Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles: Born To Run [season finale]
By fred | April 11, 2009
(S02E22) Okay… I think this episode was pretty awesome, but I’m not really sure. See, somewhere in the last minutes/seconds of the episode, it just blew my mind and now I find myself here, looking back, trying to make sense of all of this. I’m not sure I do, but I just feel it in my guts : this was one freaking awesome finale! Sadly, chances are it will be expanded from season to series finale as well, but let’s hope not.
Let’s hope not because it was really suck, this show is pretty fantastic and we need to get more of it. That said, the beauty of this episode, if I got things right, is that it works well not only as ending the season, but also makes sense and remains satisfying as a series finale as well. Now that we’re all trying to recover from this, let’s talk about it, and try to made sense of it all.
The first part of the episode was not bad, even though it went kinda creepy in the closest thing we’ll ever get to a sex scene between John and some metal (albeit looking like Summer Glau, so I guess it is excusable… although the use of a knife just doesn’t seem right). We also got a confirmation (or two) that Weaver was indeed that liquid metal saw in the sub, and that John Henry wasn’t the future Skynet, but as suspected from long the future metal enemy of Skynet.
Now of course, the most interesting bit came from the very end of the episode, and I’m not sure I understood it all. Why I think, but I won’t try to really go into details as to when / in what order those events took place, because if I do I’m fairly sure either my brain will implode or I’ll realize none of it makes much sense. But it seems that, as we long suspected, in the future there isn’t just one war, or there aren’t only two sides.
There is obviously our war, skin vs metal, the one we’ve always know about for many years now. But at the same time there’s a war between machines, and even though those two are fighting to kill Skynet, and even though each side at one time in time did invite the other to join in, they never actually joined forces. Well, in the sub “Weaver” refused to join the resistance, and in our old present, Cameron pretended not to recognize the invitation, and I believe she went to John Henry to betray him/Weaver.
I mean, what happened there was that she took out and offered her chip to JH, right? And that was so he can take it in and walk away, not needing to be linked to the Turk through a huge cable, right? But if that’s the case, what left the room isn’t John Henry, but more Cameron in a new, 100% functional body, isn’t it? (Stupid question #1: does that make John’s bomb trigger useless, or was the bomb onto the chip and now inside JH’s head?) (Stupid question #2: if so, where’s John Henry? Somewhere in the Internet back in our old present? Maybe he will download itself into his brother, maybe that’s how Skynet knows about the Connors…)
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Shows: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
I love your theory that perhaps she offered him the chip so that John would have a way to disable him.
At this point, I guess we can only hope that the excitement over the movie will give the TV series a chance at renewal that its ratings did not.
P.S. What is going on with the site? It is insanely slow nowadays. I’d change providers if I were you.
I agree to BobDod that your theory is interesting. Made me think a couple of hours.
What i am engaged on most is:
If the future timeline we saw in this episode actually leads to the events which create the timeline we saw in season 1+2 (time travel of cameron, “creating himself”, …), how will than the war be possibly ever won? Since it obviously didn’t go that way before john connor escaped with weaver, he does not, and in fact is not able to, prevent skynet from beeing build. There is a closed circle between the two timeles. Only chance would be sarah still beeing in the right timeline to stop skynet.
I would be quite careful in talking about a time paradoxon here. No question that john connor existing only because he takes action “before” he exists, like you described, is a time paradoxon. But what i mentioned above is not like that. Depending on what will happen in hopefully coming season 3, it might just be a false temporal logic.
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I personally hated the season finale for this reason alone…it basically canceled out the third Terminator movie. At the end of the third movie we saw John and Katherine standing in the Presidential bunker as nukes went off all over the world courtasy of Skynet..however in the series John Conner never saw the apocolypse, instead he went forward into the future to become the leader he was destined to be. So far the series was doing very well filling the gaps in between the second and third movies. It was just silly to end it like that.
I personally think this was an awesome finale for the series. I hope theres a third season !
And Melly I don’t know if your going to hate the entire series after saying this lol but the creators of the show said the Sarah Connor Chronicals take place in an alternate timeline from Terminator 3 and only takes 1+2 into account. Basically it acts like Terminator 3 never happens which personally I’m thankful for because has awesome as some of the action was in 3 the ending was kind of lame.. lol
I personally think this was an awesome finale for the series. I hope theres a third season !
And Melly I don’t know if your going to hate the entire series after saying this lol but the creators of the show said the Sarah Connor Chronicals take place in an alternate timeline from Terminator 3 and only takes 1+2 into account. Basically it acts like Terminator 3 never happens and theres also the fact that they jump forward in time over Sarahs death from cancer.
I have no hate for the series at all, I’m actually very disappointed that from what I’ve heard it won’t be coming back next season. Thanks for clearing that up for me. I was unaware that it was on an alternate timeline. That makes much more sense to me now and if that is the case then I take back what I said about the finale.
@ melly Jones,
the Sarah Connor chronicles IS in a different timeline than the events of Terminator 3(wiki) and it was made known in the very beginning of the show.