Release OrderRecommended
0 / 6 watchedAll six films in release order. The only sequence where the twists and timeline resets land as intended.
The Cameron duology
- 1 The Terminator
- 2 Terminator 2: Judgment Day Ends with Cyberdyne destroyed and Judgment Day seemingly prevented.
The Rise of the Machines branch
- 3 Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines Judgment Day was postponed, not prevented. Starts one branch of sequels.
- 4 Terminator Salvation Set entirely during the future war. Continues T3's branch.
The reboot attempts
- 5 Terminator Genisys Reboot that rewrites 1984. Its planned sequels were cancelled.
- 6 Terminator: Dark Fate Latest released film. A direct T2 sequel that ignores T3 onward. The new AI is Legion.
About Terminator
The Terminator series spans six films from 1984 to 2019. A machine intelligence keeps sending killers back in time, and Sarah and John Connor keep breaking the future those machines come from.
Time travel splits the story into branches. T3 and Salvation follow one future, Genisys reboots into another, and Dark Fate follows T2 directly while erasing the rest. Watch in release order. It is the only sequence where every reveal lands as designed.
Good to know
The three branches: T3: Rise of the Machines (2003) plus Salvation (2009) continue the Judgment Day future. Genisys (2015) restarts the 1984 story with Sarah raised by a reprogrammed Terminator, and its planned sequels were cancelled. Dark Fate (2019) opens by killing John Connor after T2, replaces Skynet with Legion, and ignores every film between T2 and itself.
T1 and T2 are the essential pair. Everything after T2 is a different attempt at a third chapter, so treat the later four as alternate endings and pick the branch you like. The anime Terminator Zero ran one season on Netflix in 2024 and was cancelled in February 2026. No new Terminator film had been announced as of September 17, 2026.
