Why didn’t the human Resistance send anyone back to protect John Connor in Terminator: Dark Fate? The latest Terminator movie begins with a shocking and controversial sequence in which a new T-800 unit finally catches up with John Connor several years after the events of Judgement Day and finally succeeds in assassinating the youngster. Previously, the machine uprising had sent the original T-800 to 1984 in The Terminator, followed by Robert Patrick’s T-1000 in the sequel. Ignoring the later movies, as Dark Fate does, these are the only 2 units confirmed to make the trip to the past.
However, a voiceover from Sarah Connor explains that Skynet actually sent more than just those 2 Terminators to wipe John from existence, and it was one of these previously unmentioned models that eventually caught up to the mother and son and completed Skynet’s long-held mission. Many fans have taken exception to this retcon, and one of the biggest question marks is why the Resistance wouldn’t have sent a soldier back to stop this Terminator like they had with the previous ones? Future John sends his right-hand Dad, Kyle Reese, to stop Arnie in The Terminator, then a reprogrammed T-800 to protect his younger self in the 1990s, why then get lazy and leave further Terminators unchecked?
An explicit, canon explanation for this apparent plot hole isn’t provided in Terminator: Dark Fate, but there are several facets of the franchise’s mythology that could provide some insight. Firstly, time travel was a lot harder for the Resistance than it was for Skynet. In The Terminator, Kyle Reese recounts to Sarah the bloody battle he and his comrades fought in order to gain access to Skynet’s Time Displacement Equipment.
Since John repeats the trick for Judgement Day, he might’ve been able to steal some of that tech for his own side, but the process is still a grueling one. Soldiers would know that heading to the past is a one-way trip and even if a person was sent, there’s very little a single grunt can do against a Terminator. The primary motivation for John sending Kyle Reese was so that he could be born, and less because of his ability to destroy Terminators. When Dani’s Resistance send Grace back, she’s given cybernetic enhancements in order to put up a fight. Furthermore, Arnie explains in Judgement Day that Future John intended him to act as his guardian in the past. Perhaps the Resistance leader assumed that if he reprogrammed a T-800, his younger self would be safe for a few years at least, negating the need to send anyone else.
A second explanation as to why the Resistance may not have sent anyone back to fight Carl is Sarah and John’s altering of the timeline in Judgement Day. It’s not clear when Dark Fate’s T-800 was sent back, but it must have been sometime between the first two Terminator films, before Skynet ceased to exist. Assuming the Resistance even knew that more than 2 Terminators had been sent through time, it’s possible that the group’s existence was erased before any action could be taken. In the future timeline, there would inevitably be a delay between Skynet sending a Terminator back and the Resistance responding with some time travel of their own. If Skynet could displace more Terminators through time before their destruction, it’s theoretically possible that the Resistance could do the same, but the two wouldn’t happen simultaneously. Depending on how long this process took, Skynet and the Resistance might have been rewritten after Carl was sent, but before the good guys could react.
Unfortunately, these are only possible explanations, since Terminator: Dark Fate is deliberately vague about how many other Terminators were sent back by Skynet and when they arrived. James Cameron perhaps was aiming to deter the audience from digging too deep into the retcon, encouraging them to simply accept it at face value, but it is natural to question why, after two entire movies where the Resistance send back fighters to tackle time travelling Terminators, they slack off in Terminator: Dark Fate.
More: How Terminator: Dark Fate Sets Up A Sequel (& A New Trilogy)
