Timeline of Terminator Movies

2. The Terminator (1984) – Where the Timeline Begins

James Cameron’s original film is a lean, dark tech-noir thriller. A cyborg assassin, the T-800, is sent from a devastated future 2029 back to Los Angeles, 1984, to kill Sarah Connor before she can give birth to John, the future leader of the human Resistance. Kyle Reese, a human soldier, follows the machine back in time to protect her.

In timeline terms, this film sets up a classic time loop:

• Skynet exists in a future where machines already won.
• It sends a Terminator to 1984 to erase John Connor from history.
• John sends Kyle Reese back, who becomes John’s father in the process.
• Sarah survives and begins preparing for Judgment Day.

The crucial detail is that this is not about stopping Skynet yet. It’s about survival. The future war already happened; the time travel here only protects the human leader that future depends on. The timeline remains a single, closed loop where events in 1984 and 2029 feed into each other.

Visually and tonally, the movie feels almost grounded compared to later entries – low-budget streets, neon, and grimy nightclubs. That grounded style makes the stakes feel real; it’s easier to imagine that 2029 future waiting somewhere ahead of us.

Key Timeline Takeaways

• Future war year: 2029 (Resistance vs Skynet)
• Past setting: 1984 Los Angeles
• Timeline effect: Creates the loop that guarantees John’s birth rather than erasing him.
• Essential viewing? Yes – everything else hangs off this loop, even when later films start branching away from it.

3. Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) – Delaying the Apocalypse

Terminator 2 raises everything: budget, visual effects, emotional weight. The story jumps forward to 1995, with John Connor now a troubled teenager in foster care, while Sarah Connor is locked in a psychiatric hospital for warning the world about Skynet.

This time, Skynet sends an advanced liquid-metal assassin, the T-1000, to kill John as a child. The Resistance counters with a reprogrammed T-800, now John’s protector. The goal is no longer just survival; it’s to stop the future itself by preventing the creation of Skynet and the nuclear Judgment Day originally set for August 29, 1997.

How T2 Changes the Timeline

• Sarah, John, and the T-800 target Cyberdyne Systems, the company that will give birth to Skynet.
• They destroy Miles Dyson’s research, the CPU, and Terminator arm recovered from the first film.
• The film ends with the characters believing they may have averted Judgment Day.

From a timeline perspective, T2 doesn’t just extend the original loop; it tries to break it. The franchise introduces the idea that the future is malleable. But as later movies show, that victory may only be temporary.

Key Timeline Takeaways

• Main year: 1995 (plus flash-forwards to the future war)
• Judgment Day date: August 29, 1997 – believed averted
• Timeline effect: Pushes the franchise from a fixed loop into a possibly branching future.
• Emotional shift: The Terminator becomes a father-figure to John, adding human stakes to the machine war.

4. Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003) – Judgment Day Arrives

Terminator 3 jumps ahead about a decade. John Connor is now a drifting young adult, living off the grid in an attempt to dodge his destiny. The story is set around 2004, in a world where the nuclear apocalypse seemingly never happened.

Skynet tries a new tactic: the T-X, a Terminator that combines a metal endoskeleton with liquid-metal abilities, is sent back to eliminate John’s future lieutenants and his eventual wife, Kate Brewster. The Resistance counters with a slightly upgraded T-800 model (sometimes called a T-850).

Here’s the twist that re-shapes the timeline: the T-800 reveals that T2 didn’t cancel Judgment Day at all. It only postponed it. Instead of 1997, the nuclear exchange hits on or around July 24–25, 2004, when Skynet goes online through global military networks.

Why T3 Matters for the Timeline

• Judgment Day is inevitable. The film leans into the idea that the timeline “pushes back”.
• John and Kate survive in a hardened bunker while nuclear strikes hit worldwide.
• This creates a clean transition into the future-war setting of Terminator Salvation.

The ending is chilling: the nukes launch, communications go silent, and John is left answering scattered survivors over radio. It’s the precise moment the story shifts from trying to avoid the war to learning how to win it.

5. Terminator Salvation (2009) – Living in the Future War

Terminator Salvation breaks the usual pattern. Instead of bouncing between a future and a past, it unfolds almost entirely in the devastated world after Judgment Day, specifically in the year 2018.

Here, Skynet dominates the ruined Earth with hunter-killers, harvesters, and early Terminator models, while the human Resistance works to exploit a weakness in Skynet’s communications network. A battle-hardened John Connor is part soldier, part symbol – not yet the mythic leader we heard about, but close.

The film also introduces Marcus Wright, a death-row inmate turned experimental cyborg, and a young Kyle Reese who hasn’t yet time-traveled back to 1984. The story quietly sets up the loop from the first film: John must save Kyle so that Kyle can one day go back and become John’s father.

Timeline Significance

• Year: 2018, about 14 years after Judgment Day in the T3 timeline.
• Focus: The early phase of the human vs Skynet war.
• Loop maintenance: John ensures Kyle survives, protecting the events of The Terminator.
• Shift in tone: From “prevent the war” to “fight and survive inside the war.”

If you’ve ever wanted to see the future war that earlier films only hinted at in quick flash-forwards, Salvation is the one that finally lives there.

6. Terminator Genisys (2015) – Rebooting the Past

Now things get wild. Terminator Genisys starts in a familiar place – the future war around 2029 where John Connor and the Resistance are about to destroy Skynet – then jumps to several different past years as the timeline fractures.

When Kyle Reese goes back to what he thinks is the same 1984 we saw in the first movie, everything is different. Sarah Connor has already been raised by an older, reprogrammed T-800 (nicknamed “Pops”) since 1973, and Skynet has been sending additional machines even earlier in the timeline.

After a frantic battle in 1984, Sarah and Kyle time-jump forward to 2017, where Skynet is about to emerge under a new name: Genisys, a globally connected operating system preparing for launch. This rebooted threat ties Skynet to modern ideas of cloud platforms, apps, and smartphones.

What Genisys Does to the Timeline

• Splits the story into a separate branch from the original T1/T2/T3/Salvation timeline.
• Rewrites events in 1984 and earlier by inserting extra Terminators and rescues.
• Moves the key Skynet-equivalent threat to 2017’s Genisys OS.
• Introduces a reimagined John Connor whose fate is tightly bound to Skynet’s strategy.

If the original timeline is a straight cable, Genisys is like someone cutting it and soldering in new wires at several points. It’s still recognizably Terminator, but events don’t line up neatly with earlier films. Some fans love that experimental energy, some prefer the classic loop – but either way, it definitly creates its own clear branch.

7. Terminator: Dark Fate (2019) – A New Legion Timeline

Terminator: Dark Fate takes another big swing: it acts as a direct sequel to T2, while ignoring the events of T3, Salvation, and Genisys. In other words, it says: “What if T2 really did prevent Skynet?” – and then asks what kind of new threat would rise instead.

The film opens in 1998, a few years after T2, with a shocking event that changes Sarah Connor’s life and breaks the familiar John-Connor-saves-the-world path. The main story then jumps to 2020, where a new AI called Legion has taken Skynet’s place in an alternate future. Legion sends a deadly Rev-9 Terminator back to Mexico City to kill Dani Ramos, while the Resistance counters with Grace, an augmented human soldier from 2042.

How Dark Fate Rewires the Story

• Confirms that Skynet never existed in this branch because of T2’s actions.
• Introduces Legion, a different military AI that eventually triggers a new global catastrophe.
• Reframes the idea of “the chosen one”: Dani, not John, becomes the human leader that matters in this future.
• Brings back an older T-800 who has developed a conscience and a human life over decades.

Dark Fate’s timeline suggests something unsettling: you can change the details, the names, and even the people, but as long as humanity builds world-spanning, weaponized AI systems, some version of Judgment Day keeps trying to happen.