John Connor Terminator: Who He Is and Who Plays Him

John Connor is the son of Sarah Connor and the man who, in the future, leads humanity's war against Skynet. The Terminator (1984), directed by James Cameron, refers to him before he exists: a cyborg assassin is sent from 2029 to Los Angeles to kill Sarah because her unborn son will one day lead the resistance, and the soldier Kyle Reese is sent after it to protect her. That single idea explains why the terminators want John Connor. Skynet cannot defeat a leader it cannot reach in the future, so it tries to remove him, or his mother, in the past.

John is first seen on screen in Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), also directed by James Cameron, where Edward Furlong plays him as a boy. The later films recast him each time: Nick Stahl in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003), directed by Jonathan Mostow, Christian Bale in Terminator Salvation (2009), directed by McG, and Jason Clarke in Terminator Genisys (2015), directed by Alan Taylor. Terminator: Dark Fate (2019), directed by Tim Miller, opens by killing him.

The credits list him as John Connor, Young John Connor (uncredited), Old John Connor, Infant John Connor, Baby John Connor (uncredited) and John Connor (voice), depending on the film and his age.

For the wider cast, see the terminator cast page.

John Connor's story arc runs from an unborn child in The Terminator to a resistance leader, a captured Skynet hybrid, and finally a victim killed off in Terminator: Dark Fate. It changes from film to film because the series keeps rewriting its own timeline, so the arc below follows each appearance in release order.

In The Terminator (1984) he is only referenced. Sarah, pregnant and in Mexico at the end of the film, records audio tapes to prepare her son for what is coming, and a boy takes an instant photo of her, the same photo John will later give to Reese.

The film opens in 2029 with the war already under way. Skynet sends the T-1000, a liquid metal Terminator, back to kill John while he is still a boy, and the resistance sends a reprogrammed T-800 to guard him. John lives with foster parents and believes his mother, who is held in a psychiatric hospital for warning about Judgment Day, is delusional. After the T-800 rescues him from the T-1000 at a shopping mall, John orders it not to kill people and to help free Sarah. He later helps win over Cyberdyne engineer Miles Dyson, and at the steel mill he throws the old Terminator's arm and chip into the molten steel. The T-800 then insists it must be destroyed too, and a tearful John watches Sarah lower it into the vat as it gives a thumbs up.

John is a drifter after Sarah's death, avoiding any record of his existence. Skynet sends the T-X to kill the people who will lead the resistance, starting with Kate Brewster, and an older Terminator is sent to guard both of them. At Crystal Peak, which they believe is Skynet's core, John and Kate find only an old fallout shelter and command post. Skynet turns out to be software spread across networked systems, and it launches a worldwide nuclear attack. John accepts that Judgment Day cannot be stopped and begins answering the frightened radio calls from survivors.

By 2018 John is a leading Resistance officer. He raids a Skynet facility and learns that captured people are being used to build a new kind of Terminator, and that Skynet keeps a kill list that includes him and a young Kyle Reese. Marcus Wright, a cyborg who does not at first know what he is, makes a deal with John to help free the prisoners. A T-800 stabs John through the chest, and his heart is too badly damaged to survive without a transplant.

In 2029 John's Resistance is close to beating Skynet, so Skynet sends a Terminator back to 1984, and John sends Reese after it. History has already changed there: Sarah is an experienced fighter raised by a reprogrammed Terminator she calls Pops. When the team jumps ahead to 2017 in San Francisco, they discover that John has been captured and turned into a machine hybrid serving Skynet. He is now a nanotech Terminator, and he fights them inside the Cyberdyne building where the Genisys system is being finished.

The film begins in 1998, when Sarah and John are hiding in Guatemala and an older T-800 appears and kills him. Sarah then spends decades hunting Terminators sent to the past, and the role of resistance leader passes to someone new.

John Connor's closest relationships are with his mother Sarah, his father Kyle Reese, and the reprogrammed Terminators that protect him. Each one shows a different side of him.

Sarah Connor is the person he is protecting and the person who prepared him. In Terminator 2: Judgment Day she is first seen as a woman in a hospital whom John does not believe, and by the steel mill scene they work as a pair. In Terminator: Dark Fate, after his death, she spends decades hunting Terminators.

Kyle Reese is the soldier John sends back in time and, in the first film, the man who fathers him with Sarah. In Terminator Salvation Skynet's kill list includes John and a young Kyle Reese, played by Anton Yelchin. In Terminator Genisys, Jai Courtney plays Reese, and John sends him to 1984 to protect Sarah.

The protector machines include the T-800 in Terminator 2: Judgment Day, which guards him from the T-1000, the older Terminator in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines and Pops in Terminator Genisys. John orders the T-800 not to kill people and then weeps when it must be destroyed, which makes it the closest thing he has to a father figure in the second film.

Kate Brewster, played by Claire Danes, is his ally in Terminator 3. The T-X targets her first, and the Terminator tells them that in the future it was Kate who reprogrammed it. Marcus Wright is the cyborg who gives him a second chance in Salvation, and Miles Dyson is the engineer John helps persuade in Terminator 2.

In Dark Fate, Dani Ramos is the person destined to lead the human resistance against the AI called Legion, and Grace is the soldier sent to protect her. Both occupy the position John held in earlier timelines.

John Connor survives in Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines and Terminator Salvation, is destroyed as a machine hybrid in Terminator Genisys, and is killed by a T-800 in Terminator: Dark Fate. The outcomes differ because the series does not keep a single timeline, and he dies in two of the five films in which he appears.

In Terminator 2: Judgment Day he survives the destruction of the T-1000 and the T-800, and the final scene shows him on the highway with Sarah facing an open future. In Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines he survives the T-X and shelters with Kate Brewster in the bunker as Skynet launches its nuclear attack, and he begins taking command of the survivors by answering the radio calls. In Terminator Salvation his heart is too badly damaged to survive, so Marcus Wright gives John his own heart and dies. John then radios the Resistance to say that this battle is won but the war against the machines goes on.

His two deaths come in the films that rewrite events. In Terminator Genisys, Pops traps John inside the field of the time machine's reactor, and both are destroyed when it detonates in the Cyberdyne building, which also wrecks the Genisys core. In Terminator: Dark Fate, a T-800 kills him in front of Sarah in Guatemala in 1998, and that death is the starting point for her later life.

There is no confirmed next appearance. The next film, an untitled James Cameron project, is in development with no title, cast or date announced, so John's place in it is unknown. See new terminator movie for the current status.

My favorite John Connor moment is the steel mill goodbye in Terminator 2: Judgment Day, and in my opinion it remains the best use of the character in the series. The T-800 convinces a tearful John that its technology must never help build Skynet, and Sarah lowers it into the molten steel. It works because the boy who ordered the machine not to kill people is now the one losing it, so the scene is about what John has learned rather than about the effects.

The second pick is the ending of Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines. It could be argued that the film is uneven, but the final stretch is bold: John does not defeat Skynet and instead accepts that Judgment Day cannot be stopped, then starts answering the radio calls of survivors. That gives Nick Stahl's version a clear turn from a hiding drifter to the leader the story has promised since 1984.

Third is the transplant in Terminator Salvation. Christian Bale plays John as a commander who is also a target, and Marcus Wright giving his heart pays off the deal the two men made earlier in the film.

My riskiest pick is Terminator Genisys, which turns John into a nanotech Terminator serving Skynet. In my opinion the idea suits a series built on reversals, and Jason Clarke gives the fight in the Cyberdyne building some menace, but it asks viewers to give up the leader they had been waiting for. It is also the most direct answer the franchise has given to the question of why John Connor became a terminator.

If you are new to the series, start with Terminator 2: Judgment Day and follow the terminator movies in order from there.