How to watch The Terminator Movies in Order: A Streaming Guide
“I’ll be back.” Arnold Schwarzenegger made a career out of three iconic words over multiple decades as a red-eyed cybernetic robot in the Terminator franchise.
How to watch the Terminator movies in order
Chronology is quite a puzzling issue when it comes to the Terminator movies. While the first three movies can be watched in the same order as their release date, matters get complicated with all the movies that came out in the 2010s as these included indirect follow-ups, spiritual sequels, and even a reboot of the entire franchise.
It’s for this reason the Terminator movies can be watched in three different orders.
Let’s get started with the classic pattern of watching them.
The Terminator (1984)
Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)
Terminator Salvation (2009)
Along with the aforementioned chronological timeline, Terminator: Genisys (2015) acts as a reboot of the franchise acting as a parallel story alongside the original Terminator. So, you can watch it as a standalone movie.
Terminator Genisys (2015)
Then comes Terminator: Dark Fate that ignores all events of other 2000s and 2010s movies and serves as a direct sequel to Terminator 2: Judgment Day. This gives us a new order to watch them.
The Terminator (1984)
Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)
Terminator: Dark Fate (2019)
In the first and classic order of to watch The Terminator franchise, the first movie directed by James Cameron starts off with Sarah Connor being hunted down by a murderous robot from the future (the titular Terminator played by Arnold Schwarzenegger). Another time-traveler in this narrative is Kyle Reese, who would have a child with Sarah named John Connor, the leader of the future resistance against the robots engineered by the Artificial Intelligence network Skynet.
While Reese and the antagonistic T-800 Terminator die in the first film, Cameron’s sophomore entry to the franchise finds Sarah Connor and her teenage son John fighting against yet another robot from the future (the T-1000). Schwarzenegger returns as another T-800 (but one with good intentions) as the epic continues with an explosive, interstate road trip.
Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines revolved around a grown-up John Connor in 2004. Next up is Terminator: Salvation that was set much further in the future with Connor finally living up to his fate and leading the resistance.
But when Terminator: Dark Fate (2019) brought back Sarah Connor into the timeline and shockingly killed off Terminator 2’s adolescent John Connor early on, the 2019 movie served as a direct sequel to Terminator 2 and ignored all the events of other entries in the franchise.
If you wish to binge watch all the Terminator movies in order, we have got you covered with a guide to stream all the post-apocalyptic, time-traveling adventures.
