Apple TV Resurrects 31-Episode Terminator Sequel Nearly 20 Years Later
Felipe Rangel is a Movie and TV Journalist ScreenRant. He has been writing about movies and TV since 2021. Felipe joined ScreenRant in 2022, working across different teams, covering everything from breaking news to features to reviews and more.
Felipe is a writer who is an avid film and TV fan, with superhero movies and series being his biggest passion. He graduated from college in 2019, having studied Journalism. Before college, he spent a month studying at the Oxford English Centre. His superhero knowledge expands to the comics, with his undergraduate thesis being "Politics Reflected In American Comics."
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The Terminator franchise returns with a bang as a 31-episode Terminator series finally gets some life breathed into it nearly 20 years later, showing how it remains an excellent watch. When James Cameron directed 1984's The Terminator, which he also co-wrote, he created one of the most iconic movie franchises of all time. Arnold Schwarzenegger's career was largely shaped by it.
Somehow, Cameron managed to one-up that classic with the sci-fi movie that battles for the title of the best sequel of all time. 1991's Terminator 2: Judgment Day changed things up, having Schwarzenegger's Terminator take on the role of a protector. The movie set up an incredibly high bar for the sci-fi franchise, which has never really been surpassed.
Over the years, many Terminator sequels were made, both for the big and small screens. In terms of the follow-up Terminator movies, Schwarzenegger appeared in most of the films, save for Terminator Salvation, which starred Christian Bale and Cameron's Avatar franchise lead Sam Worthington. None of the Terminator movies released after Terminator 2: Judgment Day managed to even come close to the original two films.
Signal Received · Deep Space Broadcast The Ultimate Sci-Fi TV Trivia Quiz “The truth is out there.”
🚀Deep
SpaceFinal frontiers
⌛Time
TravelWibbly wobbly
👽AliensWe are not alone
👁DystopiaThe black mirror
💡Upside
DownHawkins, 1983
01
The most famous opening monologue in TV sci-fi begins: “Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the ___.” Complete the line from the original 1966 Star Trek series.
✓ Engage! William Shatner’s iconic opening — “Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before” — has become one of the most quoted passages in all television. Later Trek series would adapt it, but the Enterprise is the one that started it all.
✗ Subspace interference! The answer is Starship Enterprise. USS Voyager belongs to the 1995–2001 series, the Defiant to Deep Space Nine, and the Discovery to the modern 2017 series. It’s the original Enterprise, captained by James T. Kirk, that William Shatner immortalized in that final-frontier monologue.
02
The Doctor’s time machine is disguised as a 1960s British police box and is famously bigger on the inside than the outside. What is the acronym it’s known by?
✓ Allons-y! TARDIS stands for Time And Relative Dimension In Space. The name was coined by the Doctor’s granddaughter Susan in the very first 1963 episode. The police-box shape is the result of its chameleon circuit getting stuck while parked in 1963 London — and it’s stayed that way for sixty-plus years.
✗ Chronal distortion! The answer is TARDIS — Time And Relative Dimension In Space. The other options are invented distractors. The TARDIS first appeared in 1963 and has followed every regeneration of the Doctor since, though its interior famously redesigns itself whenever the showrunners want a fresh look.
03
The acclaimed 2004 Battlestar Galactica reboot — considered one of the greatest sci-fi TV shows ever made — was developed by which writer-producer, a veteran of Star Trek: The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine?
✓ So say we all! Ronald D. Moore developed the modern Battlestar Galactica, reimagining Glen A. Larson’s 1978 original as a gritty, post-9/11 political allegory. Moore had cut his teeth writing many of TNG and DS9’s best episodes. His BSG aired 2004–2009 and tackled terrorism, torture, faith, and what it means to be human.
✗ Frak! The answer is Ronald D. Moore. J. Michael Straczynski created Babylon 5, David Eick was Moore’s co-executive-producer on BSG, and Glen A. Larson created the original 1978 Battlestar Galactica. Moore took Larson’s cheesy space opera and rebuilt it into a Peabody Award-winning meditation on war and morality.
04
Netflix’s ’80s-drenched sci-fi hit Stranger Things is set in a small American town sitting above a secret government lab that tore a hole into the “Upside Down.” What is the town called?
✓ Friends don’t lie! Hawkins, Indiana is the fictional town the Duffer Brothers invented for Stranger Things — home to Hawkins National Laboratory, where Dr. Brenner’s MKUltra-style experiments opened a rift into the Upside Down. The show is actually filmed in Jackson, Georgia, but the Hawkins sign is now an iconic TV landmark.
✗ The Upside Down! The answer is Hawkins, Indiana. Derry is Stephen King’s fictional town from IT, Castle Rock is another King town (and an anthology series), and Springwood is from A Nightmare on Elm Street. The Duffer Brothers deliberately evoked King’s small-town horror tradition when creating Hawkins.
05
In The X-Files, Fox Mulder has a famous poster hanging in his FBI basement office — a UFO photograph with a three-word tagline beneath it. What does the tagline say?
✓ The truth is out there! “I Want To Believe” sits below a blurry UFO photo on the poster that hangs in Mulder’s basement office throughout the series. The line became so associated with the show that it was used as the title of the 2008 feature film, The X-Files: I Want to Believe.
✗ File that one away! The answer is “I Want To Believe.” “Trust No One,” “Deny Everything,” and “The Truth Is Out There” are all iconic X-Files taglines — but it’s “I Want To Believe” that’s literally printed on the UFO poster in Mulder’s office, and which became the title of the franchise’s 2008 movie.
06
Apple TV+’s Severance — about office workers whose memories are surgically divided between their work and personal lives — was created by a first-time showrunner who used to be a customer service rep. Who is he?
✓ Praise Kier! Dan Erickson wrote the Severance pilot while working soul-crushing office jobs — literally daydreaming about splitting his mind so the “work-him” would suffer instead. Ben Stiller came on as executive producer and directed most episodes, but Erickson is the creator whose personal ennui gave us Lumon Industries.
✗ Outie interference! The answer is Dan Erickson. Damon Lindelof created Lost, The Leftovers, and Watchmen; Ben Stiller is Severance’s executive producer and primary director (but not its creator); Jonathan Nolan created Westworld and Person of Interest. Erickson’s script sat on the Black List for years before Stiller championed it.
07
In 2018, Charlie Brooker’s Black Mirror released a groundbreaking feature-length episode that let viewers make choose-your-own-adventure style decisions for the protagonist. What was it called?
✓ Interactive transmission received! Bandersnatch followed young programmer Stefan as he adapted a choose-your-own-adventure novel in 1984. Viewers could make choices at key moments, branching the story into multiple endings. It was Netflix’s most ambitious interactive experiment — and the meta commentary on viewer control remains quintessential Black Mirror.
✗ Null pointer! The answer is Bandersnatch. USS Callister is the Emmy-winning Star Trek riff, San Junipero is the beloved ’80s romance episode, and Metalhead is the black-and-white robot-dog thriller. All are Black Mirror, but only Bandersnatch was the interactive choose-your-own-adventure special that launched in December 2018.
08
Joss Whedon’s space-western Firefly became a legendary cult classic after Fox infamously cancelled it — airing episodes out of order, burying the pilot, and pulling the plug. How many episodes aired on Fox before cancellation?
✓ Shiny! Only 11 of the 14 produced Firefly episodes aired on Fox in late 2002 before the network pulled the plug. The remaining three (including the two-hour pilot “Serenity”) first aired in proper order on the Sci-Fi Channel and eventually on DVD. Fan outcry led to the 2005 film Serenity — a rare cinematic rescue for a cancelled series.
✗ Fox strikes again! The answer is 11. Fourteen episodes were actually filmed, but Fox only aired 11 before cancellation, and they aired them out of order with the pilot held until last. The complete set finally aired on Sci-Fi Channel and DVD, and the fan-driven “Browncoats” campaign eventually convinced Universal to greenlight Serenity.
Transmission Complete · Signal Decoded Your Sci-Fi Rating
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/ 8
Trekkie-level canon — or still buffering?
That said, the Terminator franchise has not only lived off its big-screen DNA. Multiple sci-fi shows set in the dystopian franchise have been released over the years. Recently, Netflix canceled the excellent Terminator Zero after a single season. That said, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles is arguably the best sequel to Terminator 2: Judgment Day, and it is experiencing a resurgence right now.
Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles Is Trending Worldwide
Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles debuted on Fox on January 13, 2008. Starring Game of Thrones' Lena Headey, before the release of HBO's hit fantasy series, the Terminator show ran for two seasons and 31 episodes, with its series finale, "Born to Run,' airing on April 10, 2009. Now, 17 years since the show ended, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles is experiencing a resurgence through the Apple TV Store worldwide, where it currently stands as the 4th most popular TV show globally, according to data from FlixPatrol. As per JustWatch, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles is available in the usual VOD stores in the United States.
Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles leaves behind quite a few major shows on the Apple TV Store's global Top 10 TV Shows chart. Those include two projects from one of the most popular fantasy franchises ever, as the sci-fi series towers above both House of the Dragon, the first Game of Thrones spin-off, which recently saw season 3 conclude, and the original Game of Thrones, which starred Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles' Headey as Cersei Lannister. The only three shows above the Terminator series on the chart are Paramount+'s MobLand starring Tom Hardy, Hulu's PEN15, and FX's American Horror Story.
Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles Is A Sequel Worth Watching
The sci-fi series hails from Josh Friedman, who was recently one of the writers of Marvel Studios' The Fantastic Four: First Steps, having also had a hand as a screenwriter or coming up with the story for sci-fi movies like Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, Avatar: Fire and Ash, Avatar: The Way of Water, Terminator: Dark Fate, and more. On TV, Friedman served as the co-creator of the hit sci-fi shows Snowpiercer and Foundation in recent years. A huge element of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles' quality came down to Friedman's mastery of the genre.
Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles boasts a high 84% critics' score on Rotten Tomatoes and a stellar 87% audience score, making it a universally beloved sequel to Terminator 2: Judgment Day that cleverly disregarded the events of Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines. Instead, the sci-fi series followed Headey's Sarah Connor and Thomas Dekker's John Connor as they fought to prevent Skynet's creation and the end of the world. Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles is an intense show that never lets up, has solid action sequences, powerful performances, and layered characters, deserving its 2026 resurgence.
- Release Date
- 2008 - 2009-00-00
- Network
- FOX
- Showrunner
- Josh Friedman
- Directors
- David Nutter
- Writers
- David Nutter, Josh Friedman
KioskNews shows a cleaned-up reading view extracted from the publisher’s page — the original always lives on their site, not ours.