Sarah Connor (Terminator)

Sarah J. Connor
Terminator films and Sarah Connor Chronicles character
Linda Hamilton as Sarah Connor in Terminator 2: Judgment Day
First appearance	The Terminator
Created by	James Cameron
Portrayed by	Linda Hamilton Lena Headey
In-universe information
Gender	Female
Children	John Connor

Sarah J. Connor is a fictional character, the heroine of the first two Terminator films and the television series Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. She was played by American actress Linda Hamilton in the films and is currently portrayed by British actress Lena Headey in the TV series.

Character history

The Terminator

In The Terminator, Sarah Connor is a young Los Angeles waitress and college student who finds herself pursued by a relentless cyborg killer, the Cyberdyne Systems Series 800 Model 101 Terminator (played by Arnold Schwarzenegger), for reasons completely unknown to her. She is rescued from the Terminator by time traveling soldier Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn), who explains that in the future, an artificial intelligence called Skynet will be created by military software developers to make strategic decisions. The program becomes self-aware, seizes control of most of the world's military hardware (including various highly-advanced robots), and launches an all-out attack on human beings. However, a man named John Connor eventually leads the human Tech-Com resistance to victory, only to discover that in a last-ditch effort, Skynet had researched time travel and sent a robotic killer back in time in an effort to destroy John Connor's family before he can be born. John Connor is Sarah's future son, and Connor sends back a trusted sergeant (Reese - who, unbeknownst to Reese, is John's father) to protect his mother at all costs. During their brief time together, Sarah falls in love with Reese. Reese becomes the only thing protecting her from the Terminator, and her only companion as they flee together. Initially, she is unaware that Reese himself had been in love with her from afar, having been given a picture of her by John Connor, and having always admired her legendary strength and resilience. They share a night of intimacy that results in the conception of John. Their relationship is cut short when Reese dies fighting the Terminator in a Cyberdyne factory; Sarah in turn crushes the Terminator in a hydraulic press. Though Reese's death deeply saddens her, his sincerity and courage inspires Sarah to carry on and develop the necessary skills and abilities that would make her a suitable mentor and teacher to John.

Terminator 2: Judgment Day

We next see Sarah Connor about eleven years after the events of Terminator. She and John have been separated. John is in a foster home and Sarah has been institutionalized in Pescadero Sate Hospital-A Criminally Disordered Retention Facility. In the years between films she has transformed herself from the mousy woman seen at the beginning of the first movie into a muscled violent warrior. In fact the first image of her in the film is of her doing pull-ups on her hospital bed. After the death of Kyle Reese, Sarah took his warnings, and the responsibility of raising the hope of mankind, to heart. She dropped off the grid, the better to protect herself and John. She lived a semi-criminal life among various outlaws and survivalists and attempted to teach her son the skills he would need to lead the resistance. Eventually her activities, and her claims of fighting evil robots from the future led to her being deemed crazy and therefore being committed. Sarah only seemed to confirm the judgment of psychiatrists by committing acts of violence against hospital staff and attempting to escape multiple times. During her final escape attempt, Sarah encounters two different terminator models. One is the T-1000, a liquid metal cyborg sent back to kill her son. The other is a T-800 of the same model which tried to murder her, and was sent back to protect them. When she initially encounters the T-800 she flees in fear, but goes with him when she sees her son, John, accompanying him.

Sarah finds it nearly impossible to accept that the T-800 is benevolent; throughout the film, she remains hostile towards it and what it represents, while her own son develops a bond with it, resembling a father-son relationship. In the director's cut of the movie, it is revealed that Sarah has an opportunity to destroy the machine's processor, thus killing it. She nearly does so, but John stops her.

In a moment of desperation, Sarah attempts to murder Miles Dyson, the computer researcher who is destined to build the revolutionary microprocessor that eventually becomes Skynet. In doing this, she loses touch with her humanity, becoming eerily similar to the Terminator itself. Ultimately, she regains her humanity and does not kill Dyson. Shortly afterwards, John and the T-800 arrive and, together, they succeed in persuading Dyson to stop his research and destroy all recovered remnants of the first Terminator. The Terminator then, with the help of Sarah Connor, destroys himself, despite the protests of the young John.

In the first Terminator movie, it is mentioned that Sarah was a legend among members of the resistance, teaching her son to fight and organize while they were still in hiding prior to the war. An alternate epilogue to Terminator 2 shows her living to become a grandmother. That ending, however, was not included in the theatrical release.

Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines

In Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, Sarah Connor is already dead, having succumbed to leukemia in 1997, after the events of Terminator 2, following a three year battle with the disease. She lived long enough to see the original 1997 "judgment day" pass without incident. Her ashes were spread at sea while a casket containing a cache of weapons was placed for John to find at a false gravesite. The epitaph on her mausoleum niche reads: No fate but what we make.

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles

File:Connor, Sarah (TSCC).jpg

Headey as Sarah Connor in T:SCC.

In November 2005, 20th Century Fox announced that it would produce a television series called Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles featuring the adventures of the title character and her son in the years after Terminator 2: Judgment Day. This was followed by a November 2006 announcement that Lena Headey had been chosen to play Sarah Connor. The choice to cast Headey has been criticized by a some fans and critics, notably those who feel only an athletic, muscular woman should fill the role established by Hamilton, who transformed her body into that of a muscled warrior for Terminator 2. The controversy has been covered by the Los Angeles Times, The Boston Herald, and The Guardian, as well as in online forums.

The television series largely overwrites the continuity of the third film. The series opens in 1993, two years after the events of T2. Sarah and John seem to be living a peaceful life. Sarah is even engaged, to paramedic Charley Dixon. However, Sarah, fearing discovery, and perhaps, as John suggests, the certainty of a stable life, forces the two of them to flee again. On his first day in his new school, John is attacked by a T-888 Terminator calling himself Cromartie, who posed as a substitute teacher. He only escapes with the help of Cameron, a teenaged girl terminator sent back to protect him. Sarah hears of the shooting on TV and rushes to the school, but is captured by Cromartie, who uses her to lure John into a trap. Again with the help of Cameron they escape, fleeing to a bank where resistance members have hidden the parts of a time machine. As Cromartie attacks them, the trio disappear. When they reappear it is the year 2007.

Cameron suggests to Sarah that their purpose in this time is to stop Skynet, which she claims will go on line in 2011. Sarah argues that time traveling was a wrong move and that if she had been allowed to stay in 1999 she would have had longer to prepare John and to prepare to destroy Skynet. It is at this point that Cameron informs her that she would have died in the intervening years of cancer. Traveling to the future has given Sarah the time she needs to destroy Skynet in its infancy. As the three of them attempt to evade discovery, and track down the origins of Skynet, Sarah is burdened with the extra knowledge that her own body might betray her. The second episode of the series show's Sarah at a doctor’s appointment where she is informed that she is completely healthy. Nevertheless, she seeks preventative measures from the doctor, hoping to avoid cancer altogether. Later episodes show her more intensively training her body, and she also is seen taking a handful of vitamins.

In the episode, Queen's Gambit, she discovers that her deceased lover, Kyle Reese, has a brother named Derek, who's also a time-travelling Resistance agent. Tormented by the memory of being unable to save Kyle, she hopes to save Derek from a similar fate after he is mortally wounded by another T-888 Terminator. After she revealed his true identity to John, he seeks the aid of her former fiancé, Charley Dixon, to save his uncle from dying.

Birth and death

According to the script for The Terminator (1984)—available on the Special Edition DVD—Sarah was 19 years old. The film was set from May 12th through May 14th of 1984, placing her birth date between May 11, 1964 and May 15, 1965.

In Terminator 2 Sarah's psychologist states that she is 29. The film itself shows on screen that it takes place when John (born 1985-02-28) is age 10 (between 1995-02-28 and 1996-02-27). This places Sarah's birth date between 1965-03-01 and 1967-02-27, making her 17, 18, or 19 during The Terminator.

The alternate ending for Terminator 2 (1991)—available on the Ultimate Edition DVD—shows Sarah alive and well on August 29, 2029. She is by then a grandmother (and John is a Senator) in a world where Skynet was never able to start its war on humanity.

The tombstone shown in Terminator 3 (2003) reads 1959–1997. The birth year would make her 24 or 25 during The Terminator. Her death was described as from leukemia sometime after the original "Judgment Day" (August 29, 1997).

The "Pilot" episode of The Sarah Connor Chronicles, picks up Sarah and John on the run in 1999. Her FBI file lists her age as 33 on August 24, 1999, placing her birth date between August 25, 1965 and August 24, 1966. This would make her 17 or 18 during The Terminator.

In the "Gnothi Seauton" episode, Cameron Phillips mentions that Sarah would have died from cancer, had they not jumped forward in time. Cameron also mentions that John Connor sent Cameron back in time to help leap over Sarah's death. At the end of the episode Sarah is at a doctor's office, where her forged drivers license shows her birthday as February 4th.

See also

• List of women warriors in folklore, movies, literature, and popular culture

External links

• A New Body of Work: Linda Hamilton Gets Tough in Terminator 2
• The Terminator at IMDb
• Terminator 2: Judgment Day at IMDb
• T2 3-D: Battle Across Time at IMDb
• The Sarah Connor Chronicles at IMDb