TheTerminatorfranchise just revealed Sarah Connor’s canon death, deepening the lore of the original 1985 movie. Thanks to the franchise’s shifting timeline, Linda Hamilton’s hero has been given various fates, from dying of leukemia between movies to living into the distant future, battling Skyneteven after Judgment Day. Now,Terminatorkills her off with a genius twist.
In today’sTerminator #10- from Declan Shalvey, Luke Sparrow, Colin Craker and Jeff Eckleberry - fans witness a post-Judgment Day mission by the human resistance, following Major Harper Duggan and an unnamed soldier in 2001. In a quiet moment, the young soldier reveals that he carries aphoto of Sarah Connor, who he claims died saving him.
Fans will recognize this photo as the one that John Connor passed on to theoriginal movie’s hero Kyle Reese, causing him to fall in love with (and later travel back in time to save) Sarah Connor. However, fans now learn that John was only willing to give up the photo because his mentor Major Harper Duggan taught him how to hold onto his loved-ones without physical reminders, stating,“He taught me how to keep my loves ones safe, locked in memory.”
Sarah Connor Died Protecting John, Pre-2001
John Connor’s Mentor Continued Raising Him, Turning Him into the Resistance’s Leader
Dynamite’sThe Terminatorseries has depicted Skynet carrying out a temporal Blitzkrieg, targeting people across time and space. As Major Harper Duggan talks to John, it becomes apparent that all these targets were members of Duggan’s bloodline, and thatSkynet has been trying to take out the rebel fighter before he could become John’s mentor. John states that Duggan"helped make me into the man I would one day become,“stressing how vital this father figure was to him becoming the Resistance’s leader.
Terminatorsold itself as an anthology series, but it’s now clear that it’s been disguising its true purpose, telling a larger story of how Skynet tried and failed to stop John by targeting his surrogate father, having failed to kill off his biological mother. The issue establishes thatSarah Connor lost her lifesaving her son, and seemingly moves the modern-day franchise back into the timeline established by the original movie, rather than that of the most recent film in the franchise,Terminator: Dark Fate.
The comic’s ending will have fans scrabbling for the first issue in the series, which is set in 2018 and sees Duggan - who secretly survived his experiences in issue 10 - returning home to be with his wife Penny, eventually dying at the hands of one of the many T-800s sent after him.
As with anyTerminatorstory, it’s an ouroboros that draws meaning from how future and past events interact, making Duggan’s quote from the first issue even more poignant -“Time escapes no-one. … Yes, it’s always right behind you. But never forget, it’s in front of you too.”
