Given that no modern film can truly function unless it’s part of a vast, interlocking network—like a system of franchise machines, all working together to enslave humanity with their complex continuity demands—plans for the rebooted Terminator now necessarily include an intersecting companion TV series. The Hollywood Reporter says that the first in the upcoming Terminator film trilogy will follow Arnold Schwarzenegger’s cyborg in “a time-spanning story that sees him tasked with protecting Sarah Connor as she grows up,” and its effects animators tasked with blurring the evidence that Arnold Schwarzenegger is in his late sixties. And soon enough, that plot will be interwoven with a TV series from Thor writers Zack Stentz and Ashley Miller that, like so many viewers, ignores The Sarah Connor Chronicles and instead takes off from a “critical moment” in the original Terminator movie.
“Where the film's story goes one way, the upcoming series will take the same moment in a completely different direction,” THR writes, suggesting that the TV show will zag by having Sarah Connor’s Porsche-driving date Stan Morsky not stand her up, instead whisking her away for a wonderful night that rapidly turns into a whirlwind marriage, followed by their absconding to a nice little town in the Midwest to start a tomato farm. And then the film trilogy will find whoever plays Sarah Connor and a visibly grateful Schwarzenegger sitting on a porch, just quietly passing the time in a way that would certainly explain how they plan to keep having Schwarzenegger in Terminator movies. “I’ll be back,” Schwarzenegger will say, as he heads in to get more lemonade.