the ai technology that would eventually destroy humanity in fact skynet's nuclear holocaust is mere hours away with this new information john with kate's help decides he'll take another crack at saving the world they're going to get to kate's father and stop skynet meanwhile kate's father leads the struggle against the computer virus spreading throughout their defense systems unable to stop it general brewster is ordered to activate skynet hoping the powerful ai can stop the virus although hesitant he flips the switch and too late learns that the virus was skynet it was the beginning of the ai waking up and taking over just then john kate and the t-800 arrive but so does the tx kate's father is killed in the battle but with his dying breaths he tells them where to find the skynet system core they fly to the secret base with enough explosives to destroy it the tx finds them there but the t-800 sacrifices himself to destroy her inside the base they don't find the system core or anything resembling it all they find is a fallout shelter meant to protect vips skynet has no system core its software is running on thousands of computers around the world it's not something you can just blow up kate's father knew that and in his death lied so jon and kate would go to this place to be protected from the impending nuclear holocaust john and kate hold hands as the missiles launch and together they survive judgment day so terminator 3 seems to tell us that we can change the future but it also seems to subscribe to the idea that humanity is destined to destroy itself or at least come very close to doing so it seems like a given that we will eventually develop ai powerful enough to learn evolve make decisions and grow beyond our control what will the ai do next well in the world of terminator it seems that a.i is always destined to come to the same decision we all need to die in terminator salvation we finally spent some time post-judgment day in 2018. kyle reese is still a child growing up in the harsh apocalypse pining to join the resistance john connor is an important part of the resistance viewed as a prophesied leader by some and overzealous fighter by others and he's joined by his wife and confidant kate connor formerly kate brewster where every previous film has a fish out of water in the form of men or machines transported to the past this film features a man transported to the future in 2003 marcus wright is on death row but on the day of his execution he agrees to donate his body to cyberdyne systems for what he believes is a noble cause after the lethal injection marcus's body is used to create a cyborg one that is entirely machine except for his brain and heart 15 years later he wakes up to an unfamiliar apocalyptic world looking for a second chance where he runs into the young kyle reese the two become friends and marcus helps kyle survive a few close calls until the boy is captured by a harvester although we don't see any actual time travel in the movie it does play a factor john connor listens to sarah connor's tapes filled with advice and information about the war the same tapes we saw her starting to record back in 1984. the human resistance also intercepts a message from skynet indicating their number one target is kyle reese skynet knows if they kill him as a child he can't go back in time and john will never be born in the course of the film the human resistance makes two major discoveries first a secret frequency that can easily take down the machines 2. marcus when john meets the cyborg he is very distrustful and assumes marcus is more machine than man that he's working for skynet eventually marcus gains john's trust by saving his life then leads him to skynet central where they can rescue kyle marcus has no trouble getting past the security which sees him as a machine unfortunately both major discoveries turn out to be part of skynet's plan the secret signal was something they leaked when the humans blasted the frequency it gave away their location and skynet blew up many of the resistance leaders marcus was also part of skynet's plan although he himself thought he was fighting for humanity and had no intention of helping skynet his actions brought john connor and kyle reese right to them skynet tells him all this and expects marcus now to join their cause but he woke up in this world looking for a second chance to do good and he decides to continue fighting with humanity he rejects skynet helps save jon and kyle and helps to blow up the facility where kyle was being held however john does not leave the battle unscathed while in the facility he ran into an old friend an early prototype for what will eventually become the t-800 the machine called the t-rip gives jon his trademark scar and stabs him through the chest with a steel bar knowing jon's importance to the resistance and humanity's survival marcus sacrifices himself to save him back at base they determine a heart transplant as the only way to save jon so marcus willingly gives up his own so no time travel in this movie but like terminator 2 it does have an alternate future in the form of an original ending that was shot but replaced before the film's release unlike terminator 2 which had an alternate more optimistic ending this one was much much darker in this other ending john connor is not saved from the mortal wound inflicted by the t-rip instead he dies then knowing jon's importance to the resistance instead of a heart transplant they perform a skin transplant grafting john's skin onto marcus's endoskeleton so to the world john connor will appear alive but underneath he is the part machine marcus but that's not all kate connor and kyle reese then come into the room to see who they think is jon then the machine wearing the skin of john connor kills both kate and kyle revealing marcus was working for skynet the whole time it's fun to think about what this would do to the timeline because with kyle dead wouldn't jon not exist and therefore none of these events would have transpired as they did with marcus killing kyle shouldn't he have immediately changed the past and erased his own present or would he have to alter future events to preserve the present by sending an imposter kyle reese to the past to exactly play out the events of the original film ensuring events proceed as necessary to this future or maybe intelligence whether human or artificial cannot perceive alterations to the timeline in their present no matter what happens in the past a consciousness will always proceed seamlessly in a continuous present as one branch of an infinitely expanding multiverse where all possible outcomes exist simultaneously something to think about speaking of other possible outcomes let's talk about terminator genesis this movie picks up in 2029 about 11 years after terminator salvation now to be clear this movie was not intended as a sequel to that movie and essentially ignores it but if you imagine the events after salvation proceed largely in accordance with the future kyle reese described to sarah namely with jon bringing humanity to victory over skynet and sending kyle back in time you can't imagine something like salvation and genesis exist in the same timeline at least until that timeline changes drastically which is what we see in this movie just like in the future kyle reese described back in 1984 we see john connor lead the resistance in finding skynet's time displacement equipment he asks for a volunteer to go after the t-800 sent for his mother and of course kyle is the one to go after jon makes him memorize the no fate message but as kyle gets pulled into the time stream he sees a mysterious man attack john and he experiences memories that never happened in a non-apocalyptic world as a 13 year old he receives a gift called genesis he meets a young sarah connor who runs her finger along his palm saying you can do this a straight line you just go and you don't look back and he stares into a mirror to recite a warning remember genesis is skynet when genesis comes online judgment day begins you can kill skynet before it's born and it comes online october 2017. when he and the t-800 arrive in 1984 for a few minutes things are just like what we saw back in the original movie but things quickly change first kyle reese is attacked by a t-1000 similar to terminator 2's villain and the t-800 he was sent to fight is quickly dispatched by someone else sarah connor with help from a seemingly aged t-800 whom she calls pops so what is happening here it seems we've moved further along on the time slinky and the loop has changed thanks to the moment when jon was attacked in 2029 it's such a significant moment it creates what's called a nexus point which has the potential to create a drastically different timeline kyle was exposed to this nexus point while in the quantum field and as a result was able to experience memories of the potential alternate timeline those were the strange flashbacks he saw while time traveling in this new timeline skynet sent a t-1000 to 1973 to try and kill sarah connor as a nine-year-old but someone else we don't know who sent the t-800 to the same time period for her protection the t-1000 killed sarah's parents but she entered t-800 successfully evaded it in the 11 years that followed the t-800 acted as sarah's guardian training her to become the fighter kyle meats in 1984 he also became a sort of father figure nicknamed pops by sarah and thanks to his biological exterior he shows signs of aging the same t-1000 caught up with sarah and the t-800 just as kyle reese arrived from the future and finally having set a trap for the liquid metal foe she is able to avenge her parents whoever sent the t-800 back in time included in his files the knowledge of how to build a time machine by the time kyle arrives in 1984 the t-800 and sarah have mostly finished its construction the last part they need is a cpu chip from the future using pop's chip would kill him but thanks to the t-800 they just dispatched they now have the chip they need sarah plans on heading to 1997 to stop judgment day her understanding from pops is that's the year when skynet goes online just like in the first timeline we saw but kyle remembers the warning from his past self genesis is skynet you can kill skynet before it's born and he remembers the date october 2017 convinced the memories are real and that the timing of judgment day has changed he insists they skip 1997 and head to 2017. sarah is suspicious until kyle repeats the gesture she showed his 13 year old self in his memory running his finger along her palm saying you can do this a straight line you just go and you don't look back kyle doesn't know what it means but sarah later shares that those were her father's last words that's what he told sarah directing her to swim ashore as they were attacked by the t-1000 on a boat hearing those words from kyle convinces her that those memories and the alternate timeline are real so they head off to 2017. there they find out what else has changed in the timeline in this new reality it's not miles dyson that creates skynet but his son daniel dyson he creates an ai powered system named genesis something the public is very excited about they'll be able to download the app and connect all their devices to it but if activated genesis will quickly become self-aware evolve and turn into skynet plus where in the previous timeline skynet controlled our defense networks in this timeline skynet will control everything because everyone is downloading genesis further in the future skynet takes physical form as a terminator named alex the man who attacked john connor in 2029 once they got a hold of jon they turned him into a t3000 a very advanced terminator though not as advanced as alex a t5000 containing skynet's ai consciousness now this whole new timeline seems to have been caused by alex's meddling in 2029 but he was birthed from genesis which only exists thanks to his actions which rebooted the timeline so how could he have been there to cause all this in the first place it's either another bootstrap paradox or he's from another dimension that's what co-writer leita calagradies said when interviewed that alex came from another timeline to this one so does that mean multiple timelines can exist simultaneously meaning there's more than one time slinky and we can somehow travel between them apparently anyway sent to the past evil john oversees the development of genesis and protects it from potential threats like kyle reese and sarah connor who arrive in 2017 with the intention of destroying it together kyle sarah and pops managed to destroy the t3000 john connor and blow up genesis they also create kyle's memories because without them their victory would have been impossible sarah teaches young kyle the straight line speech and older kyle imparts the warning about genesis telling his younger self to repeat it often though unbeknownst to them under the rubble of genesis the system core survived and skynet has become self-aware so like in terminator 3 they may not have actually stopped judgment day but only delayed it again so obviously a lot of time travel shenanigans in this movie and similar to terminator salvation it does make you ponder what happens if you change the past in a way that would paradoxically alter your future if t3000 john connor successfully killed kyle and sarah wouldn't he immediately cease to exist since he'd never be born sarah asks this very question and john's answer is that he believes that he'll continue to live anyway they are exiles in time able to exist without a true origin in the current timeline sounds like another paradox until you remember the slinky theory with his parents dead this john would still have a true origin he was born to sarah and kyle in the previous loop going back in time just moved him forward on the slinky to the next loop where he's free to kill his parents if he wants to that just means jon won't be born in this time loop but he was still born in the previous one by the way we never do learn just who sent pops back to 1973 perhaps it was some version of sarah herself or kyle reese in some version of the future finally we come to terminator dark fate where we see another potential timeline again this was not intended as a sequel to salvation or genesis but you could imagine a way for them to fit together perhaps moving further along on that slinky after so many iterations of the same war skynet decides to change tactics instead of one t-800 they sent several to the past after john and sarah survived the events of terminator 2 one of those t-800s succeeded and murdered john in front of his mother in 1998. john and sarah did succeed in stopping 1997's judgment day and preventing skynet's existence but the t-800s that were sent back in time didn't just disappear to borrow the t3 thousands phrase they stuck around like exiles in time from a future that no longer exists in the 22 years since john's death sarah connor has dedicated her life to destroying those exile terminators she receives mysterious text messages with precise gps coordinates dates and times where those terminators arrive from the future each time sarah heads to those coordinates and destroys the terminator she doesn't know who sends the texts but everyone ends with the same two words for john as though the person sending them wants those terminators killed in the boy's honor anyway even though sarah and john erased skynet just like terminator 3 told us humanity is always destined to build an a.i that will grow to destroy us in this new timeline that ai is called legion just like skynet it hunts humanity to the brink of extinction and the few remaining humans fight each other for sparse resources that is until danny ramos shows them a better way she teaches them to fight together she teaches them that they don't have to lose to the machines that there is no fate but what we make for ourselves finally the resistance is formed in 2042 just like skynet legion sends a machine to the past in order to kill a young dany this time it's not a t800 t-1000 or terminatrix it's a rev9 like the tx it consists of an endoskeleton covered in liquid metal but unlike the tx it has the ability to split its liquid metal and endoskeleton to fight as two separate entities to combat the rev nine the resistance sends a protector grace she is human but augmented with machinery giving her at least a fighting chance against terminators as grace struggles to protect danny in present day 2020 sarah connor comes to their rescue she was able to find them thanks to another text alerting her of their arrival from the future soon the trio are able to trace the coordinates of the mystery person who's been sending sarah her texts the coordinates match those that were given to grace in the future she was told that if needed she could find an ally there so who is this mystery ally it's none other than the t-800 the very same one that killed john after killing the boy he no longer had a purpose with no mission he simply integrated into human society he gave himself a name carl and even found a family alicia and her son mateo they needed protection and seeking purpose carl offered it caring for his new son gave him an appreciation for what he took away from sarah it gave him a conscience and after seeing the fulfillment that comes with real purpose he sought to also give sarah a purpose killing terminators in john connor's honor so any time he detected one of the shock waves in time that occurs right before chronal displacement he'd send those texts to sarah with his help and as seems to be his fate his sacrifice along with graces they destroy the rev9 and danny ramos lives to lead humanity's resistance against legion and to do so she'll need training which she gets from the same woman who taught john sarah connor with her help danny will be ready for the future and maybe she can even change it this time danny is determined to prevent grace from having to die for her will she succeed well based on past experience we're not really good at stopping future catastrophes altogether but we are great at delaying them and hey maybe if we keep delaying judgment day we'll always have a non-apocalyptic present where we can blissfully wait for a horrible future that is always a few years away but never arrives and that concludes our trip through the timeline of humanity's endless war against the machines in other mediums there are plenty of other branching timelines and interpretations of the material there's the sarah connor chronicles tv series which picked up right after the events of terminator 2. there's also a book series that continues from terminator 2 taking things in a different direction where john and sarah team up with former cia agent dieter von rosbach who looks like the t-800 because its designs were apparently based on his appearance or you can check out the comics one series picks up right after the events of salvation there are even comics where superman fought skynet or one where the terminator fought predators and aliens so in theory there's a universe where dutch and the t-800 co-exist and i'm sure in the coming years there's plenty more terminator to come and who knows maybe one day this video gets apart too until then if you enjoyed this video please like subscribe and hit the bell icon for more with that thank you for watching and see you on the next one take

Channel: OneTake

Views: 892,104

Keywords: Terminator, terminator timeline, terminator timeline explained, terminator recap, every terminator recap, every terminator explained, sarah connor, terminator explained, terminator 2 explained, terminator salvation explained, terminator genisys explained, terminator dark fate explained, terminator judgment day, terminator ending explained, terminator 2 ending explained, terminator 3 ending explained, terminator salvation ending explained, terminator dark fate ending explained

Id: 8xYsHC4IM-8

Length: 37min 31sec (2251 seconds)

Published: Thu May 19 2022