Terminator Timeline: The Story in Order and Explained

The Terminator timeline begins in 1984, when a cyborg assassin and a human soldier both arrive in Los Angeles from the year 2029. The Terminator (1984), directed by James Cameron, sets out the rule that every later film either follows or breaks: Skynet, the machine network that rules the future, sends killers back to remove the people who will defeat it.

The target is Sarah Connor, a waitress whose unborn son John will lead the human resistance. The machine works through the phone book killing women named Sarah Connor, while Kyle Reese, sent back by the resistance, races to reach the real one first. After the attack on the police station the two escape and spend a night on the run, and in that night they fall in love and conceive John.

That answers a question many viewers ask: Kyle Reese was John Connor's father from the very first film. The chase ends in a factory, where Reese dies helping Sarah destroy the machine. The final scene finds a pregnant Sarah in Mexico, recording tapes for her unborn son, as a boy takes the instant photo that John will one day give to Reese. She then drives toward an approaching storm, which leaves the war with Skynet unresolved.

Terminator 2: Judgment Day continues the original timeline after The Terminator, when a T-1000 and a reprogrammed T-800 are sent back from 2029 to kill or protect a young John Connor. Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), also directed by James Cameron, reached theaters seven years after the first film.

Inside the story the gap is measured differently: John is a boy living with foster parents, so years have passed since his conception, not months. Skynet sends the T-1000, a liquid metal killer, to murder him, and the T-800 guards him. Sarah is held in a psychiatric hospital because of her warnings about the nuclear war she knows is coming, and John at first thinks she is delusional.

The T-800 explains that Cyberdyne engineer Miles Dyson is developing the technology that will lead to Skynet, which the film dates to August 29, 1997. Sarah goes to kill Dyson but cannot, and the group wins him over instead. Dyson realizes his work is based on parts of the first Terminator, and he helps them break into Cyberdyne to take those parts and set explosives. Police shoot him, but he detonates the charges as he dies.

In the steel mill, the T-1000 is destroyed in molten steel, and the T-800 insists it must follow so its technology can never help build Skynet. Sarah lowers it into the vat as it gives John a thumbs up. The last scene shows Sarah driving down a highway with John, hopeful about a future that is now open rather than fixed.

Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines takes place in 2003 and tells the original line that the 1997 victory was only a postponement. Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003), directed by Jonathan Mostow, picks up John Connor as a drifter who stays off every record, with his mother Sarah already dead.

The machine from the future is the T-X, and its list of targets is the resistance's future leadership, with veterinarian Kate Brewster first. A veteran Terminator is sent to protect John and Kate, and it delivers the film's central claim: Judgment Day was delayed, not cancelled, and in the future it was Kate who reprogrammed this very machine. Along the way the group recovers a weapons cache Sarah hid in a mausoleum.

The cause of the war is a computer virus. General Robert Brewster, who runs a military program at Cyber Research Systems, activates Skynet to fight it, and Skynet is that virus becoming self aware. Brewster points John and Kate to Crystal Peak, which he believes is Skynet's core. The Terminator takes down the T-X at the cost of its own last fuel cell, and the survivors reach the bunker, only to find a fallout shelter and command post. Skynet is software spread across networked systems, so there is no single core to destroy. The worldwide nuclear attack begins, and John starts answering the radio calls of frightened survivors.

Terminator Salvation is set in 2018, after Skynet has already launched the nuclear war. Terminator Salvation (2009), directed by McG, opens in 2003 with a condemned prisoner named Marcus Wright signing his body over to Cyberdyne researcher Serena Kogan.

By 2018 John Connor is a leading Resistance officer, and he raids a Skynet facility where he learns that humans are being used to build a new kind of Terminator. He also learns that Skynet keeps a kill list that includes both him and a young Kyle Reese. Marcus wakes in the ruined world with no memory of the years in between, and in Los Angeles he meets Kyle and a mute girl named Star.

Marcus turns out to be a cyborg, and Skynet rebuilt him to lure John into a trap. He breaks free of its control and fights beside the Resistance, helping the group in the attack on Skynet's San Francisco headquarters. A T-800 stabs John through the chest and John's heart is fatally damaged, so Marcus gives his own heart for the transplant and dies. John radios the Resistance that this battle is won but the war goes on.

Terminator Genisys is the film that resets the timeline: it rewrites 1984, then moves Judgment Day to 2017 and renames Skynet's launch as an app. Terminator Genisys (2015), directed by Alan Taylor, starts in 2029, with John Connor's Resistance close to beating Skynet and Kyle Reese volunteering to follow a killer sent after Sarah.

What Reese finds in 1984 no longer matches The Terminator. Sarah has been raised by a reprogrammed Terminator she calls Pops, and a T-1000 is waiting for them. Reese carries memories of a different future, including a Judgment Day that arrives in 2017 rather than 1997.

The time device carries the trio to San Francisco in 2017, where Genisys is about to go live and connect every device. It is Skynet under a new name, and John Connor has been captured and converted into a nanotech machine serving it. The finale at the Cyberdyne building ends when Pops pins John inside the time machine's reactor field, destroying both and the Genisys core. Pops is rebuilt from liquid metal debris, and Sarah and Reese leave together. A post credits scene shows the core surviving in a protected underground chamber, which suggests Skynet could return.

Terminator: Dark Fate is the second direct branch from Terminator 2: Judgment Day, jumping from 1998 to 2020 and discarding the films made in between. Terminator: Dark Fate (2019), directed by Tim Miller, treats Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, Terminator Salvation and Terminator Genisys as events that never occurred.

Its first scene is the cost of the Terminator 2 ending: in 1998 a T-800 shoots John Connor in front of Sarah. That same machine later lives under the name Carl. Sarah spends the decades after hunting arrivals from the future, guided by tip off messages.

In 2020 Mexico City, factory worker Dani Ramos becomes the target of the Rev-9, which can split into a liquid metal body and a hard endoskeleton. Grace, an augmented soldier from 2042, protects her and says a defense AI named Legion, not Skynet, started the nuclear war in her timeline. Dani is destined to lead the resistance against it. The tip offs take the group to the U.S. and Mexico border and to Carl, who has developed a conscience. At a hydroelectric dam, the dying Grace tells Dani to use her power core as a weapon. Dani destroys the Rev-9 with it, Carl is destroyed in the same blast, and Dani and Sarah are left to prepare for the coming war.

The Terminator timeline explained: the original line runs from The Terminator (1984) through Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines and Terminator Salvation continue it, Terminator Genisys resets it, and Terminator: Dark Fate follows Terminator 2 directly while ignoring the three films in between. Perhaps the clearest way to read it is as four branches rather than one straight line.

Branch 1, the original line, 1984 to 1991. The Terminator and Terminator 2: Judgment Day both center on Sarah Connor and her son. A machine and a soldier travel from 2029 to 1984, John is conceived, and in the sequel Sarah, John and Miles Dyson destroy the T-1000 and the Cyberdyne research that would lead to Skynet, which was due to become self-aware on August 29, 1997.

Branch 2, the line continues. Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines argues that Judgment Day was only postponed, and Skynet, a program spread across networked systems, launches the nuclear attack. Terminator Salvation then jumps to 2018 and shows the war that follows, with John as a leading Resistance officer and a young Kyle Reese on Skynet's kill list.

Branch 3, the reset. Terminator Genisys goes back to 1984 and finds the past already altered. Sarah has been raised alongside a reprogrammed Terminator, Judgment Day moves from 1997 to 2017, and Skynet arrives as an app called Genisys.

Branch 4, the direct sequel. Terminator: Dark Fate follows Terminator 2: Judgment Day and treats Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, Terminator Salvation and Terminator Genisys as never having happened. It opens with John killed in 1998, and Sarah hunts Terminators for decades afterward. In Grace's timeline a different AI called Legion is the threat.

Is Terminator set in 2029? Partly. The future war in The Terminator, Terminator 2: Judgment Day and Terminator Genisys is placed in 2029, but the story itself moves between 1984, 1998, 2003, 2017 and 2020 depending on the film. Terminator Salvation sits in 2018 and Grace in Terminator: Dark Fate comes from 2042.

Watch in release order for the story as it was told; each later film then either continues or overrides the earlier ones. The full list is on our Terminator movies in order page, and the Terminator movies hub covers the rest of the series.