The Terminator: Dark Fate Sequel You Won't Get To See
In 2018, the Halloween franchise got a thorough overhaul with a simplified storyline that erased most of the previous canon while bringing back Jamie Lee Curtis as an older, traumatized Laurie Strode. Strode got her catharsis against Michael Myers, and Halloween found a new life with two more confirmed sequels through Blumhouse.
One year later, producer James Cameron and director Tim Miller attempted to do the same thing with Terminator. Previous films from the franchise were excised from continuity and Linda Hamilton returned as Sarah Connor for the first time since Terminator 2: Judgment Day as an older, traumatized mother with survivor's guilt.
The resulting film, Terminator: Dark Fate — despite critical praise as a return to form for the franchise — did not meet with Paramount Pictures' hopeful box office expectations. Unlike Halloween, it is very unlikely that there will be a direct sequel to Dark Fate. However, that doesn't mean there wasn't a plan for what would have happened next in the Terminator franchise, and Mackenzie Davis, who played Grace, recently revealed where the story would've gone.
While promoting her latest film, Happiest Season, on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, Davis was asked how a sequel would have continued Dark Fate's story, and she revealed something pretty surprising — Grace would have come back.
How Grace would have come back to life
If you did not catch Terminator: Dark Fate, what you need to know is that Grace is a human who underwent radical augment surgery to be able to fight terminators. Unfortunately, being an augment has a heavy cost to Grace's physical well-being, and her life would've been cut short even if she hadn't sacrificed herself at the end of the movie to protect the future leader of the human resistance, Dani Ramos (Natalia Reyes).
With Terminator: Dark Fate ending on a new, alternate timeline where the most recent robo-pocalypse has been averted, the only survivors of the film are Sarah Connor and Dani Ramos. So, how would Grace have come back?
"It was gonna be a sort of timeline thing, where there'd be another timeline that you'd explore," explained Davis. "Like, there's no resurrection, but she came from the future, so..."
There is a moment at the end of Dark Fate where we do see Dani looking at Grace as an innocent child, so it stands to reason that the sequel could simply have picked up later in that new timeline when Grace is grown up again. It could've been interesting to see more from the Grace and Dani relationship. As Christina Cauterucci pointed out at Slate, there's a lot of queer subtext in the theatrical cut of the film, not to mention a deleted scene in which Grace (in the future) gets down on her knees and begs Dani to let her go back in time and save younger Dani.
It would have been nice to see more of what very much appeared to be their love story explored. Unfortunately, it's unlikely we'll see a continuation of the Dark Fate timeline.