Terminator: Dark Fate (2019): Cast, Plot and Ending Explained

Terminator: Dark Fate (2019), directed by Tim Miller, follows a young woman in Mexico City who is hunted by a new Terminator while a veteran Sarah Connor and a soldier from the future try to keep her alive. The story opens in 1998, when Sarah and her son John are hiding in Guatemala and an older T-800 Terminator appears and kills John.

Years later, in Mexico City, a young factory worker named Dani Ramos is targeted by a new, shapeshifting killer machine called the Rev-9. Grace, an augmented soldier from the future, arrives to protect Dani and her brother Diego. The Rev-9 kills Diego, and Sarah Connor shows up in time to help the survivors escape.

The opening matters because the film asks the series to carry on without the character it started with: John Connor is gone before the first act is over.

The full plot of Terminator: Dark Fate runs from John Connor's death in a Guatemalan hideout in 1998 to a last fight inside a hydroelectric dam. Spoilers follow.

In 1998 Sarah Connor and her son John are hiding in Guatemala when a T-800 walks up and kills John in front of her. Sarah spends the decades afterward destroying the Terminators that keep being sent back to the past.

The story resumes in 2020 Mexico City, where factory worker Dani Ramos becomes the target of the Rev-9, a machine whose body can separate into a liquid metal layer and a rigid endoskeleton. Grace, an augmented human soldier sent from 2042, steps in and explains why: a defense AI called Legion started a nuclear war in her timeline, and Dani is destined to lead the human resistance against it. The Rev-9 kills Dani's brother Diego. Sarah, who has been receiving messages that tip her off to Terminator arrivals, turns up in time to rescue the others.

Those same messages send the group to the border between the U.S. and Mexico. There they find the T-800 that killed John. He now lives as a man named Carl and has developed a conscience, and he agrees to fight the Rev-9 alongside them.

The group tries to obtain an EMP weapon, but the Rev-9 destroys it. On a cargo plane the Rev-9 captures Carl and forces the others to jump. They parachute down near a hydroelectric dam, and the final fight takes place there.

Carl and Grace haul the Rev-9 toward a turbine, and Grace is mortally wounded. She tells Dani to use her power core as a weapon. Carl holds the Rev-9 in place while Dani destroys it with Grace's power core, and Carl is destroyed along with it. Dani and Sarah are left to prepare for the coming war.

Terminator: Dark Fate reached US theaters on November 1, 2019, according to TheWrap, after opening in the UK on October 25, 2019 and in Australia on October 31, 2019, as listed by Box Office Mojo. The UK and Australian dates are reported rather than confirmed. No premiere date, city or venue has been reported.

The film is rated R in the US, 15 in the UK and MA 15+ in Australia.

On money, Box Office Mojo lists a budget of $185 million, with about $62 million earned domestically and about $199 million internationally, for roughly $261 million worldwide. That is about 1.4 times the budget, and a production budget does not include marketing costs. For comparisons across the series, see terminator box office.

As of November 3, 2026, Terminator: Dark Fate streams in the US on Paramount Plus and fuboTV (per TMDB, via JustWatch). Paramount Plus is also available through the Amazon and Roku channels, and the ViX Premium Amazon Channel carries it too. It can be rented on Amazon Video, Apple TV, Google Play Movies, YouTube, Fandango At Home and Plex, and bought on all of those except Plex.

In the UK, Disney Plus streams it, with rentals and purchases on Apple TV, Amazon Video, Sky Store, YouTube and Rakuten TV. In Australia, it streams on Disney Plus and Stan, and it can be bought on Apple TV, Amazon Video and YouTube.

Netflix does not carry Terminator: Dark Fate in the US, UK or Australia.

Other films in the series are tracked at where to watch terminator.

The ending of Terminator: Dark Fate destroys the Rev-9 with Grace's power core, which also destroys Carl, and leaves Dani and Sarah to prepare for the war against Legion. Full spoilers follow.

The sequence starts on the cargo plane, where the Rev-9 captures Carl and forces the others to jump. They parachute down near a hydroelectric dam, and the last fight happens among its machinery. Carl and Grace drag the Rev-9 toward a turbine. Grace is mortally wounded and tells Dani to use her power core as a weapon. Carl holds the Rev-9 in place, Dani destroys it with the core, and Carl is destroyed with it. Grace dies from her injuries.

Why does Carl's death matter? It closes an arc the story set up in its first minutes: the T-800 that killed John in 1998 spends the film making something of the years afterward. He has a wife, a name and a conscience, and he spends his last moments holding the Rev-9 still so that Dani can finish it. The film never asks whether he is forgiven by Sarah. Opinion: that refusal is the most honest choice the script makes, because the closing action does the answering for it.

The closing scene shows Dani and Sarah watching a young girl play in a park, a version of the child Grace. The two women then head off together to prepare for the fight against the future war machines. Grace sacrificed herself for a future she is no longer part of, and the shot of the child suggests that the war she came from has not yet been fought.

How it compares with the rest of the series: Terminator 2: Judgment Day and Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines are both built around John Connor as the figure the machines must reach or protect. Dark Fate removes him in the opening scene in Guatemala and hands his role to Dani. In that respect it resembles The Terminator, where the target is a young woman who does not yet know what she will become, with Sarah now standing where a protector once stood for her. Terminator Genisys, the film immediately before it in release order, kept John at the center of its story, so Dark Fate reads as a deliberate break from its predecessor as well.

On the timeline, the events run from 1998 to 2020 on screen, with Grace's 2042 as the future being fought over. The terminator timeline and terminator movies in order pages set it beside the other films.

The biggest change is who the story belongs to. Dani, not John, is now the person the machines want, and Sarah ends the film as her guide rather than the center of the war.

Terminator: Dark Fate was filmed mostly in Spain and Hungary, even though much of the story is set in Mexico. Principal photography began in June 2018 in the Almería area of Spain, under the working title Terminator 6: Phoenix.

Tim Miller told the Mexican newspaper Excelsior that the Mexico-set scenes were shot in Spain because of worries about violence against the crew and budget issues, as Fox News reported. Madrid supplied the Mexican towns, with the Pueblo Nuevo and Lavapiés neighborhoods standing in for them and cars repainted to look like taxis. Further Spanish shooting took place in Catral and Cartagena, and at the Aldeadávila Dam in July 2018.

In Hungary, a C-5 fuselage set was built at Origo Film Studios in Budapest, which is where a cargo plane interior could be controlled in a way a real aircraft would not allow. Detention center scenes were shot at an old Nokia factory in Komárom, and further scenes were shot at a Mercedes-Benz factory in Kecskemét. Using working factories and a disused one gave the production real industrial interiors rather than built sets, a different approach from the studio-heavy futures of earlier entries such as Terminator Genisys.

Terminator: Dark Fate reunited Linda Hamilton and Arnold Schwarzenegger on screen for the first time in 28 years, according to Fox News.

• Tim Miller told the Mexican newspaper Excelsior that the Mexico scenes were shot in Spain because of worries about violence against the crew and budget issues.
• Filming began in June 2018 in Spain under the working title Terminator 6: Phoenix.
• Schwarzenegger finished filming on October 28, 2018, and the shoot wrapped in early November 2018.
• Edward Furlong's likeness was used digitally for the younger John Connor, and he is credited as John Connor reference.
• Alicia Borrachero is credited as Carl's Wife, and Stephanie Gil plays Young Grace, credited at age 10.

The film followed terminator genisys in release order.