Whenever a Neflix series reaches its conclusion, I always experience a sting of anxiety. Thats’s not just because I’ve become invested in the show and I’m desperate to see what transpires, but there’s always that stigma that the streaming giant simply just won’t renew the series despite there being as many plot threads left dangling as the would be on a tatty sweater. After all, we got multiple seasons of the spin off Jurassic Park animated series and yet there’s still no word on further seasons of Godzilla: Singular Point or Gamera Rebirth and I’d happily take a kick to the shins in order to get more episodes.
The overachieving Terminator Zero is no different as the final entry in its first season is full of blatant nods to further adventures, but then maybe it’s just ironically fitting that, for once, it’s the Terminators who are now at the mercy of a merciless algorithm…
Anyway, on with the show.
When we last left Malcolm’s oldest son, Kenta, he was pleading with his father to unlock the vault door leading to Kokoro’s inner chamber otherwise the Terminator who kidnapped him was going to empty its shotgun into the back of his head. Shockingly, with the future of all humanity hanging in the balance, Malcolm refused and the last thing we heard as the previous episode cut to black was the sound of a gunshot…
However, while the Terminator did pull the trigger, it seemed to have been bluffing and merely fired a shot into the wall which immediately makes you want to check to see if the show’s title had been changed to The Bluffenator. Why would a relentless killing machine suddenly relent, even if it was to torture Kenta instead by pulling on one of his arms? Before we can ponder this, Malcolm finally gives up, deciding that drawn out torment for his son is far worse than a quick death and opens the door.
It seems that the Terminator has finally achieved its goal and now has the full means to disrupt Kokoro for good, but luckily, Eiko, Misaki and Malcolm’s remaining children show up and the battle is joined. However, during a brutal battle, injuries of various nature are obtained – some of them far more serious than others – and in the aftermath, the Terminator once again scoops up Kenta under his arm and heads off in search of a plan B. Meanwhile, in the face of sacrifice and death, Kokoro finally makes her decision about what kind of God-like AI she wishes to be, but finds herself in a bit of a bind when it’s realized that the Terminator is making a bee-line to an EMP charge located in the building in order to take out all the machines in the building. But when it gets there, it makes a bizarre choice and tells Kenta he has to fire off the pulse – what is the reasoning for such a switch and what choice will Kenta make as the future of mankind teeters on the brink?
While the lion’s share of the withheld twists were unleashed with a vengence in the previous episode, Model 108 makes sure it too has enough surprises in the tank to put you in a state of shock and awe, but while time related rug pulls are incredibly important when crafting a Terminator story, equally vital is providing some hard hitting action to sell the surprises with some good old fashioned Sturm und Drang. An ideal mixture would be an approximation of the twists from episode seven and the action from episode four, but while Model 108 doesn’t quite meet these lofty ideals, it still serves as a rousing end to an extremely pleasing rebirth of the Terminator franchise.
First, let’s zero in on the negative and aside the nervousness I naturally feel whenever a Netflix show I’ve enjoyed ends on multiple cliff hangers, there’s a feeling that maybe too much of Terminator Zero’s final act is setting up questions that may never be answered. First example, considering that the allegiance of Kokoro was essentially the major thrust of the entire show, it’s a little bit annoying that we never truly get a straight answer about which way she’s eventually gone. While she isn’t predominately all kill all humans, she’s hardly the benevolent god Malcolm hoped she’d be (I don’t remembering her switching off the 1NNOs either). While I’ll admit an ambiguous ending is always a good thing in the Terminator universe, the fact that so many plot threads have been discarded by the later film sequels, it would be a real blow if yet more were left to fizzle out into nothing.
However, while Terminator Zero bends over backwards to facilitate a second season, the episode itself proves to be a great finish to a surprisingly good series that fully embraced the look and feel of the original, 1984 classic while still, eventually, finding an identity of it’s own.
By far the most intriguing surprise comes from a rather unlikely source in the form of complaining hostage bait, Kenta. While it seemed that the Terminator had kidnapped him because it needed at least one of Malcolm’s children for leverage, it turns out the eldest Lee child was selected for a reason. Not only that, but we find out that the Terminator sent to kill Kokoro wasn’t actually sent by Skynet at all, but instead was reprogrammed and commanded by Kenta himself sometime in the future! Not only does that explain why the Terminator didn’t give him a shotgun side parting when it had the chance, but it also infers later that it’s Kokoro who is the real threat and that a truce had been engineered in the future between Skynet and Kenta meaning that the war was all but over. Is the Terminator lying? It certainly doesn’t seem that way when he puts an impossible decision in young Kenta’s hands and fights off an army of 1NNOs while leaving the child to choose whether Kokoro perishes in an EMP burst. It’s the pivotal moment of the entire season (not to mention a nice nod to the boy and his Terminator leanings of T2) and it’s thankfully edge of the seat stuff and his choice to not kill Kokoro may have doomed humanity in ways far worse than before – especially when the AI is presented with the destroyed skull of the destroyed Terminator at the end of the episode.
The tragic thing about this is after all he’s gone through, Malcolm will never know if he’s been successful as he sustains a fatal wound during an incredibly brutal fight that also sees Eiko’s hand pulped in the Terminator’s grip, but as he expires, he reveals the last of of the episode’s secrets – that he is actually Eiko’s son. This obviously comes as some shock to the freedom fighter considering that living in a dystopian future while being hunted by killer robots should be quite a sizable form of contraception, while she initially panics that she’s caught in a time loop, the recent revelations the show has made about the nature of time travel insists that nothing is actually certain.
While there’s a couple too many threads left hanging for my liking, Terminator Zero ends on a good mixture of uncertainty and closure as the survivors head off into an uncertain future. But will we find out if this kickass ode to the Terminator franchise will continue on further into its own time line when so many of the previous movies have failed?
Please be back.
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