I’m not sure about this. I think @Lumpy has it right that Sarah could successfully avoid capture in Mexico or farther south indefinitely, and I think she’d take John with her.
The government, knowing that she wasn’t crazy, would actively search for her for a little while to ensure she doesn’t go blabbing to the media. But as it became clear that she wasn’t going to go public, they’d quietly stop the hunt. Eventually it becomes clear that having her disappear is the best thing for the government, so they do what they can to help her stay hidden.
Meanwhile, Sarah is no idiot and is now well-versed in time travel paradoxes, so she doesn’t trust that destroying Cyberdyne solved everything. She goes all-in on prepper conspiracy nut, building a large cache of weapons to take down the next Terminator or evil corporation, and constantly watching the news and police channels for any sign of things starting over.
That’s really interesting - I hadn’t seen that before. What’s funny is that the way the camera pans up to show the CYBERDYNE SYSTEMS logo seems like a big reveal - a ta-da! moment - but of course it wasn’t.
Sarah Conner is a violent, escaped felon. She would have continued only until her next encounter with th police. Not taken into custody, dead in final shoot out. There really isn’t any other possible outcome at the end if the movie. She is just a Krazy Karen on the run to her next sovereign citizen meeting.
Witnesses being listened to? No one will pay attention to eye witnesses, they didn’t see what they thought, they can’t be believed, and if they keep talking we will investigate thier entire lives and drag it all out in the open, or just make shit up.
Can someone remind me why Sarah returned to the US the first time? Anyway, since I doubt it was arrest and extradition, I’m pretty sure that means she returned to the US of her own accord, which means as of T2, she has demonstrated the ability to live in Mexico and Central America for an as yet indefinite period of time, and presumably for the remainder of her natural life, subject to her own whims.
So what happens after the end of T2? Sarah heads south with John and hides out as she did before. Until such time as she feels compelled to return to her old habits, and take down the system once more. For all we know she would be triggered by ChatGPT and that would be the thing to set her off again.
But between the end of T2 and the rise of ChatGPT? Probably living south of the border and below the radar. As for John in adulthood, well… can authorities pin any crimes on him after T2? I don’t recall if there are any scenes where he does something illegal and leaves behind irrefutable evidence to that effect.
I believe John said that his mom got arrested trying to “blow up a computer factory”. So I guess she returned to the US to try to stop Cyberdyne’s project.
Sarah Connor could not fade quietly into retirement in any scenario.
If she thought Cyberdyne / Skynet was averted in her specific time thread, she would remain ever obsessed that other Terminators were coming through some other gap in time. Her only real recourse to defending against it would be to go public, urging people to cache arms and watch out for robots, which would see her branded as a crackpot by most, but a ready target by the few in the know. As a crazy, armed anti-govt known associate of terrorists spouting stuff that almost everyone agrees can’t ever possibly be true, it’s really down to a race between assassination by Evil Corp, the
future Santos presidency or suicide by cop.
Well, Reese also explains that the terminators have been evolving over time. The first models had fake skin, they were easy to spot. The later ones had the vat-grown flesh exterior. So, they’re clearly keeping track of the development, so they can develop new ways of detecting them.
Yes, and up to that point of the story, she hadn’t actually done anything illegal. She lived in Mexico and South America because that’s where it was easy to hide, and also find training in weapons and the like. But she always had the option to return to the US, since up to then, the police only knew her as a victim of the terminator from the first movie. Becoming paranoid and learning how to use guns isn’t illegal, after all. She only ended up in jail when her paranoia finally made her take action against the people she blamed for Skynet.
(Not trying to thread shit, or fight the hypothetical, but…) While I like T2, I can’t care what what happens “after”. It’s a time travel movie where changing the past is a key plot point, so there’s no such thing “after”. Anything that happens in the film is subject to being overwritten and over-overwritten.
Thing is, the sequels showed that, every time a terminator was sent back in time, the time line changed. That means speculation on what would have happened immediately following T-2 becomes irrelevant because the time line will be changed in the past.
Quantum probability is a strange thing. All things exist until a choice is made, yet there seems to be a certain inevitability as far as human events are concerned. I really liked “Terminator: Dark Fate” it showed that, even though Sarah and John actually succeeded is stopping Skynet, humans still managed to develop the technology are cause the same kind of disaster.
I think the T2 novel series, written by S. M. Stirling did a pretty good take on the years following the events of the second movie.
Set six years after the events of Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Sarah and 16-year-old John live a relatively normal life under the assumed names John and Suzanne Krieger near a small town in Paraguay, believing they have destroyed Cyberdyne Systems for good and prevented the creation of Skynet. They own a successful trucking company known as Krieger Trucking, while also being proficient smugglers. Sarah works at the company, while John attends military school, quickly becoming one of their best students, gaining military skills, weaponry and hacking knowledge.
So, leaving the country, hiding in a place and managing professions that let them improve their skills and update their supplies if needed. Although in the context of the story, they think they’ve succeeded, especially after six years of peace. Sarah is on the edge of developing a serious drinking habit, and it concerns John - little signs of years of safety and lack of purpose have begun to erode them.
As for the series itself… it isn’t more ridiculous (well other than one MAJOR coincidence that even I balked at) than most of the other Terminator entries, but it does IMHO lean into the “No, the future is fixed, you can make minor changes but otherwise it’s self fulfilling…”
So while far from perfect, I’d argue it’s better than any of the post T2 movies in terms of story.
So Skynet was created by Cyberdyne reverse-engineering the the damaged CPU and the right arm of the first Terminator from the first film. right? And when they were destroyed at the end of T2 the heroes prevented Skynet from being built–thwarting Judgment Day.
In my opinion this is wrong. I mean the CPU had to originate for somewhere. All the ending of T2 did was reset the timeline to where Skynet was created originally without any use of time travel.