Why The Cast Of Terminator: Dark Fate Looks So Familiar
In May of 2019, fans finally got to see the first teaser trailer for Terminator: Dark Fate, the first entry in the franchise since 2015's Terminator: Genisys. Dark Fate marks James Cameron's return to the story of the killer cyborgs from the future — albeit as a producer, rather than the writer/director role he filled on Terminator and T2: Judgment Day. Instead, Tim Miller of Deadpool fame is taking the helm. Judging by the teaser and the usual tone of the Terminator flicks, while there might be just as much bloodshed in Terminator: Dark Fate as there was in Deadpool, it probably won't be quite as funny.
The first trailer features some familiar faces, not just from the Terminator franchise, but from other films and TV shows. Linda Hamilton is reprising her role as Sarah Connor, and she looks absolutely badass. While we don't see him much in the teaser, we get a shot of Arnold Schwarzenegger, presumably as another model of the cyborg to kill Sarah Connor in the original film. With his previous incarnations destroyed — not to mention the fact that robots don't typically age in the way Arnold has over three decades — there's some mystery surrounding his presence. Then again, when time travel is involved, anything is possible.
There are other actors featuring prominently in the trailer, including a new antagonist Terminator and an athletic short-haired woman who seems to be part machine even though she's one of the good guys. While these characters may be rookies in the franchise, they aren't exactly new to the screen. Keep reading to find out why the cast of the Terminator: Dark Fate looks so familiar.
Linda Hamilton as Sarah Connor
Though her role as the protagonist of the first two Terminator films made her an action icon, Linda Hamilton's weathered heroine Sarah Connor hasn't been a prominent figure in the franchise for decades. She was absent from 2003's Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, having been retroactively killed off (it was revealed that she died of Leukemia in 1997). She did lend her voice to Sarah's recorded diary in 2009's Terminator Salvation, but she remained off-screen and out of the story. She hasn't physically appeared in one of the films since she transformed from mental patient to survivalist warrior in 1991's Terminator 2: Judgment Day.
That's okay, because according to James Cameron, everything that happens after Terminator 2 is being ignored. In 2017, he told The Hollywood Reporter the plan was to pretend everything after Terminator 2 was "a bad dream."
While it may seem difficult to separate Hamilton from the role of Sarah Connor, she's had memorable roles both before and after 1984's The Terminator. She starred as Vicky in the 1984 horror film Children of the Corn, and between 1987 and 1990 she starred opposite Ron Perlman on CBS' Beauty and the Beast.
In 1997, she starred with Pierce Brosnan and Jaime Renée Smith in the disaster thriller hit Dante's Peak. She hit the small screen in a big way in 2010, appearing on two episodes of Weeds and scoring a recurring role on NBC's Chuck as a CIA agent and Chuck Bartowski's (Zachary Levi) estranged mother. In recent years, she's nabbed a recurring antagonist spot on Syfy's Defiance and a prominent guest role on the supernatural drama Lost Girl.
Mackenzie Davis as Grace
The athletic woman we see going head-to-head with the new Terminator in the teaser is Grace, played by Mackenzie Davis. As of her appearance in Dark Fate, Davis' professional film acting career is just under a decade old. She made her feature debut in 2012's addiction drama Smashed, and her first starring film role came just a year later with the rom-com Breathe In. She appeared as Miles Teller's friend and eventual love interest in 2014's That Awkward Moment. Davis' tireless engineer Mindy Park played a key role in getting Matt Damon's astronaut Mark Watney home in 2015's The Martian.
Mindy Park wasn't her last nerdy role — from 2014 to 2017, she played programmer Cameron Howe on AMC's Halt and Catch Fire. She achieved even more small screen exposure when she starred alongside Gugu Mbatha-Raw in "San Junipero," hailed by many as the finest episode of Black Mirror.
If you're excited for Terminator: Dark Fate, you may have already caught another long-awaited science fiction sequel dealing with complex questions about artificial intelligence. That brings us to one of Mackenzie Davis' most prominent roles to date: Mariette, a replicant sex worker and freedom fighter in Blade Runner 2049.
Gabriel Luna as Rev 9 the Terminator
Terminator: Dark Fate introduces us to Rev 9, the most advanced Terminator model we've yet seen. Judging by the trailer, its enhancements seem to be related to a mixture of Robert Patrick's liquid metal T-1000 from Terminator 2 and the old school hard-metal robots. We still don't know the full extent of Rev 9's abilities, but we do know that this killing machine is played by Gabriel Luna, who you should definitely recognize if you're a Marvel TV fan.
Luna appeared in the fourth season of Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. as Robbie Reyes, a.k.a. the supernatural vigilante Ghost Rider. Over his season-long arc, Reyes — having been granted the power of the Spirit of Vengeance after getting murdered by a street gang — helps S.H.I.E.L.D. tackle a few supernatural threats before exiting the show with the season 4 finale.
Before playing Ghost Rider, Luna starred in ABC's short-lived crime procedural Wicked City as Detective Paco Contreras. Fans of the El Rey Network may also recognize him as Tony Bravo, the soccer star who doubles as a CIA operative in Matador. He appeared in 2011's dark comedy Bernie — the real life story of a mortician (Jack Black) who befriends and later murders an eccentric millionaire (Shirley MacLaine) — and starred alongside Johnny Simmons and Clifton Collins Jr. in the 2016 thriller Transpecos, the story of border patrol agents embroiled in a conflict against a drug cartel.
Natalia Reyes as Dani Ramos
The woman who Grace and Sarah Connor are risking everything to protect is Dani Ramos. Dani is played by Natalia Reyes, a Colombian actress whose fame has yet to find a sure foothold with American audiences, but whose talents have already made her a star in her native country.
Reyes is perhaps best known for her starring role in the Colombian telenovela Lady, La Vendedora de Rosas, the fascinating and tragic true story of Lady Maria Tabares, a famous Colombian actress who was sentenced to 26 years in prison for ordering the murder of a taxicab driver. More recently, Reyes starred in the critically-hailed crime epic Birds of Passage, which gained her much more international attention, including in the States. Birds of Passage was a prominent feature of the 2018 Cannes Film Festival and made the shortlist for the 2019 Academy Awards for Best Foreign-Language Film (though it ultimately lost to Mexico's Roma).
Arnold Schwarzenegger as The Terminator
We hope Arnold Schwarzenegger looks familiar. If he doesn't, hey, we're not judging, but it's just kind of a mystery why you're interested in Terminator: Dark Fate at all. Maybe you thought it was a really hardcore pest control service? We don't know.
Schwarzenegger's first film was his starring role in 1970's Hercules in New York. His prominence as the action hero of the eighties began with 1984's Conan the Barbarian, in which he played the savage warrior of Robert E. Howard's fiction. That same year he starred as the ruthless cyborg hunting Sarah Connor in James Cameron's The Terminator, truly cementing his status as a pop culture icon.
Ironically, while the first Terminator film did so much for his career, he didn't play bad guys much after that (including in other Terminator entries). Throughout the '80s and '90s, he battled mercenaries in Commando, hunted a monster in The Predator, won a deadly game show in The Running Man, got his ass to Mars in Total Recall, and failed to keep the wool over Jamie Curtis' eyes in True Lies. Through it all he made the delivery of violent yet corny one-liners into an art all its own. As he grew in fame, he was successful in a couple of memorable comedies as well, namely 1988's Twins and 1990's Kindergarten Cop.
More recently, Schwarzenegger has been a regular fixture in the Expendables franchise and turned in a surprisingly subtle performance in 2015's low-key zombie drama Maggie. Oh yeah, and between 2003 and 2011, he was busy being the 38th governor of California.
Tom Hopper as Hadrell
Tom Hopper isn't seen in the trailer for Terminator: Dark Fate, but we know he'll be in the film. In March 2019, Revenge of the Fans Editor-in-Chief Mario-Francisco Robles tweeted the scoop that Hopper had been cast to the film in an undisclosed role. IMDb lists his character name as Hadrell, and so far that's all we know about his character.
Hopper's first credited screen role was in an episode of the BBC medical Drama Casualty, but he first started getting real attention for his role as Sir Percival in the fantasy Merlin, which aired from 2010 to 2012. He played William "Billy Bones" Manderly — a character who first appeared in Robert Louis Stevenson's classic 1883 novel Treasure Island — in the pirate adventure series Black Sails for the entire 2014-2017 run of the show. He followed his pirate career by becoming Samwell Tarly's (John Bradley) more studly brother Dickon in the seventh of HBO's Game of Thrones... though being more of a beefcake didn't stop him from getting burnt to a crisp by a dragon.
More recently, Hopper starred as Luther, a.k.a. Spaceboy — the bulky, gorilla-armed team leader — in the Netflix original The Umbrella Academy, a much more bizarre superhero drama than most were used to that was nevertheless a runaway hit.
Diego Boneta as Miguel Ramos
Playing Miguel Ramos — the older brother of the Terminator's target, Dani Ramos — is Mexican actor and singer Diego Boneta. We don't know how a big a role Boneta will play, but considering the usual body count of a Terminator flick, it's probably a good idea not to fall in love with the guy.
In 2010, Boneta started showing up a lot on the small screen, making guest appearances in, coincidentally, five episodes each of the dramas Pretty Little Liars and 90210. He also starred in the MTV mini-series Underemployed and showed up in the made-for-TV sequel Mean Girls 2.
Boneta's breakout role was the 2012 musical comedy Rock of Ages, based on the '80s glam rock-obsessed stage production of the same name. Boneta stars as the stage fright-infected Drew Boley, who nevertheless has big dreams of rock godhood. More recently, he appeared regularly in the first season of Fox's comedy-horror series Scream Queens.
Steven Cree as Rigby
Scottish actor Steven Cree will be playing a character named Rigby in Terminator: Dark Fate. While we don't know the nature of his role, we do know that when it comes to mixing drama with time travel, Cree's been there before (or after, depending on your point of view). His most prominent gig to date has been the role of Ian Murray in the Starz drama Outlander, based on the time travel book series by Diana Gabaldon. Cree has a recurring role on the show, having most recently appeared in the fourth season episode "Down the Rabbit Hole."
The Scottish thespian seems most comfortable in roles set either in the past or in fictional worlds based on the past. He played the minor part of Overseer in Maleficient, and he lost his head as a Greek Marine in the sequel 300: Rise of an Empire. In 2018, he appeared in the Netflix original Outlaw King, the story of Scottish King Robert the Bruce (Chris Pine), as the king's brother-in-law, Sir Christopher Seton.
Despite the wealth of period pieces under Cree's belt, it doesn't seem likely that's what he'll be playing in Dark Fate. That is, unless during one of the characters' time jumps they mess up and get stuck in 13th century Scotland or something along those lines.