Grace in Terminator: Dark Fate: Who She Is

Grace is an augmented human soldier from 2042 who is sent back in time to protect Dani Ramos in Terminator: Dark Fate (2019). Tim Miller directed the film, and Mackenzie Davis plays Grace, billed third behind Linda Hamilton as Sarah Connor and Arnold Schwarzenegger as the T-800 (Carl). The credits also list a Young Grace (10yrs), played by Stephanie Gil.

Grace is not a robot or a Terminator; Terminator: Dark Fate presents her as an augmented human soldier. Her body has been enhanced, but the film keeps her on the human side of the war. That distinction matters in this franchise, because the earlier films send either a human protector or a reprogrammed machine back through time, and Grace belongs to the first group, in the same way as Kyle Reese in the terminator 1984.

She arrives in a world where Skynet is no longer the threat. Instead, she explains that a defense AI called Legion started a nuclear war in her timeline. Her mission is to keep Dani Ramos, a young factory worker in Mexico City, and Dani's brother Diego alive against a new killer machine, the Rev-9, played by Gabriel Luna. You can read about the film itself on the terminator dark fate page.

Grace's story in Terminator: Dark Fate runs from a Mexico City street in 2020 to a hydroelectric dam, where she is fatally wounded while helping to stop the Rev-9. Everything she does serves a single purpose, which is to keep Dani Ramos breathing. Having traveled back from 2042, she steps in front of Dani and Diego when the Rev-9 closes on them, a machine able to separate into a liquid metal body and a hard endoskeleton.

She also supplies the reason behind the chase. In the timeline Grace left, the defense AI Legion set off a nuclear war, and Dani is the one destined to lead the human resistance against it. Soon after, the Rev-9 kills Diego, and Sarah Connor turns up in time to help the survivors get away. Later the group finds the T-800 (Carl), the machine that killed John Connor in 1998. He now lives as a man, has developed a conscience, and joins them against the Rev-9.

An attempt to obtain an EMP weapon fails when the Rev-9 wrecks it. The Rev-9 then takes Carl prisoner aboard a cargo plane and forces the rest to leap out, and they parachute down close to a hydroelectric dam. The last battle happens there. Grace and Carl haul the Rev-9 toward a turbine, and in that struggle Grace takes the injuries that will kill her.

Grace's central relationship is with Dani Ramos, played by Natalia Reyes, because Dani is the person she crossed time to protect. Dani is the future resistance leader in Grace's timeline, so Grace treats her as both a charge and a cause. Unlike Kyle Reese, who was sent back in the terminator 1984 to protect the mother of the future leader, Grace is sent to protect the future leader herself. Dani has her own page at dani ramos terminator.

Her second key bond is with Sarah Connor. Sarah, played by Linda Hamilton, has spent decades hunting Terminators sent to the past, and she turns up just after the Rev-9 kills Diego. The two women approach the mission from different directions, with Sarah as a veteran who lost her son and Grace as a soldier from a future she is trying to prevent. See sarah connor terminator for her full history.

Grace's opponents and allies fill out the rest. The Rev-9, played by Gabriel Luna, is the machine hunting Dani, covered at rev-9 terminator. The T-800 (Carl), played by Arnold Schwarzenegger, joins the group against the Rev-9 and ends up fighting beside Grace at the dam; his wider history is at t-800 terminator. Legion, the defense AI, is the reason Grace is sent back at all.

Grace dies at the hydroelectric dam in the closing stretch of Terminator: Dark Fate, killed by the wounds she takes fighting the Rev-9. While she and Carl pull the Rev-9 toward a turbine, she is injured beyond saving, and with what time she has left she instructs Dani to turn her power core into a weapon. Carl pins the Rev-9 in place, Dani uses the core to destroy it, and Carl is destroyed in the same moment.

Grace is not a Terminator, despite the power core. She is an augmented human, and the machines in the story are the T-800 and the Rev-9. Her death is the price of ending the Rev-9 and keeping Dani alive.

The final scene leaves a small echo of her. Dani and Sarah stand watching a young girl in a park before setting out together to prepare for the war with the future machines. Because the credits include a Young Grace (10yrs), played by Stephanie Gil, many viewers take the girl as a reference to Grace, though the film never says so outright.

Grace's best moments in Terminator: Dark Fate are her arrival in 2020 Mexico City, her dam sacrifice and the closing park scene. In my opinion, the first of these does the most work, because she steps between Dani and the Rev-9 and starts explaining Legion, which sets up the whole story in a few scenes.

The dam finale is the other peak. It echoes the factory ending of the terminator 1984, where Kyle Reese dies helping Sarah destroy the Terminator. Grace does the same thing: she is a soldier from the future who dies so the person she came for can finish the job, and Dani does so with Grace's power core. She also works best next to Carl, because the T-800 that killed John Connor now fights beside the protector from 2042, and I find that pairing the most interesting of the film.

The closing park scene is the one I would point newcomers to. A young girl plays while Dani and Sarah watch, and the credits list a Young Grace (10yrs), played by Stephanie Gil, which makes the death feel less like an ending than a handover. If you want the full picture of the franchise's other protectors, the terminator characters page is the place to go next.