The Terminator franchise timeline became increasingly tangled, leaving even the most devoted viewers scratching their heads.

What started as a relatively simple story about a killer robot hunting Sarah Connor has spiraled into an intricate web of alternate timelines and conflicting narratives. For every flawed timeline, there lies an attempt to tackle larger existential questions about survival, innovation, and hope. Yet from paradoxical premises to plot holes, reboots, and attempts to resolve its own timeline, there’s a reason why the Terminator remains a complex — if occasionally frustrating — sci-fi saga.

Terminator’s Time Travel Premise Makes The Movies Paradoxical By Default

No Franchise Serves Up More Timeline Shenanigans Than Terminator

The Terminator movies hinge on time travel, which introduces paradoxes as an inevitable and unavoidable feature of the story. The original Terminator (1984) sets the tone perfectly. Kyle Reese travels back in time to protect Sarah Connor, only to become the father of John Connor, the man who sent him in the first place. This causal loop is a classic predestination paradox, where John Connor’s very existence depends on events being set in motion by his future self.

Of course, that logic becomes convoluted quickly when characters’ actions in the past rewrite or negate the very futures they emerge from. The Terminator is paradoxical storytelling on steroids. Rather than cleaning up the time travel messiness of his first film, James Cameron’s Terminator 2: Judgment Day doubles down, escalating the complexity by introducing the idea of altering the future. Sarah, John, and the reprogrammed T-800 seek to prevent Skynet’s creation entirely, challenging the notion of predetermined events.

However, the idea that the future can be changed while simultaneously relying on a fixed timeline makes things murky. The very premise of altering destiny clashes with the foundations of the first Terminator. With every subsequent sequel exploring different interpretations of time travel rules, the timeline grows even more convoluted, sometimes contradicting itself outright.

Some Terminator Plot Holes Are Meant To Be Part Of The Franchise’s Story

Many Terminator Story Bugs Have Now Been Canonized As Features Instead

Not all of the franchise’s seeming inconsistencies are accidental. Some are baked into the story itself. For instance, the original film’s plot hole regarding how Skynet initially sends the Terminator back becomes part of the mythology in later entries.

The franchise acknowledges the chicken-or-egg dilemma of Skynet’s invention. The time-traveling T-800’s remains in Terminator 2 fuel the research that leads to Cyberdyne’s development of Skynet, creating a perfect paradox. This self-sustaining loop is clever but confusing, forcing viewers to accept that some questions simply have no answer within the logic of the films.

Terminator Genisys (2015) goes a step further by deliberately upending the established timeline. The movie presents a version of Sarah Connor who’s been raised by a T-800 since childhood, defying the chronology of the first two films. While this was an attempt to reinvigorate the series, it created even more questions, including who sent this T-800 and why Skynet kept trying different tactics despite its failures. The messy Terminator timeline became a meta-commentary on the franchise’s own convoluted evolution. These intentional plot holes highlight the self-referential complexity that has become core to Terminator’s identity.

Terminator’s Failed Movies Led To A Lot Of Retcons & Reboots

Is A Box Office Defeat A Failure -- Or A New Opportunity?

One of the biggest reasons the Terminator timeline is so confusing is the sheer volume of retcons and reboots across its six-film trajectory. After Terminator 2, subsequent movies tried to either continue or rewrite the story, leading to inconsistencies. Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines shifts the narrative by asserting that Judgment Day is inevitable, contradicting the hopeful ending of T2. This redefines the franchise’s message, creating a tonal and narrative disconnect. There's also Salvation (2009), which skips time travel entirely, focusing on the post-apocalyptic war and sidelining the established timeline.

Each new entry attempted to fix these inconsistencies with varying levels of success. Terminator Genisys, for instance, retcons the events of Terminator and T2, creating an alternate timeline where the original series’ rules are almost entirely disregarded. Meanwhile, Terminator: Dark Fate (2019) boldly kills off John Connor in the opening sequence to pave the way for a new protagonist, Dani Ramos.

These efforts aimed to modernize the series and appeal to new audiences following the sort of box office dips that are inevitable in an aging franchise. However, they further muddied the waters for long-time fans invested in the original chronology. The result is a timeline that feels less like a cohesive story and more like a puzzle missing half its pieces.

How Terminator Zero Tries To Fix The Terminator Franchise's Timeline

The Latest Terminator Story Attempts To Turn Into The Time Travel Skid

Enter Terminator Zero, a concept that grapples with the franchise’s time-travel loop and proposes a way to finally break the cycle. Terminator Zero acknowledges the recurring Skynet-versus-resistance time war and suggests a bold new approach to end the stalemate. Instead of retreading the same narrative ground, this idea explores what happens when both sides realize the inefficacy of their strategies. Skynet and the resistance are essentially locked in a loop — the machines send assassins to the past; the resistance sends protectors to stop them. The outcome never changes.

Of course, that twist ends up counterbalanced in Zero by a new player in the Skynet vs. humans battle: an A.I. named Kokoro. In another deviation from the T1-T2 timeline, Skynet sends a Terminator back not to eliminate Sarah or John Connor, but to prevent Kokoro from emerging as its biggest existential threat in the future.

Ultimately, Skynet succeeds in killing Kokoro’s creator, but whether Kokoro goes online as planned or not is a question left unanswered at the end of season 1. Through Zero, the philosophical underpinnings of fate and free will, a core overarching theme of the entire Terminator franchise, remain at the center of the narrative in a way that still feels grounded and forward-thinking.

Time travel will always invite complexity, but for better or worse, it’s the beating heart of The Terminator. With Terminator 7 already in development, Skynet and John Connor’s battle may one day resolve — but until then, the chaos keeps viewers coming back to each new franchise installment for more.