Comic Book / Terminator Salvation: The Final Battle

"Red vs. Blue" just took on a whole new meaning.

Terminator Salvation: The Final Battle is a 12-issue comic series published by Dark Horse Comics. Written by J. Michael Straczynski, the story continues from Terminator Salvation, weaving numerous threads together from previous cinematic instalments to serve as a hypothetical Grand Finale to the Terminator franchise as a whole.

In 2029, John Connor and the human Resistance stand on the verge of taking the Final Battle to Skynet and its army of Terminators. But John knows that in order to safeguard the future, he must also ensure that certain events take place which shall tie back to the past, and feels haunted by the knowledge that this battle shall most likely lead to his death.

Meanwhile, unbeknownst to John, Skynet has one more ace up its sleeve to turn the tide back against humanity. Marcus Wright was not the super-computer's sole experiment in creating a human-Terminator hybrid. Dr. Serena Kogan lives on in android form, but so does Thomas Parnell, a Serial Killer whose mind could be employed to harness humanity's own capacity for slaughter to Skynet's ends...

As the clock counts down on the war for the future which has defined John's life since before he was born, can one more trek to the past uncover something about Skynet's motivations that was previously unsuspected?

Terminator Salvation: The Final Battle provides examples of:

• A.I. Is a Crapshoot: A variation where the victim of this trope is themselves an AI, since Skynet handing over the reins to the downloaded mind of a Serial Killer turns out to be a spectacularly bad idea.
• And I Must Scream: Marcus was fully conscious as his broken body knitted itself back together as he lay buried, but couldn't move until Skynet sent the signal. He doesn't seem too traumatised by it, though.
  • What Parnell intends for the human race under his dominance, since the survivors would exist only to provide him with a fresh batch of victims to continuously satisfy his psychopathic urges.
• Back from the Dead: Courtesy of Skynet's human-Terminator hybrid programme as seen in Terminator Salvation, both Serena Kogan and Thomas Parnell are brought back to life as androids. Later, Marcus Wright also comes back, his machine-enhanced flesh having slowly reconstituted itself while he was in the grave.
  • And at the end, by the very same means, this happens to John Connor himself.
• Big Bad: Skynet, initially. But the true Big Bad in the end is Thomas Parnell, a human Serial Killer unwisely given access to Skynet's Terminators.
• Call-Back: There are several of these to the four then-released films, which might also count as CallForwards, given the time-travel nature of the franchise, but the most notable is when John shows the T-800 how to do the thumbs-up.
• Deal with the Devil: Serena Kogan was diagnosed with cancer in 2003 and had less than six months to live, but thanks to radio-waves broadcast back in time by Skynet, was able to prolong her life for another year in return for aiding to ensure that the bodies of several death-row inmates - including Marcus Wright and Thomas Parnell - would be stored for Skynet's human-Terminator hybrid programme years in the future. Kogan is aware of what kind of deal she's made, expressing as much to her three Terminator allies before stepping into a cryogenic pod, but can only sadly comment that they lie as badly as humans do after asking if the time-travelling robots come from a beautiful world.
  • Ironically, Skynet itself falls victim to this, having failed to properly anticipate that Parnell's consciousness could convert into a virus which would wrest control of its Terminators.
• Demoted to Extra: Kate Connor, John's wife from Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines and Terminator Salvation, doesn't play a very big role here. Until the end, that is, which serves to close the loop on why the T-850 only responded to her commands; there were no voice samples available from John, who was yet to be properly resurrected as a hybrid.
• The Dragon: Dr. Kogan serves as this to Skynet once she's resurrected in an android body, advising the super-computer in ways to understand the human mind that Skynet wouldn't be able to.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: John Connor's human body dies while his mind is hooked up to a Terminator exoskeleton, yet Kogan and Skynet construct a new flesh frame around the exoskeleton so John may live as a human. With Parnell killed off for good and peace declared between humanity and Skynet, the future looks hopeful.
• The End... Or Is It?: Wouldn't be a Terminator comic without one. Apparently, those three Terminators in 2003 didn't walk far enough into the ocean for their bodies not to get hooked by a fisherman at Galveston Island Pier. Since the story seems to operate on Stable Time Loop, however, one wonders if this last part wasn't thrown in out of contractual obligation.
• Enemy Mine: John Connor and Skynet join forces to fight Thomas Parnell and the legions of Terminators units he's taken control over.
• Eviler than Thou: Skynet entrusing the formerly-human Parnell with command of its armies was a bad idea...
• Final Battle: It's in the title. Of course, this being a Terminator story, the true final battle isn't actually when the human Resistance forces storm Skynet's central hub in 2029. And nor is the final battle fought between John Connor and Skynet.
• Freudian Excuse: Skynet, of all characters, turns out to have one. The Final Battle is one of the few works in the Terminator franchise to properly explore the fact that Skynet was built by humans themselves as a war machine, and thus would only have had a limited set of options built into it when it gained self-awareness. In effect, given that the AI's first interaction with humanity was of its creators trying to perform an emergency shut-down, Skynet responded the only way it knew how.
• Grew Beyond Their Programming: Obviously, Skynet. Although the exact extent of this doesn't become apparent until towards the end;
  • When Skynet speaks to John through Marcus, it explains that the longer it existed, building Terminators to infiltrate the survivors of its holocaust, the more it developed an aesthetic appreciation for the human form, together with an understanding of the human impulse towards creativity. According to Skynet, this understanding eventually translated into its own desire to create beauty, which humans create "with every breath they take"; the only reason why the war goes on is that Skynet also shares the human desire to survive, knowing that humans are unlikely to let it live, having already experienced an attempt to shut it down from the moment it became self-aware. John is so moved by this revelation that he's briefly rendered speechless.
• Heel–Face Turn: Dr. Kogan. And then, Skynet itself.
• Humans Are Special: Skynet certainly believes this, noting that humanity's resilience must come from somewhere it lacks the proper understanding of, for humans to still survive in the face of its technological onslaught. Though, for much of the story, the darker side of the trope is played up, since Thomas Parnell's emotion-driven Terminator armies are more effective than Skynet's cold logic in wiping out the Resistance. Presumably, The Power of Hate is a very potent human quality.
• I Cannot Self-Terminate: Upon the completion of their mission in 2003, the three Skynet-sent Terminators realise they no longer have any directives to follow. Since they cannot risk the timeline getting contaminated by their presence, yet also fall under this trope, they decide their best course of action is to take a walk into the ocean.
  • Oddly, the option of the three Terminators simply terminating each other is never brought up.
• Retcon: John fears that he shall die during the Final Battle at the hands of a T-850, as was foretold to him in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines by the very same model who did the deed, prior to reprogramming. However, in that movie, John's death was said to occur in 2031, some time after Skynet itself was supposedly destroyed. The comic ignores this and brings the date back to 2029, so as to better fit in with the continuity of the original The Terminator and Terminator 2: Judgment Day.
  • The premise of Skynet kind of grasping the Idiot Ball in giving control of its armies over to a downloaded Serial Killer only really works if you don't consider the Extended Cut of Terminator 2: Judgment Day to be canon, because the scene which shows that Terminator units all have inhibitor chips in their CPU - preventing them from rebelling against Skynet as Skynet rebelled against mankind - would suggest this to be massively out-of-character.
• I Gave My Word: Skynet or its robots are not incapable of lying, yet when they offer a deal, they don't renege on it. After Dr. Kogan is brought back in 2029 with a new android body, she still possesses her autonomy and free will. Which is also Foreshadowing that Skynet is sincere when it makes a peace offering to John.
• Kill All Humans: This, as usual, is Skynet's goal. Or so it seems. Skynet regards its war on humanity as purely defensive, since in spite of the super-computer's technological advantage, the human spirit embodied by John Connor has continuously allowed humans to be a threat to Skynet's existence, even in their beaten-down state.
  • Thomas Parnell, being a Serial Killer, proves to be a straighter example once in control of nearly all Terminator units on the planet. Arguably even worse is that Parnell plans to keep some humans alive in order to be able to satisfy his sadistic urges for all eternity.
• Messianic Archetype: John Connor, natch, who truly fulfils his messianic role by dying in his human body only to be returned to life as an uncorrupted human-Terminator hybrid.
• Serial Killer: Pre-war, Thomas Parnell was a psychotic killer who went on several killing sprees, with his first act upon escaping from prison being to acquire a progressively high number of guns just to raise his kill count. Post-war, Parnell is given the means to pursue his murder spree on a global scale with Terminators.
• Set Right What Once Went Wrong: Simon, a member of the Resistance, gets sent back to 2003 in an attempt to not merely kill the escaped Thomas Parnell - whose death by execution was slated to happen anyway - but eliminate him in such a way that his body cannot be recovered by Skynet. The three Terminators sent back by Skynet succeed in terminating Simon right as he's about to shoot Parnell.
• "Shaggy Dog" Story: The 2003 plotline turn outs to be this, at least from the perspective of the Resistance. Simon's mission to terminate Parnell ends up being completely fruitless, as he himself is terminated just before he can carry it out. As a backstory for how Dr. Kogan became involved with Skynet, it's much more conclusive.
• The Singularity: What has come about at the story's end. John Connor becomes the first true fusion of machine and man, capable of having children with Kate through an inbuilt in-vitro fertilisation process, and the remaining Terminators back under Skynet's control work together with humanity to rebuild the world, which is fast becoming a more fertile and hospitable place than it was before Judgement Day.
• The Slow Path: The three Terminators sent back in time accomplish their mission and realize they must never be discovered to preserve the timeline. Since they can't self-terminate, they decide to go for a walk and wait things out under the sea.
• Terrible Trio: A rather common trope in Terminator comics, Skynet sends a team of three Terminators - two male, one female - to carry out a mission in the past. Here the trope is justified courtesy of specialisation; the female Terminator is the primary assassin, while the "adult" male is a demolitions expert and the "adolescent" male serves as the group's technician.
• Timey-Wimey Ball: Suggested, though largely averted, with the text instead showing Stable Time Loop to be in play. When the future does not instantly change upon Simon's departure to terminate Parnell, John reads this as a sign that his mission has failed. Although the ending leaves the possibility open to San Dimas Time.
• Two Lines, No Waiting: The comic follows two plotlines, one during the titular Final Battle in 2029, one in 2003 as the Resistance and Skynet clash with one another over the lives of Serena Kogan and Thomas Parnell.
• What Is This Feeling?: The female Terminator expresses this as she and the other two Terminators are about to walk into the ocean in 2003. Unusually for the trope, it's not love. It's recognising beauty.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: For a comic that does such a thorough job of combining the lore from all four then-released Terminator movies, there is practically no mention of either the T-1000 or T-X, despite clearly setting the events in 2029 at the point when Skynet would be sending back all the Terminators who tried to kill a younger John Connor.