T-1000 Terminator: Who It Is, Who Plays It and How It Ends

Robert Patrick plays the T-1000, the liquid metal Terminator Skynet sends through time to kill John Connor as a boy in Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991). The film was directed by James Cameron, and Patrick is billed fourth, behind Arnold Schwarzenegger, Linda Hamilton and Edward Furlong. The credit there reads simply "T-1000".

The film is set in 2029, when Skynet and the human resistance are locked in a war, and the machines choose a shape shifting killer instead of a metal frame like the one in The Terminator (1984). That is the whole idea of the character. It is a machine that can take a new form on demand, which makes it a very different threat from the relentless but recognizable cyborg that hunted Sarah Connor in Los Angeles.

The T-1000 appears in two films. Its second outing is Terminator Genisys (2015), directed by Alan Taylor, where Lee Byung-hun is credited as "Cop / T-1000". So, if you are searching for the T-1000 Terminator actor, Patrick is the answer for Terminator 2: Judgment Day and Lee Byung-hun is the answer for Terminator Genisys.

In Terminator 2: Judgment Day the T-1000 hunts John Connor from the mall to the steel mill, and in Terminator Genisys it returns briefly in 1984 to attack Sarah, Kyle Reese and Pops, the reprogrammed Terminator she calls by that name. The first film gives it a full arc, and the second gives it a cameo.

In Terminator 2 the resistance sends back a reprogrammed T-800 to guard John. Sarah Connor is held in a hospital for her warnings about Judgment Day, and John lives with foster parents. The T-1000 tracks John to a shopping mall, where the T-800 arrives just in time to help him escape.

From there the film becomes a chase. John orders the T-800 not to kill people and to help free his mother, and the three of them flee the T-1000 after the breakout. The T-800 explains that Cyberdyne engineer Miles Dyson is developing the technology that will lead to Skynet, so the group has two jobs at once: stop the future war at its source and stay ahead of the machine that is hunting them.

The climax is set in a steel mill. There the T-1000 disables the T-800 and imitates Sarah to lure John out of hiding, which is the clearest use of its shape shifting in the film. Sarah and the reactivated T-800 then push it into molten steel, where it is destroyed.

In Terminator Genisys a T-1000 is sent to 1984 to stop Sarah Connor, Kyle Reese and Pops, and the three of them destroy it.

In Terminator 2: Judgment Day the T-1000 hunts John Connor while the reprogrammed T-800 protects him, and the T-1000 disables the T-800 at the steel mill before it is reactivated. The two machines meet at the mall and again at the mill, and the T-800 helps finish the fight once it is back on its feet.

Its link to Sarah Connor is more personal. At the mill it imitates her to draw John out, and later it is Sarah and the reactivated T-800 who push it into the molten steel. Behind all of this sits Skynet, which sent the machine and is the reason for the whole chase. The group's other aim, stopping Cyberdyne's work through Miles Dyson, is a race against the same network.

In Terminator Genisys the T-1000 is sent against Sarah, Reese and Pops, and the three of them destroy it. Later films reach for the same idea with different models, for example the T-X in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, described as a new, more advanced killer machine, and the Rev-9 in Terminator: Dark Fate. You can see all the models together on the Terminator models page.

The T-1000 is destroyed in both of its films, and in Terminator 2: Judgment Day the weakness that finishes it is molten steel. At the end of the steel mill fight Sarah and the reactivated T-800 push it into the vat, and the machine is destroyed there. John then throws the old Terminator's arm and chip into the steel as well, so that nothing from the future survives to help build Skynet.

In Terminator Genisys the T-1000 sent after Sarah, Reese and Pops is destroyed by the three of them in 1984. Nothing in the film brings it back.

The saga moved on to other machines: Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines sends the T-X, and Terminator: Dark Fate introduces the Rev-9, which can split into a liquid metal body and a hard endoskeleton.

The steel mill is the best T-1000 scene because it turns the character's shape shifting against the heroes. When the machine imitates Sarah to lure John out, the audience has already learned that it can look like anyone, so the threat feels earned rather than announced. That is the strongest use of a shape shifting villain in the saga.

My second pick is the mall, which introduces the T-1000 and the T-800 in the same sequence and shows the difference between them at once: the T-800 arrives in time to help John escape, and the T-1000 simply keeps coming. It is a neat piece of staging, because the film tells you who holds the advantage before a single punch lands.

My last pick is the short return in Terminator Genisys, if only for the small pleasure of seeing the 1991 villain reappear in 1984. It does not match the mill, but it shows how much of the character's reputation rests on one design idea. If you want the full picture, start with Terminator 2: Judgment Day and then read the Terminator timeline.