T-X Terminator: Who She Is, Who Plays Her and What Happens to Her

A T-X is a shape shifting killer machine, described in the film as a new and more advanced model than the older Terminator (the T-800, played by Arnold Schwarzenegger) sent to guard John Connor. Skynet dispatches her to 2003 with a clear order: kill the people who will lead the human resistance, starting with Kate Brewster.

In Terminator 3 the T-X is a shape shifting machine that can take control of other machines, including the T-800 himself.

She appears in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, released in the US on July 2, 2003. The credited name in the film is simply "T-X", and Kristanna Loken is billed fourth in the cast, behind Arnold Schwarzenegger, Nick Stahl and Claire Danes.

If you are new to the series, the setup is easy to hold in your head. John Connor has spent years living off the grid, convinced that the machines that hunted him are still out there. He is right. The T-X arrives in the present day, the resistance sends back the T-800 to protect John and Kate, and the three of them are soon on the run together.

For the wider cast of machines, see our guide to Terminator models, and for the man on her kill list see John Connor.

In Terminator 3 the T-X hunts Kate Brewster and John Connor in one long chase that ends when the T-800 destroys her at Crystal Peak.

She first reaches Kate at the animal hospital where Kate works as a veterinarian, and the T-800 rescues Kate and John from her there. The group then retrieves a weapons cache that Sarah Connor hid in a mausoleum, and the T-800 tells them they have only delayed Judgment Day, not stopped it.

The hunt then moves to Cyber Research Systems, where Kate's father, General Robert Brewster, oversees a military program. Under pressure to stop a fast spreading computer virus, he activates Skynet, which turns out to be the virus becoming self aware. The T-X wounds Brewster and takes control of the company's machines. Brewster still manages to tell John and Kate where to find what he believes is Skynet's core, a site called Crystal Peak.

Her most dangerous move comes next. She takes over the T-800 and orders him to kill John. He forces his own shutdown to resist her, and she recovers and keeps hunting them. At Crystal Peak, the T-800 restarts and crashes a helicopter into her.

The T-X is connected most closely to the people she hunts and to the T-800 who stands between her and them.

Kate Brewster is her first named target, and John Connor is the other young survivor the T-800 is sent to protect. The T-800, played by Arnold Schwarzenegger, is her direct opponent, and the film shows her taking over his systems, which is the clearest sign of how far ahead of him she is. For his own profile, see T-800.

Her link to Skynet is less direct than in the earlier films. Skynet here is software spread across networked systems, and the T-X works on its behalf as an assassin while the system itself launches a worldwide nuclear attack.

There is also a family resemblance to the T-1000 of Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), a liquid metal machine that was sent to kill the young John Connor and that imitated Sarah to lure him out. Later in the saga, the Rev-9 of Terminator: Dark Fate (2019) is another shape shifting killer, though that film answers to a different defense AI called Legion.

The T-X is destroyed at the end of Terminator 3, and the T-800 is destroyed with her.

At Crystal Peak, he crashes a helicopter into her, then uses his last fuel cell to destroy himself and the T-X. The blast holds the bunker door open long enough for John and Kate to get inside. They then learn that Crystal Peak is an old fallout shelter and command post, not Skynet's core, so the nuclear attack goes ahead and Judgment Day arrives anyway.

The film therefore ends with her mission both failed and, in a different sense, fulfilled. She does not kill John or Kate, but the war she was sent to prepare for begins, and John starts answering the frightened radio calls from survivors.

The T-X does not return in Terminator Salvation, Terminator Genisys or Terminator: Dark Fate, and none of those films credits a character by her name.

The T-X's best moment is when she takes over the T-800 and orders it to kill John Connor.

In the first two films, a Terminator could be damaged, stripped down or melted. Here, a machine is turned into a weapon against the people it protects, and only its forced shutdown stops it. It is the cleverest idea in Jonathan Mostow's film, and Kristanna Loken plays the threat with very little dialogue.

The second best moment is the set of attacks on the Brewster family. She wounds General Brewster and takes control of the company's machines, which shows the story shifting from one hunter to a machine network. That makes her, in my view, the most dangerous Terminator seen on screen up to 2003, though the films never rank their machines, so this is opinion and not fact.

As for the T-1000 comparison, I would give the T-1000 the better film. Terminator 2: Judgment Day cost $102 million, according to Box Office Mojo, and gave us a tighter chase, with the T-1000 imitating Sarah to lure John out in the steel mill. Terminator 3 cost $200 million, according to Box Office Mojo (The Numbers lists $170 million, so the figure varies by source), and took $433 million worldwide. That being said, on pure threat, the T-X is the one I would not want behind me.