Sarah Connor Terminator: Who She Is and Who Plays Her

Sarah Connor is the woman whose son will one day lead humanity against the machine network Skynet, which makes her the human center of the whole saga. In The Terminator (1984), directed by James Cameron, she starts as a waitress in Los Angeles, and a cyborg assassin arrives naked from the year 2029 with one mission: to kill her before her son is born.

That is also the answer to why they are looking for Sarah Connor in Terminator. The machine cannot tell which Sarah Connor it needs, so it works through the women with that name in the phone book, while the human soldier Kyle Reese, sent back from the same future, tries to reach the real one first.

Two actresses matter here. Linda Hamilton plays her in three films: billed third in the 1984 original, second in Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991, also directed by Cameron) and first in Terminator: Dark Fate (2019, directed by Tim Miller). Emilia Clarke takes the role in Terminator Genisys (2015, directed by Alan Taylor). The credits also list her as "Young Sarah" and, in uncredited voice and voice-over roles, as "Sarah Connor (voice)" and "Sarah Connor (voice over)".

Her name also appears in the title of a television series, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (2008). That series is a separate production from the films, and the film credits above do not include it.

If you are new to the saga, the Terminator Movies in Order guide shows where each appearance sits.

Sarah Connor survives the 1984 and 1991 films as the target and then the fighter, is absent from Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, is reimagined in Terminator Genisys, and returns in Terminator: Dark Fate. Each version answers a different question about whether the future can be changed, and the film pages cover the full plots, so this is her thread through them.

The Terminator (1984). Reese finds Sarah and gets her away from the machine, but the police do not believe their story, and the machine attacks the station where she is held. Reese and Sarah escape and spend a night on the run, during which they fall in love and conceive John. Reese dies helping her destroy the machine in a factory. Some months later she is pregnant in Mexico, recording audio tapes for her unborn son, and a boy takes an instant photo of her, the same photo John will later give to Reese.

Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991). By 2029 the machines and the resistance are at war, and Sarah is held in a psychiatric hospital for trying to stop the nuclear war she knows is coming. John thinks she is delusional. After a reprogrammed T-800 protects John from the T-1000, they break her out. She goes to kill Cyberdyne engineer Miles Dyson, cannot do it, and the group wins him over. At the steel mill she and the T-800 push the T-1000 into molten steel, and she lowers the T-800 into the vat as well. She ends the film driving down a highway with John, feeling hope for an unknown future.

Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003). Sarah Connor does not appear on screen in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines; the film says she has died, and John's group retrieves the weapons cache she hid in a mausoleum.

Terminator Genisys (2015). Reese arrives in 1984 to find the past changed. This Sarah, played by Clarke, is already an experienced fighter who has been guarded since childhood by a reprogrammed Terminator she calls Pops. She, Reese and Pops jump to 2017 in San Francisco, where John has been turned into a machine hybrid, and they destroy the Genisys core.

Terminator: Dark Fate (2019). In 1998 a T-800 kills John in front of her in Guatemala. She spends decades hunting Terminators sent to the past, and she receives messages about their arrivals. They lead her to Dani Ramos, Grace and a reformed T-800 living as a man named Carl.

Sarah Connor's key relationships are with her son John, the soldier Kyle Reese, the Terminators that protect or hunt her, and Miles Dyson and Dani Ramos. Each one changes with the version of the timeline.

John Connor. He is her son and the reason Skynet wants her dead. She records tapes for him before he is born, and in Terminator 2: Judgment Day she must convince a boy who thinks she is delusional. See John Connor for his arc.

Kyle Reese. He is the soldier sent from the future to protect her, and in the original film he is also John's father. Terminator Genisys keeps the pair together at the finish. See Kyle Reese.

The Terminators. The T-800 in Terminator 2: Judgment Day is sent to protect John, and Sarah eventually lowers it into molten steel. In Terminator Genisys she is raised by Pops, and in Terminator: Dark Fate she works beside Carl, the T-800 named Carl who killed John in Terminator: Dark Fate. See the T-800. Her enemies include the T-1000 and the Rev-9.

Miles Dyson and Dani Ramos. Dyson is the engineer she cannot bring herself to kill in Terminator 2: Judgment Day. In Terminator: Dark Fate she meets Dani Ramos, the new target, and Grace, the augmented soldier who defends her. See also Miles Dyson.

Sarah Connor survives every film she appears in on screen, but Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines says she has died. The original ends with her alive and pregnant, driving toward an approaching storm. Terminator 2: Judgment Day ends with her alive and hopeful on a highway. Terminator Genisys ends with her and Reese leaving together to build a life, and with Pops rebuilt from liquid metal debris to rejoin them.

The saga does not give her a single ending, because the later films disagree. Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines says she has died, and John lives as a drifter afterward. Dark Fate shows her alive in 2020 and hunting Terminators, so the two films contradict each other.

In Terminator: Dark Fate she survives the final fight at the hydroelectric dam, where Grace dies and Carl is destroyed along with the Rev-9. She ends the film with Dani, watching a young girl play in a park, then heads off with her to prepare for the coming war.

Sarah Connor's best moment is lowering the T-800 into the molten steel in Terminator 2: Judgment Day. These are opinion picks, and in my opinion the best Sarah Connor scenes are the ones where she makes a decision rather than survives an attack.

1. Lowering the T-800 into the steel (Terminator 2: Judgment Day). Sarah finishes what the film began by sending the machine that protected her son into the vat, and its thumbs up as it sinks is the emotional peak of the saga.

2. Failing to kill Miles Dyson (Terminator 2: Judgment Day). She goes in to shoot a man for what he might build and cannot do it. It shows how far her certainty has cost her, and it makes the group's later plan at Cyberdyne believable.

3. The tapes in Mexico (The Terminator). Recording messages for an unborn son turns a chase film into a story about inheritance, and the closing drive toward the storm is a quiet way to end a low budget thriller.

4. Her return in Terminator: Dark Fate. Sarah arrives in time to help the survivors escape the Rev-9, and her entrance confirms the sequel is about her as much as Dani. It is also notable that this was the first time Hamilton and Schwarzenegger shared the screen in 28 years, according to Fox News.

Perhaps the fairest summary is that Linda Hamilton's Sarah Connor is the best version, because her anger has a cost, while Emilia Clarke's version in Terminator Genisys is a different character raised by a machine. Start with Terminator Movies Ranked if you want film verdicts.