Terminator Just Expanded Its Original Trilogy With an Ending Twist That Will Break Your Heart

Warning: Contains SPOILERS for The Terminator #3! While The Terminator is a fun action/horror/Sci-Fi franchise, it also has moments that are extremely heavy, and utterly brutal. Honestly, the entire premise is horrific, as it revolves around the borderline extinction of the human race after the rise of an evil AI network called Skynet and its nearly indestructible killer robots, Terminators. Death and carnage ravage this universe, making bleak moments an inevitability – and this latest one is absolutely heartbreaking.

In The Terminator #3 by Declan Shalvey and David O’Sullivan, a T-800 is sent back in time to the Vietnam War, and its target is an American soldier who had a child with a Vietnamese woman he fell in love with. This soldier’s entire family is at risk, as he’s clearly an ancestor of someone who becomes a problem for Skynet at some point in the future. So, in the middle of a warzone, this soldier has to defeat a killer robot from the future and get his family on a flight back to the United States.

While the task he was forced to undertake may have seemed impossible, this American soldier actually pulled it off on all fronts. He beats the T-800 Terminator, he gets his family safely to the United States, and he even makes it out of all that alive himself. It certainly wasn’t easy, and the soldier nearly lost his life a number of times, including when it seemed like he sacrificed himself to kill the machine and save his family. But, in the end, it was worth it, and victory was his. At least, that’s what readers are led to believe.

In the final pages of this story, this soldier is shown lying on his deathbed in 1997, decades after he made it out of Vietnam. And the final thing he sees before he dies is the mushroom cloud of a nuclear explosion right outside his window. The Terminator‘s original Judgment Day came to pass in this man’s timeline, and upon seeing the explosion, the soldier knew exactly what was the cause. He defeated the Terminator that was sent to kill him, but he lived just long enough to see that it didn’t matter, as the Terminators would always kill him eventually.

The Terminator Comic Series Makes Judgment Day Even Darker

The Ending of Terminator #3 Highlights the Underlying Theme of the Franchise

The sight of a detonating nuclear bomb is nothing new for Terminator fans, as this isn’t the first time Judgment Day has been shown on-screen. Both Terminator 2: Judgment Day and Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines depicted the nuclear holocaust that ushered in this world’s horrific future, and this comic is simply the latest to do so as well. However, Terminator #3 somehow makes Judgment Day even darker than fans have seen from this event in the past by using it to highlight the underlying theme of the franchise.

Throughout this Dynamite Entertainment comic series, the Terminators (and Skynet at large) have been compared to time itself. Just as time will inevitably end the lives of everything and everyone, so too will the Terminators. Even if a single killer-android is defeated, there is no escape from the machines. Terminator #3 highlights that in truly brutal fashion, as the survivor of the T-800 attack in Vietnam lives just long enough to be killed by Skynet’s world-ending attack on humanity, meaning he was still killed by the Terminators despite his previous victory – and that’s insanely depressing.

This Terminator Comic Highlights Another Grim Truth About This New Series: No One Is Safe

Plot Armor for Main Characters has Officially Been Removed in The Terminator

This issue highlights how Terminators themselves are something of a metaphor for time, but it also shows that no one is safe, including and especially ‘main characters’. This soldier was the main character of the story, yet even he didn’t survive the Terminators. Sure, he defeated one Terminator, but in the end, he died along with the vast majority of humanity on Judgment Day. In the past, main characters have had a certain level of plot armor (Sarah Connor, John Connor), and fans knew they’d be safe. But now, that plot armor is gone, and this comic issue proves it.

In every conceivable way, Terminator #3 makes Judgment Day even darker than it originally was, which is something that didn’t seem possible. Not only that, but it made the infamous event darker in the most personal and heartbreaking way, acting as a grim expansion of Terminator lore.

The Terminator #3 by Dynamite Entertainment is available now.

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Terminator

The Terminator franchise, launched by James Cameron in 1984, explores a dystopian future where intelligent machines wage war against humanity. The relentless pursuit of key human figures by time-traveling cyborg assassins known as Terminators is central to the narrative. John Connor, the future leader of the human resistance, is the core target of the malicious machines.