10 Inevitable Plot Developments in Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles Season 3

By Shaun Clayton

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles has been canceled after ending a particularly awesome season with a cliffhanger, so there could have not have been a worse finish for fans of the show. Then again, science fiction shows have often had trouble when it comes to their third years (Season 3 of the original series of Star Trek, anyone?) so juts maybe having the show die may be a blessing in disguise. Here now is some creative speculation as to what Season 3 could have had in store for the fans.

10) James Ellison Becomes the Main Character

The entirety of season three centers around the character of James Ellison, the FBI Agent hunting Sarah Connor, walking around, constantly questioning whether he’s doing the right thing, a permanent furrowed brow on his face. We follow him as he sits in a church for a long time, reading bible quotes, contemplating the nature of God, wondering if he’s doing the right thing. We see him occasionally talking to Sarah Connor about what is right and just, and always wearing a suit and tie even in the hottest weather. There are absolutely no gun battles with terminators or fights with resistance members sent from the future. The show becomes about slow as a Jim Jarmusch film on horse tranquilizers.

9) Jesse Flores Stands Around

It is revealed that Derek Reese (Kyle’s older brother) did not shoot fellow time-traveling resistance member Jesse Flores and she still lives. With John Connor missing, the Cameron terminator she hated seemingly destroyed, and Derek Reese dead, she does not have much to do at all. She wanders aimlessly around Los Angeles looking for ways to continue to look really terrific despite coming from a hellish post-apocalyptic future where makeup and hair supplies must be a luxury, not to mention her amazing lack of scars. She befriends a runaway teenage girl who reminds her of Riley Dawson, and then kills her as well. Jesse then discovers that what she really has wanted to do all along is kill teenage girls.

8) John Henry Tries to Understand Humanity

The show checks on T-888 John Henry in the post-apocolyptic future trying to understand what it is like to be human, in a completely unique character progression completely unlike Data, Spock, Johnny 5, Pinnochio and Small Wonder. Confused, awkward, and shy, we watch him approach disheveled humans in a post-nuclear wasteland and try to get them to play Dungeons & Dragons, which they have no interest in whatsoever, instead focusing on trying to eat and not cough up so much blood. Occasionally, due to the malfunctioning Cameron terminator chip in his head, he finds himself hugging the humans too hard and breaking them.

7) John Connor Becomes His Own Father, Rendering the Circle of Paradox Complete

It’s not out of the realm of possibility that John will find himself in a situation where John Connor finds himself being sent back from the future to the 1980s by his future self to become his own father after Kyle Reese is killed. This means he has to have sex with his own mother and somehow die fighting the terminator sent back to kill her and end up back in the future as his older self. That may sound completely insane, but let us step back a moment and consider that John exists because he sends his own father back in time from the future to protect his mother and create himself. He also sends terminators back in time from the future to protect himself in the past so he can exist in the future. Really, the whole crux this mythology hangs on is like taking acid while staring at an Escher painting while listening to Dark Side of the Moon and with nobody really knows how this is supposed to work at all.

6) Allison Young’s Wonderful Life

Allison Young, the human that the Cameron terminator eventually kills and replaces, is put in the position of being this person fated to die. Thus she is incredibly chipper and upbeat, loves every moment of life, has nothing bad to say about anyone, and is constantly making plans about what she’ll do with her long, happy life. Every moment of her on-screen time makes her eventual death excruciatingly painful to know about, whether it be the time she brings a stray kitten back to health, or sings a song to brighten the spirits of starving children, or dances in sunbeams. The season ends with her dead body being dumped in a SkyNet garbage processor.

5) Sarah Connor’s Anatomy

Sarah Connor gets cancer and then we watch as she goes through numerous surgeries and chemotherapy to try to stop the cancer, usually through a series of montages and voice-overs. There is a lot of talk about inner strength and endurance, and Sarah Connor maintaining a tough exterior while holding her true emotions in check until they explode in a huge emotional release with her crying and wailing while holding a kindly old nurse who is full of wisdom. The last scene of the season involves Sarah gathering the strength to “walk out into the sun one last time” she dies with her eyes closed and her arms raised to the sky, collapsing in a field of daisies.

4) John Connor Teams Up with John Connor

The younger John Connor is stuck in the future trying to figure a way to get back to the past while not getting killed. He meets a tough as nails kid also named John, who possesses a masterful sense of oratory, superior fighting skills, a genius-like intellect, and surprisingly none of the whiny, unbelievable attributes that John Connor has as future leader of t
he resistance. They bond pretty well, and John Connor eventually reveals the truth about himself to the other John, how he is fated to lead the resistance and save the world. During their fight for survival John Connor teaches the other John everything he knows about the Terminators and Skynet. It is then that Shirley Manson’s T-1001 terminator shows up, kills John Connor, and then uses a time machine to take the other John and herself back to the present where this other John becomes a more believable and realistic John Connor.

3) Fox Interferes

Much like Fox tends to do with a lot of shows, Fox comes in and decides to “re-tool” the show.  Every week the main characters fight Terminators who are also blonde with enormous breasts. Lena Headly has to dye her hair blonde and get breast implants. Also, there is a tie-in to whatever movie is popular that week, such as Nazi terminators showing up around the time the film Inglorious Basterds is shown in theaters, or a terminator that needs to keep setting itself on fire to keep going, around the time a Crank 3 is made. eventually it just becomes a shitty 24 with robots.

2) An Army of Werewolf Terminators Show Up

Just having the young and old John Connor in one place creates such a rip in the time-space continuum that Tech Com is no longer fighting Skynet’s army of werewolves, but Skynet’s army of robotic werewolves. You see, the biological forms of the Terminators catch lyncanthropy, so that now they are cyborgs with a werewolf outside. So, as soon as the moon is full, the terminators turn into snarling, fur covered killing machines with a metal, red-eyed metal killing machine inside Even more of a problem for the resistance is that shooting a silver bullet into them only kills the werewolf outside, and doesn’t damage the metal endoskeleton underneath. Also, with werewolf genetics, dogs no longer bark at the terminators, but instead wag their tails and try to sniff their crotches.

1) James Cameron Suddenly Hears of the Show and Takes Over

Enough said.