Note: Contains spoilers for Terminator: Dark Fate.

Terminator: Dark Fate lived up to Linda Hamilton's promise that its opening would "shock" audiences, but it hasn't proven to be a universally popular decision.

Following the release of the new movie, some Terminator fans have reacted angrily to one character's fate – something that we're about to spoil for you if you haven't seen the movie, so look away now if you haven't.

20th Century Fox

Kicking off in 1998, three years after Sarah Connor prevented Judgment Day, Terminator: Dark Fate delivers a heartbreaking twist for Sarah.

As she is enjoying some downtime in Guatemala with her son John (the future leader of the resistance), a T-800 – carrying "out orders from a future that never happened" – arrives and kills John, with Sarah helpless to save him: "A machine took him from me and I am terminated."

It's a brutal and bold way to reinvent the series in its new post-Judgment Day timeline that ignores all of the other sequels, but John's death hasn't gone down well with some fans who believe it's totally against the whole idea of Terminator.

But hang on, since when has John really been the actual hero of the franchise?

Tristar Pictures

Yes, we know the whole idea from the first two movies is that Sarah has to survive so that John can lead the Resistance in the future and save the human race. He's never exactly been heroic in the franchise though, so he's essentially a MacGuffin (ie his existence motivates other characters and sets the plot in motion, but he doesn't *do* much himself).

In The Terminator, John doesn't feature and in Terminator 2: Judgment Day, he's a very annoying 10-year-old brat who shows little of the future hero he's about to come. Sarah, the T-800 and even Miles Dyson do more to save the day and protect the future.

Hell, John even wants the T-800 to remain in the timeline and not destroy itself, negating any attempt by Sarah and co to stop the rise of Skynet.

Tristar Pictures

And in both Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines and Terminator Salvation, John doesn't exactly save the day.

In the third movie, he's tricked into surviving the end of the world and in the fourth one, he's tricked by Skynet and inadvertently helps them destroy a submarine with Resistance leaders on board. Oops.

If we want to go as far as Terminator Genisys (not that many people want to remember it), John is turned into an actual Terminator and tries to kill his mother several times. Awkward.

Paramount

The other thing is those three previous movies only exist because they invalidated Terminator 2's ending.

Sarah's actions only delayed the rise of Skynet and the apocalypse, necessitating the need for John to become the de facto leader of the Resistance, even though he seems pretty useless.

That's something that Dark Fate doesn't do.

Skynet doesn't exist anymore in the new timeline because Sarah was successful in stopping its rise. Yes, humanity is still responsible for its own downfall, but it's not Skynet, so John's whole position as the Resistance leader is questionable, not to say moot.

20th Century Fox

It makes total sense that in this new world, John wouldn't be the Resistance leader as Sarah wouldn't have instilled the necessary knowledge in him.

He might know how to tackle a T-800 or a T-1000 but Sarah has no idea of the new future, so how would she prep him to lead the Resistance in a future that is different to the one created by Skynet?

And John's presence in those previous movies didn't exactly make them good Terminator movies, much like he wasn't a major part in what made T2 such a classic.

If Terminator: Dark Fate proves anything, it's that it's always really been Sarah's story, so it's irrelevant what happens to John: a future leader of a Resistance in a timeline that no longer exists.

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Terminator: Dark Fate is out now in UK cinemas and is released in US cinemas on November 1.

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