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Sarah Connor (fictional character)
Encyclopedia
Sarah Jeanette Connor is a fictional character
from the Terminator
films and the television series Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. She was played by American
actress Linda Hamilton
in the films and by English
actress Lena Headey
in the TV series. The character develops greatly over the course of these productions, from a timid victim of the first film to a hardened warrior on the verge of losing touch with her own humanity.
. After her father leaves, Sarah stops spending her afternoons with her childhood friend whose father is an engineer with IBM
. Instead, she takes to visiting the factory where her own father had worked to watch the gears and belts of the machines, knowing something is wrong with what she sees.
The Terminator film itself never specifies an age or birth date for Sarah Connor, although according to the original script (available on the Special Edition DVD), she was 19 years old. The alternate ending for Terminator 2 (available on the Ultimate Edition DVD) shows Sarah alive and well on August 29, 2029. She is by then an elderly grandmother (and John is a Senator) in a world where Skynet was never able to start its war on humanity. The tombstone shown in Terminator 3 reads 1959–1997. The "Pilot
" episode of The Sarah Connor Chronicles picks up Sarah and John on the run in 1999. Her FBI file lists her age as 33 on August 24, 1999. Due to the forward time-travel jump in "Pilot", Sarah and John are now eight years younger than their birth-dates would otherwise indicate.
, Sarah Connor is a young Los Angeles
college student and waitress who finds herself pursued by a relentless cyborg
killer, the Cyberdyne Systems Series 800 Model 101 Terminator (played by Arnold Schwarzenegger
). She learns she is in danger from a televised report of two other identically-named Los Angeles women who were shot to death earlier that day. She is rescued from the Terminator by time-travelling soldier Kyle Reese
(Michael Biehn
), who explains that in the future an artificial intelligence
called Skynet will be created by military
software developers to make strategic decisions. The program becomes self-aware, seizes control of most of the world's military hardware (including various highly advanced robots), and launches an all-out attack on human beings. However, a man named John Connor
eventually leads what remains of the world's military and survivors, The Resistance, to victory, only to discover that in a last-ditch effort, Skynet had invented a means of time travel and sent a robotic killer back in time to destroy John Connor's mother before he is born. John Connor is Sarah's future son, and he sends back a trusted sergeant Kyle Reese
to protect his mother at all costs. During their brief time together, Sarah falls in love with Reese. Reese becomes the only thing protecting her from the Terminator, and her only companion as they flee together. Initially, she is unaware that Reese himself had been in love with her from afar. He had been given a picture of her by John Connor and had always admired her legendary strength and resilience. While they are avoiding the Terminator, they share a night of intimacy that results in John's conception. Their relationship is cut short, however, when Reese dies fighting the Terminator in a Cyberdyne factory. Sarah in turn crushes the Terminator in a hydraulic press. Though Reese's death deeply saddens Sarah, his sincerity and courage inspires her to carry on and develop the necessary skills and abilities that would make her a suitable mentor and teacher to John. After these events, Sarah becomes a fugitive from society and begins making a voice recording for John (in which she acknowledges his paternity) to later give to her son at the proper age. While recording the tape, she stops for gas and the aforementioned photograph is taken by a young boy and sold to her. This is the same picture John Connor will give to Kyle Reese in the future.
, which occurs ten years after the events of The Terminator. She and John have been separated from each other: John is now a preteen and living in a foster home, and Sarah has been institutionalized in Pescadero State Hospital. In the years between films, she has transformed herself from the mousy, timid woman seen at the beginning of the first movie into a muscled, ferocious warrior. In fact, the first image of her in the film is of her doing chin-ups on her hospital bed. After the death of Kyle Reese, Sarah took his warnings, and the responsibility of raising the hope of mankind, to heart. However, her fixation on the disaster and her fanatical desire to keep John safe has made her slightly mentally unstable and very violent, which is only aggravated by her fear and hatred of the T-800. She dropped off the grid to better protect herself and John. She lived a semi-criminal life among various outlaws and survivalists, and she attempted to teach her son the skills he would need to lead the resistance. Sarah was captured and sent to the hospital after she attempted to destroy a computer factory.
Several times at the hospital, she has tried to improve her behavior in hope of getting to see her son, but her caregivers do not believe her. Her activities and claims of fighting evil robots from the future led to her being deemed incurable. Sarah only seemed to confirm the judgment of psychiatrists by committing acts of violence against hospital staff (including Dr. Peter Silberman, whom Sarah stabbed in the knee with his pen) and attempting to escape multiple times. During her final escape attempt, Sarah encounters two different Terminator models. One is the T-1000
, a liquid metal cyborg sent back to kill her son. The other is a T-800 (the same model which had previously tried to murder her) that was sent back to protect them. When she initially encounters the T-800, she flees in terror, but she goes with him when he utters the first thing Reese had said to her: "Come with me if you want to live."
Sarah finds it nearly impossible to accept that the T-800 is benevolent; throughout the film, she remains hostile towards it and what it represents, while her own son develops a bond with it, resembling a father-son relationship. In the director's cut of the movie, it is revealed that Sarah has an opportunity to destroy the machine's CPU
, which would "kill" it. She nearly does so, but John stops her, managing to convince her that they need its help and that no one would listen to his leadership ideas if she did not do so. While in Mexico
, watching John do a high-five with the Terminator, Sarah loses her hostility towards the machine and begins to see it as the closest thing John has to a father.
In a moment of desperation, Sarah attempts to murder
Miles Dyson, one of the computer researchers who works at Cyberdyne Systems and is destined to build the revolutionary microprocessor
that eventually becomes Skynet
. In doing this, she loses touch with her humanity, becoming eerily similar to the Terminator itself. Ultimately, she cannot bear to kill Dyson in front of his wife and kids, because he wasn't responsible for anything yet. Shortly afterwards, John and the T-800 arrive and, together, they succeed in persuading Dyson to stop his research and destroy all recovered remnants of the first Terminator. Then the T-800 lets himself be destroyed with the help of Sarah Connor, despite the protests of the young John. It is at this point that Sarah fully respects the T-800 and offers her hand in friendship to a comrade and brother warrior before his final sacrifice, which he takes. She is last seen holding her son and comforting him upon the T-800's destruction. Because of this event, Sarah looks to the future with renewed hope, believing that if a Terminator can learn the value of human life, then perhaps humanity is not doomed to self-destruction.
In the first Terminator movie, it is mentioned that Sarah was a legend among members of the resistance, teaching her son to fight and organize while they were still in hiding prior to the war. An alternate epilogue to Terminator 2 shows her living to become a grandmother. That ending, however, was not included in the theatrical release.
, Sarah Connor has died, having succumbed to acute myeloid leukemia
in 1997 (after the events of Terminator 2) after a three-year battle with the disease (see note below). As a result, she is not seen on-screen during the film but is mentioned by both John and the T-850 multiple times. She lived long enough to see the original 1997 "Judgment Day" pass without incident, and she was cremated
in Mexico
. Her ashes were spread at sea. Never truly believing that they had beaten Skynet, her friends, in accordance with her will
, store a cache of weapons in a casket for John to find at a false grave site in the event that Judgment Day was not averted and the Terminators returned. The epitaph on her mausoleum niche reads, "No fate but what we make", which ultimately proves to be wrong when Skynet goes online and starts the war at the end of the film.
Terminator 3 follows a different storyline to the events in Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (see below). In particular, while Sarah Connor died from terminal
leukemia
in 1997 Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, she is still alive in Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. (See also Birth and death, which mentions that Sarah would have died in 2005, if they had not jumped forward in time).
The Boston Herald, and The Guardian
, as well as in online forums.
The series opens in 1999, a few years after the events of Terminator 2. Sarah and John Connor
seem to be living a peaceful life. Living undercover after being blamed for the murder of Miles Dyson, Sarah is even engaged to paramedic Charley Dixon. However, Sarah, fearing discovery, and perhaps, as John suggests, the certainty of a stable life, forces the two of them to flee again. On his first day in his new school, John is attacked by a T-888 Terminator posing as a substitute teacher called Cromartie. He escapes with the help of Cameron Phillips, a Terminator (in a Skynet-manufactured body that resembles a teenaged girl) sent back in time (by the future John) to protect him. Sarah hears of the shooting and rushes to the school but is captured by Cromartie, who uses her to lure John into a trap. Again with the help of Cameron, they flee to a bank where resistance members have hidden the parts of a time machine. As Cromartie attacks them, the trio disappears into the year 2007.
Cameron suggests to Sarah that their primary mission should be to stop Skynet, estimated to go online in the year 2011. Sarah argues that time traveling was the wrong move and that if she had been allowed to stay in 1999, she would have had longer to prepare John and to prepare to destroy Skynet. It is at this point that Cameron informs her that she would have died from cancer (similar to the film version of Sarah) in 2005. Traveling to the future has served several purposes: it gives Sarah the time she needs to destroy Skynet in its infancy, faking her and John's deaths keeps the authorities from pursuing them, and staying off the grid hides them from Skynet (which is aware that they've travelled through time but doesn't know which year they have been sent). As the three of them attempt to evade discovery and track down the origins of Skynet, Sarah is burdened with the extra knowledge that her own body might betray her. The third episode of the series shows Sarah at a doctor's appointment, where she is informed that she is completely healthy. Nevertheless, she seeks preventative measures from the doctor to avoid cancer altogether. Later episodes show her more intensively training her body, and she is seen taking a handful of vitamins and medications.
Sarah's relationship with Cameron has been repeatedly antagonistic and they share a mutual distrust. As Sarah attempts to teach Cameron the value of a human life, Cameron argues the importance of their mission to thwart Skynet's creation even if killing is necessary. During battles with Terminators programmed to kill the Connors, Sarah and Cameron often find themselves working together. Also, since Cameron is the only other person who knows of her cancer situation, Sarah often approaches her for advice in the matter.
.
implied that Sarah Connor could return in future installments of the new trilogy. He revealed that the fifth film would likely be about Connor himself timetravelling to 2011 and be an exploration of a "survivalist creature in our world doing his best to bring the world up to speed on an impending doom... and one could argue he meets his mother. I strongly suspect Linda Hamilton to be the star of the next film."
Fictional character
A character is the representation of a person in a narrative work of art . Derived from the ancient Greek word kharaktêr , the earliest use in English, in this sense, dates from the Restoration, although it became widely used after its appearance in Tom Jones in 1749. From this, the sense of...
from the Terminator
Terminator (franchise)
The Terminator series is a science fiction franchise encompassing a series of films and other media concerning battles between Skynet's artificially intelligent machine network, and John Connor's Resistance forces and the rest of the human race....
films and the television series Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. She was played by American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
actress Linda Hamilton
Linda Hamilton
Linda Carroll Hamilton is an American actress best known for her portrayal of Sarah Connor in The Terminator and its sequel Terminator 2: Judgment Day and Catherine Chandler in the television series Beauty and the Beast, for which she was nominated for two Golden Globes and an Emmy...
in the films and by English
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
actress Lena Headey
Lena Headey
Lena Headey is an English actress. Headey's performance in a one-off show when she was 17 caught the attention of a casting agent, who took a photo and asked her to audition and eventually she got a supporting role alongside Jeremy Irons and Ethan Hawke in the 1992 British drama film Waterland and...
in the TV series. The character develops greatly over the course of these productions, from a timid victim of the first film to a hardened warrior on the verge of losing touch with her own humanity.
Beginnings
In a deleted scene of the episode "The Demon Hand", details of Sarah's childhood are revealed during a session with Dr. Peter Silberman. When she was seven, her father—a chronically depressed war veteran—loses his mattress factory job to a machine, which leads to dysfunction within her family and her father's subsequent abandonment of them. Her mother finds a job as a waitress. Even as a child, Sarah has an intense technophobiaTechnophobia
Technophobia is the fear or dislike of advanced technology or complex devices, especially computers. tech·no·pho·bi·a n. Fear of or aversion to technology, especially computers and high technology. -Related forms: tech'no·phobe' n., tech'no·pho'bic adj."— "tech·no·pho·bi·a - Show Spelled...
. After her father leaves, Sarah stops spending her afternoons with her childhood friend whose father is an engineer with IBM
IBM
International Business Machines Corporation or IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas...
. Instead, she takes to visiting the factory where her own father had worked to watch the gears and belts of the machines, knowing something is wrong with what she sees.
The Terminator film itself never specifies an age or birth date for Sarah Connor, although according to the original script (available on the Special Edition DVD), she was 19 years old. The alternate ending for Terminator 2 (available on the Ultimate Edition DVD) shows Sarah alive and well on August 29, 2029. She is by then an elderly grandmother (and John is a Senator) in a world where Skynet was never able to start its war on humanity. The tombstone shown in Terminator 3 reads 1959–1997. The "Pilot
Pilot (Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles)
Pilot is the premiere episode of the American science fiction television series Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. It first aired on January 13, 2008 in the United States.-Plot:...
" episode of The Sarah Connor Chronicles picks up Sarah and John on the run in 1999. Her FBI file lists her age as 33 on August 24, 1999. Due to the forward time-travel jump in "Pilot", Sarah and John are now eight years younger than their birth-dates would otherwise indicate.
The Terminator
In The TerminatorThe Terminator
The Terminator is a 1984 science fiction action film directed by James Cameron, co-written by Cameron and William Wisher Jr., and starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Michael Biehn, and Linda Hamilton. The film was produced by Hemdale Film Corporation and distributed by Orion Pictures, and filmed in Los...
, Sarah Connor is a young Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
college student and waitress who finds herself pursued by a relentless cyborg
Cyborg
A cyborg is a being with both biological and artificial parts. The term was coined in 1960 when Manfred Clynes and Nathan S. Kline used it in an article about the advantages of self-regulating human-machine systems in outer space. D. S...
killer, the Cyberdyne Systems Series 800 Model 101 Terminator (played by Arnold Schwarzenegger
Arnold Schwarzenegger
Arnold Alois Schwarzenegger is an Austrian-American former professional bodybuilder, actor, businessman, investor, and politician. Schwarzenegger served as the 38th Governor of California from 2003 until 2011....
). She learns she is in danger from a televised report of two other identically-named Los Angeles women who were shot to death earlier that day. She is rescued from the Terminator by time-travelling soldier Kyle Reese
Kyle Reese
Kyle Reese is the primary character in the first Terminator film, the posthumous father of John Connor, and the love of Sarah Connor. He is played by Michael Biehn in the first Terminator films, Jonathan Jackson in the television series, and played as a teenager by Anton Yelchin in Terminator...
(Michael Biehn
Michael Biehn
Michael Connell Biehn is an American actor. He is best known for his roles in James Cameron's science fiction action films The Terminator as Kyle Reese, Aliens as Cpl. Dwayne Hicks, and The Abyss as Lt. Coffey. He has also acted in such films as Tombstone, The Rock, and Planet Terror...
), who explains that in the future an artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science that aims to create it. AI textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent agents" where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its...
called Skynet will be created by military
Military
A military is an organization authorized by its greater society to use lethal force, usually including use of weapons, in defending its country by combating actual or perceived threats. The military may have additional functions of use to its greater society, such as advancing a political agenda e.g...
software developers to make strategic decisions. The program becomes self-aware, seizes control of most of the world's military hardware (including various highly advanced robots), and launches an all-out attack on human beings. However, a man named John Connor
John Connor
John Connor is a character appearing in the American science fiction Terminator franchise and he serves as the series main protagonist. Created by writer and director James Cameron, the character is first referred to in the 1984 film The Terminator and first appears portrayed by teenage actor...
eventually leads what remains of the world's military and survivors, The Resistance, to victory, only to discover that in a last-ditch effort, Skynet had invented a means of time travel and sent a robotic killer back in time to destroy John Connor's mother before he is born. John Connor is Sarah's future son, and he sends back a trusted sergeant Kyle Reese
Kyle Reese
Kyle Reese is the primary character in the first Terminator film, the posthumous father of John Connor, and the love of Sarah Connor. He is played by Michael Biehn in the first Terminator films, Jonathan Jackson in the television series, and played as a teenager by Anton Yelchin in Terminator...
to protect his mother at all costs. During their brief time together, Sarah falls in love with Reese. Reese becomes the only thing protecting her from the Terminator, and her only companion as they flee together. Initially, she is unaware that Reese himself had been in love with her from afar. He had been given a picture of her by John Connor and had always admired her legendary strength and resilience. While they are avoiding the Terminator, they share a night of intimacy that results in John's conception. Their relationship is cut short, however, when Reese dies fighting the Terminator in a Cyberdyne factory. Sarah in turn crushes the Terminator in a hydraulic press. Though Reese's death deeply saddens Sarah, his sincerity and courage inspires her to carry on and develop the necessary skills and abilities that would make her a suitable mentor and teacher to John. After these events, Sarah becomes a fugitive from society and begins making a voice recording for John (in which she acknowledges his paternity) to later give to her son at the proper age. While recording the tape, she stops for gas and the aforementioned photograph is taken by a young boy and sold to her. This is the same picture John Connor will give to Kyle Reese in the future.
Terminator 2: Judgment Day
Sarah Connor next appears in Terminator 2: Judgment DayTerminator 2: Judgment Day
Terminator 2: Judgment Day is a 1991 science fiction action film directed by James Cameron and written by Cameron and William Wisher Jr.. It stars Arnold Schwarzenegger, Linda Hamilton, Robert Patrick, and Edward Furlong...
, which occurs ten years after the events of The Terminator. She and John have been separated from each other: John is now a preteen and living in a foster home, and Sarah has been institutionalized in Pescadero State Hospital. In the years between films, she has transformed herself from the mousy, timid woman seen at the beginning of the first movie into a muscled, ferocious warrior. In fact, the first image of her in the film is of her doing chin-ups on her hospital bed. After the death of Kyle Reese, Sarah took his warnings, and the responsibility of raising the hope of mankind, to heart. However, her fixation on the disaster and her fanatical desire to keep John safe has made her slightly mentally unstable and very violent, which is only aggravated by her fear and hatred of the T-800. She dropped off the grid to better protect herself and John. She lived a semi-criminal life among various outlaws and survivalists, and she attempted to teach her son the skills he would need to lead the resistance. Sarah was captured and sent to the hospital after she attempted to destroy a computer factory.
Several times at the hospital, she has tried to improve her behavior in hope of getting to see her son, but her caregivers do not believe her. Her activities and claims of fighting evil robots from the future led to her being deemed incurable. Sarah only seemed to confirm the judgment of psychiatrists by committing acts of violence against hospital staff (including Dr. Peter Silberman, whom Sarah stabbed in the knee with his pen) and attempting to escape multiple times. During her final escape attempt, Sarah encounters two different Terminator models. One is the T-1000
T-1000
The T-1000 is a fictional nanomorph mimetic poly-alloy assassin and the main antagonist in Terminator 2: Judgment Day controlled by the series main antagonist Skynet. The T-1000 is portrayed primarily by Robert Patrick; however, being a shape-shifter, the T-1000 is played by other actors in some...
, a liquid metal cyborg sent back to kill her son. The other is a T-800 (the same model which had previously tried to murder her) that was sent back to protect them. When she initially encounters the T-800, she flees in terror, but she goes with him when he utters the first thing Reese had said to her: "Come with me if you want to live."
Sarah finds it nearly impossible to accept that the T-800 is benevolent; throughout the film, she remains hostile towards it and what it represents, while her own son develops a bond with it, resembling a father-son relationship. In the director's cut of the movie, it is revealed that Sarah has an opportunity to destroy the machine's CPU
Central processing unit
The central processing unit is the portion of a computer system that carries out the instructions of a computer program, to perform the basic arithmetical, logical, and input/output operations of the system. The CPU plays a role somewhat analogous to the brain in the computer. The term has been in...
, which would "kill" it. She nearly does so, but John stops her, managing to convince her that they need its help and that no one would listen to his leadership ideas if she did not do so. While in Mexico
Mexico
The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...
, watching John do a high-five with the Terminator, Sarah loses her hostility towards the machine and begins to see it as the closest thing John has to a father.
In a moment of desperation, Sarah attempts to murder
Murder
Murder is the unlawful killing, with malice aforethought, of another human being, and generally this state of mind distinguishes murder from other forms of unlawful homicide...
Miles Dyson, one of the computer researchers who works at Cyberdyne Systems and is destined to build the revolutionary microprocessor
Microprocessor
A microprocessor incorporates the functions of a computer's central processing unit on a single integrated circuit, or at most a few integrated circuits. It is a multipurpose, programmable device that accepts digital data as input, processes it according to instructions stored in its memory, and...
that eventually becomes Skynet
SkyNET
SkyNET, known as The Terminator: SkyNET in Europe, is a computer game based on the Terminator film series. It was originally an expansion, and became the sequel to The Terminator: Future Shock, also developed by Bethesda Softworks....
. In doing this, she loses touch with her humanity, becoming eerily similar to the Terminator itself. Ultimately, she cannot bear to kill Dyson in front of his wife and kids, because he wasn't responsible for anything yet. Shortly afterwards, John and the T-800 arrive and, together, they succeed in persuading Dyson to stop his research and destroy all recovered remnants of the first Terminator. Then the T-800 lets himself be destroyed with the help of Sarah Connor, despite the protests of the young John. It is at this point that Sarah fully respects the T-800 and offers her hand in friendship to a comrade and brother warrior before his final sacrifice, which he takes. She is last seen holding her son and comforting him upon the T-800's destruction. Because of this event, Sarah looks to the future with renewed hope, believing that if a Terminator can learn the value of human life, then perhaps humanity is not doomed to self-destruction.
In the first Terminator movie, it is mentioned that Sarah was a legend among members of the resistance, teaching her son to fight and organize while they were still in hiding prior to the war. An alternate epilogue to Terminator 2 shows her living to become a grandmother. That ending, however, was not included in the theatrical release.
Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines
In Terminator 3: Rise of the MachinesTerminator 3: Rise of the Machines
Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, commonly abbreviated as T3, is a 2003 science fiction action film directed by Jonathan Mostow and starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Nick Stahl, Claire Danes and Kristanna Loken...
, Sarah Connor has died, having succumbed to acute myeloid leukemia
Acute myeloid leukemia
Acute myeloid leukemia , also known as acute myelogenous leukemia, is a cancer of the myeloid line of blood cells, characterized by the rapid growth of abnormal white blood cells that accumulate in the bone marrow and interfere with the production of normal blood cells. AML is the most common acute...
in 1997 (after the events of Terminator 2) after a three-year battle with the disease (see note below). As a result, she is not seen on-screen during the film but is mentioned by both John and the T-850 multiple times. She lived long enough to see the original 1997 "Judgment Day" pass without incident, and she was cremated
Cremation
Cremation is the process of reducing bodies to basic chemical compounds such as gasses and bone fragments. This is accomplished through high-temperature burning, vaporization and oxidation....
in Mexico
Mexico
The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...
. Her ashes were spread at sea. Never truly believing that they had beaten Skynet, her friends, in accordance with her will
Will (law)
A will or testament is a legal declaration by which a person, the testator, names one or more persons to manage his/her estate and provides for the transfer of his/her property at death...
, store a cache of weapons in a casket for John to find at a false grave site in the event that Judgment Day was not averted and the Terminators returned. The epitaph on her mausoleum niche reads, "No fate but what we make", which ultimately proves to be wrong when Skynet goes online and starts the war at the end of the film.
Terminator 3 follows a different storyline to the events in Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (see below). In particular, while Sarah Connor died from terminal
Terminal illness
Terminal illness is a medical term popularized in the 20th century to describe a disease that cannot be cured or adequately treated and that is reasonably expected to result in the death of the patient within a short period of time. This term is more commonly used for progressive diseases such as...
leukemia
Leukemia
Leukemia or leukaemia is a type of cancer of the blood or bone marrow characterized by an abnormal increase of immature white blood cells called "blasts". Leukemia is a broad term covering a spectrum of diseases...
in 1997 Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, she is still alive in Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. (See also Birth and death, which mentions that Sarah would have died in 2005, if they had not jumped forward in time).
Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
In November 2005, 20th Century Fox announced that it would produce a television series called Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles featuring the adventures of the title character and her son in the years after Terminator 2: Judgment Day. This was followed by a November 2006 announcement that Lena Headey had been chosen to play Sarah Connor. The choice to cast Headey was criticized by several fans and critics who argued that she bore no resemblance to the athletic, muscular woman established by Hamilton, who transformed her body into that of a muscled warrior for Terminator 2. The controversy was covered by the Los Angeles TimesLos Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
The Boston Herald, and The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
, as well as in online forums.
The series opens in 1999, a few years after the events of Terminator 2. Sarah and John Connor
John Connor
John Connor is a character appearing in the American science fiction Terminator franchise and he serves as the series main protagonist. Created by writer and director James Cameron, the character is first referred to in the 1984 film The Terminator and first appears portrayed by teenage actor...
seem to be living a peaceful life. Living undercover after being blamed for the murder of Miles Dyson, Sarah is even engaged to paramedic Charley Dixon. However, Sarah, fearing discovery, and perhaps, as John suggests, the certainty of a stable life, forces the two of them to flee again. On his first day in his new school, John is attacked by a T-888 Terminator posing as a substitute teacher called Cromartie. He escapes with the help of Cameron Phillips, a Terminator (in a Skynet-manufactured body that resembles a teenaged girl) sent back in time (by the future John) to protect him. Sarah hears of the shooting and rushes to the school but is captured by Cromartie, who uses her to lure John into a trap. Again with the help of Cameron, they flee to a bank where resistance members have hidden the parts of a time machine. As Cromartie attacks them, the trio disappears into the year 2007.
Cameron suggests to Sarah that their primary mission should be to stop Skynet, estimated to go online in the year 2011. Sarah argues that time traveling was the wrong move and that if she had been allowed to stay in 1999, she would have had longer to prepare John and to prepare to destroy Skynet. It is at this point that Cameron informs her that she would have died from cancer (similar to the film version of Sarah) in 2005. Traveling to the future has served several purposes: it gives Sarah the time she needs to destroy Skynet in its infancy, faking her and John's deaths keeps the authorities from pursuing them, and staying off the grid hides them from Skynet (which is aware that they've travelled through time but doesn't know which year they have been sent). As the three of them attempt to evade discovery and track down the origins of Skynet, Sarah is burdened with the extra knowledge that her own body might betray her. The third episode of the series shows Sarah at a doctor's appointment, where she is informed that she is completely healthy. Nevertheless, she seeks preventative measures from the doctor to avoid cancer altogether. Later episodes show her more intensively training her body, and she is seen taking a handful of vitamins and medications.
Sarah's relationship with Cameron has been repeatedly antagonistic and they share a mutual distrust. As Sarah attempts to teach Cameron the value of a human life, Cameron argues the importance of their mission to thwart Skynet's creation even if killing is necessary. During battles with Terminators programmed to kill the Connors, Sarah and Cameron often find themselves working together. Also, since Cameron is the only other person who knows of her cancer situation, Sarah often approaches her for advice in the matter.
Terminator Salvation
Linda Hamilton reprised her role as Sarah Connor in voiceovers warning of the future war (in the form of taped recordings for John) delivered throughout Terminator SalvationTerminator Salvation
Terminator Salvation is a 2009 American science fiction action film directed by McG and starring Christian Bale and Sam Worthington. The fourth installment in the Terminator series, the film is set in 2018 and focuses on the war between Skynet and humanity, with the human Resistance fighting...
.
Terminator 5
Director McGMcG
Joseph McGinty Nichol , better known as McG, is an American director and producer of film and television, as well as a former record producer....
implied that Sarah Connor could return in future installments of the new trilogy. He revealed that the fifth film would likely be about Connor himself timetravelling to 2011 and be an exploration of a "survivalist creature in our world doing his best to bring the world up to speed on an impending doom... and one could argue he meets his mother. I strongly suspect Linda Hamilton to be the star of the next film."