Summary
Terminator 2: Judgment Dayis James Cameron’s direct sequel toThe Terminator, and much like the first movie, it has plenty of complex sci-fi ideas and time travel concepts that can make it pretty confusing to watch. With multiple characters andvarious Terminator modelsjumping around the timeline to prevent a nuclear apocalypse, the film runs head-first into some complicated paradoxes that audiences have struggled to reckon with since it was released. The second movie is even more unanswerable, with the entire final act hinging on amission that doesn’t quite make sense.
While there are definitely somegood things about theTerminatorsequels, it’s widely recognized thatTerminator 2is the most exciting and engaging film in the franchise. The story follows John Connor, a boy who’s destined to lead the human rebellion against the machines of the future, as he’s hunted down by a new Terminator model. With the assistance of another Terminator sent back in time by his older self, he and his mother attempt to destroy all traces of Skynet before it causes the world to end. But this mission births a fundamental paradox that doesn’t work on any level.
Terminator 2: Judgment Day Ending, Explained
From the T-800’s sacrifice to Sarah Connor’s fate, there’s a lot to unpack in the explosive ending of Terminator 2: Judgment Day and its aftermath.
Terminator 2 Relies On A Bootstrap Paradox
And Nobody Has Been Able To Solve It
A bootstrap paradox refers to a logical impossibility that’s created through time travel, where an object is sent back in time and causes its own creation, thus making aninfinite loop that has no discernable origin. This is seen inThe Terminator, where John Connor sends Kyle Reese back in time to protect his mother, but Reese ends up sleeping with Connor’s mother and turning out to be his father. This is an infinite loop, with John Connor’s existence depending on his own decision to send Reese back in time.
…if there was no war, it’s not clear how Connor could have acquired a Terminator to send into the past.
However, the paradox inTerminator 2is much harder to explain. By sending a Terminator into the past and destroying all traces of Skynet technology in the ‘90s, future John Connor ensures that the war between humanity and machines will never happen. And it works - a flash-forward at the end ofT2proves that the war has been averted. However, if there was no war, it’s not clear how Connor could have acquired a Terminator to send into the past. No war makes such an action impossible, and if he doesn’t send the Terminator back,the war happens anyway. It’s another infinite loop, yet with no clear solution.
This Cannot Be Explained As A New Timeline
The Typical Solution Doesn’t Apply Here
Bootstrap paradoxes are nothing new, particularly in the sci-fi genre. There are plenty ofgreat movies that use paradoxesto their advantage, most often by explaining away the logical impossibility as the creation of a new timeline. By that logic, when the Terminator destroys the Skynet tech at the end ofTerminator 2, it creates a new timeline where the war never happened - but the timeline he comes from still exists, as does that version of John Connor. Unfortunately, this explanation doesn’t work forTerminator 2-and it’s James Cameron’s own fault.
The final scene ofThe Terminatorshows Sarah Connor receiving the exact same photograph that Kyle Reese will use in the future to identify her - proving that everything has happened the same way it always does. If Reese’s time traveling had created a new timeline, things would have happened differently and the future would look unfamiliar. But Sarah’s photograph is exactly the same as the one Reese has at the beginning of the movie, which rejects any theories of multiple timelines, and instead cements the fact that John Connor is caught in an endless loop.
The Paradox Is Part Of The Magic Of Terminator 2
The Movie Wouldn’t Work Without It
Ultimately, it doesn’t matter thatTerminator 2suffers from an unsolvable logic problem. The magic of this sci-fi universe is that not everything canbe understood, andsome things are just impossible. Sarah Connor even addresses this in the closing lines ofThe Terminator,recording a message for her son in the future: “If you don’t send Kyle, you can never be… God, a person can go crazy thinking about all this.”
This is James Cameron’s way of weaving a kind of escape net for himself into the story - yes, there are paradoxes and things that can’t be explained, but we can’t call them impossible when we don’t understand anything about real time travel ourselves.The Terminator’s paradox doesn’t really matter, and getting caught up in the intricacies of the plot only prevents audiences from enjoying the exceptional storytelling and revolutionary action sequences on display inTerminator 2.
