Warning! Spoilers ahead forTerminator#9!Dynamite’s 2025Terminatorcomics provide an answer to a long-standing Judgment Day mystery. Ever since Arnold Schwarzenegger first played the T-800 in James Cameron’sThe Terminator, the rise of Skynet’s AI has been taken as a given. The Terminators come from the future, and the human resistance needs to break the cycle.
ThroughoutDeclan Shalvey’sTerminatorrun, Skynet has sent its robots to different eras of human history, to varying results. It’s only until Skynet sends a T-800 to 1997 that Judgment Day is locked. A single T-800 prevents a team of time-traveling resistance fighters from destroying Cyberdyne Systems.
It might seem like yet another event in theTerminatortimeline, but the resistance fighters' failed attempt to destroy Cyberdyne’s headquarters is precisely what Skynet needed to doom humanity.
The Resistance’s Attempt To Prevent Judgment Day Inspired Skynet To Start It
The Terminator#9; Written By Declan Shalvey; Art by Joe Mulvey and Colin Craker; Letters by Jeff Eckleberry
Like previous issues,The Terminator #9takes the POV of the T-800to show the how the resistance comes prepared to kill anybody they suspect is a Terminator.By shooting the guards, they alert the infiltrated T-800, who murders the entire team before they can put a single bullet in the Cyberdyne building. Skynet sends the T-800 back to the same point, getting the same results every time.
Meanwhile, the Skynet system is already active in Colorado. Learning from the resistance’s attempt to destroy Cyberdyne, Skynet concludes that the"termination of the human species is necessary"and decides to launch Judgment Day. Without the resistance, Judgment Day might have been postponed. But without Skynet’s decision to start Judgment Day in 1997, the resistance wouldn’t have time-traveled to 1997 in the first place.
The only other option humans have is to go back and create the very situation they find themselves in
All things considered,Judgment Day’s paradoxical nature is especially dishearteningafterThe Terminator #9. In the future, the resistance has no choice but to survive a post-apocalyptic wasteland. On top of that, the only other option humans have is to go back and create the very situation they find themselves in.
Dynamite’s Terminator Shows Why Judgment Day Doesn’t Happen Earlier Or Later
Humanity’s Days Were Counted At The End Of The Millenium
TheTerminatorfranchise has provided different origins for Skynet and Judgment Day, but the very beginning must have always been the off-screen spark of a time loop.Terminator #9shows this time loop from a new angle.After countless visits to different points in time, Skynet sees the resistance’s 1997 attack on Cyberdyne as the final proof that its existence is incompatible with humanity.
Judgment Day’s imminent arrival retroactively improves James Cameron’s first twoTerminatormovies. Sequels toT2tried to extend the franchise withtwists on the original Judgment Day, but none of them came close to the originals. Likewise, Judment Day cannot be changed in-universe, as all attempts are rendered futile from the start, as theTerminatorcomics confirm.
