r/Terminator • u/Tulanian72 • 7d ago

Discussion This has always been a multiverse saga

There are no time travel paradoxes in the films, because every time a terminator or a person is sent back in time a new branching timeline is created. Which is to say, a new parallel dimension.

In T1, the Skynet that nearly destroyed humanity, but found itself on the brink of defeat sent a T-800 back to kill Sara Connor. That created a new timeline, a new parallel reality. Skynet was the result of a timeline in which no Terminator had ever threatened Sara Connor. Timeline T1 becomes T1a.

Now, things get weird from here. Technically the humans who sent Kyle Reese back cannot have come from the same timeline in which SkyNet sent the T-800 back, because, again, the past of that original timeline did not have a Terminator attack on Sara. They started in T1a, and now created T1b sending Kyle back.

Sending the T1000 back in the start of Terminator 2 moved them from T1b to T2. Then the humans send their friendly T800 back, creating T2a.

So on and so on.

They don’t create time paradoxes or loops, they branch reality into new timelines.

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u/Tulanian72 7d ago

Funnily enough, I don’t think like this because of any fun chemical enhancements.

I’m just autistic.

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u/DukeNukemsGlasses 5d ago

It doesn't make sense from Skynet's point of view though. Why would it send the T800 back to kill Sarah if that version of Skynet will never benefit from it and only an alternate timeline Skynet will?

Unless Skynet didn't know that time travel would create alternate timelines, it was a last ditch effort with experimental technology after all.

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u/Tulanian72 5d ago

The story has never made sense from Skynet’s POV. If it knows enough to understand and use time travel it knows there’s no way to change the past, only to create new parallel time lines.

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u/Misfit_Stitch 7d ago

I love this take. Thanks for posting it. I’m only one marijuana in at this time of day but give me a few hours to catch up.

That’s kind of how I always saw the movies but never really thought to articulate it.

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u/TheSquirrelmancer 2d ago

Nope, the first movie is a bootstrap paradox. Everything else that comes after is fans attempt to force a chain of logic on something like franchise fiction that doesn't need to be logical.

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u/Finnsbomba 7d ago

You should've stopped smoking like two marijuanas ago. That shit can kill you.