Sarah Connor was made for these times.

From her introduction in 1984's landmark sci-fi shocker "The Terminator" to forever changing the world of action cinema in 1991's "Terminator 2: Judgment Day," Sarah evolved from a target to a warrior, a one-woman resistance against merciless forces from a technologically dominated, post-apocalyptic future.

The fight continues in "Terminator: Dark Fate," out now on digital, Blu-ray and DVD. And unlike in the three previous attempted cinematic successors to "T2," Linda Hamilton is back on screen as Sarah Connor. She's as powerful and vital a force as ever.

But Hamilton didn't think she'd be back.

“I didn’t see it coming," Hamilton said. "I never, ever thought I’d return. As a matter of fact, I’d sort of been working anti-Sarah Connor juju ever since then, as an actress. I mean, I’m very happy I got to play that role twice, but you want to go on and play women of all kinds."

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Hamilton said she was ultimately drawn back to the role because the opportunity this film afforded to go somewhere new. The story of "Dark Fate" opens with an act that, without giving specifics away, serves as an emotional gut-punch, up-ending the climax of "Terminator 2" and sending the character of Sarah Connor on a drastically altered trajectory.

“The passage of time was very intriguing, the fact that the future as she imagined it at the end of ‘T2’ turns on her immediately ... that she has no mission, that she has no love for humanity, either," said Hamilton. "She’s a woman standing very alone and empty and bereft. And I just knew I that could take those two decades that had passed and fill them with a great story for myself as the character and then launch from there.

“So I knew it wouldn’t be just sort of the same thing with diminished returns, that we could flesh out something very dark and painful and whatnot, but that I could really do something new and that’s what I want to do as an actress.”

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"Dark Fate" boasts the return of original franchise director James Cameron — who produced and is co-credited with the film's story — and discards the events of "Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines" (2003), "Terminator Salvation" (2009) and "Terminator Genisys" (2015), as well as the 2008 to 2009 TV series "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles."

With "Deadpool" (2016) director Tim Miller at the helm, "Terminator: Dark Fate" finds Hamilton's Connor joining forces with an enhanced super soldier (Mackenzie Davis) to protect a young automotive plant worker (Natalia Reyes) from a new futuristic, artificial assassin (Gabriel Luna).

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At its best, the "Terminator" franchise, and indeed all great science-fiction, confronts the issues of its day. That's plainly the case in "Dark Fate," as Cameron and Miller grapple with industrial automation, surveillance programs in the 21st Century and access to health care.

The Colombian-born Reyes plays a blue collar worker in Mexico City targeted by a Terminator with much of the film's action taking place at or around the U.S./Mexico border, including a key sequence at a border detention center.

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"I actually embrace each of them in different ways for touching on these topics," Hamilton said of the way Cameron and Miller handled these issues. "Really, we could only touch on them because truly it’s entertainment in the end, isn’t it? But it still has to be anchored in something that is very real today (by) Jim, in the way that he thinks, and Tim, in the way that he presents it."

Miller, Hamilton said, took care to be sensitive with regard to the real world issues "Dark Fate" was alluding to.

"When we were at the detainment center, our little false world for I.C.E. and everything going on (in) the summer about immigration, children being separated, Tim, even though it’s our false world, was so sensitive," she said. "And he made a speech at the beginning of that sequence, apologized for what we had to represent because it really pained him to see people in cages. And he cried and just said, ‘I’m going to try to do my best to make this real, to not skimp on this just for entertainment purposes.’"

And Hamilton said it was a focus on humanity that ultimately set "Dark Fate" apart; long gone are memories of prior, now de-canonized entries in the franchise.

“We really worked, I think all of us, from the top down, Jim, Tim, myself, really focused in on bringing it back to characters and a story about characters," she said. "Because it doesn’t matter if you’ve got all the spectacle and a thousand people blowing up in a building — if you don’t know one of those characters and care about them, it falls flat.”

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"Terminator: Dark Fate," 128 minutes, rated R, now available on digital, 4K Ultra HD, Blu-ray and DVD.