Terminator Zero Takes a Dark Turn on the John Connor Myth

The following contains spoilers for the first season of Terminator Zero, now streaming on Netflix.

AS Terminator Zero takes place, fans are treated to a story that serves as a side quest for James Cameron's films. Cameron focused on Kyle Reese, Sarah Connor, and their son, John, in a time loop locked in Terminator AND Terminator 2: Judgment DayNow, this Netflix anime is tied to that timeline and completely ignores the other movies.

It's a breath of fresh air and honestly quite refreshing to see new characters in the game. However, when the Terminator Zero In the finale, a major theme is brought back. That is the concept of John as the leader of the Resistance in the future. But, this time, there is an intricate twist that speaks to something other than fire, struggle, and the human spirit that persists in war. In fact, it offers a new solution to the transgressions of Skynet and the machines; one that makes this messiah compromised in terms of ethics and morals.

Kenta Lee from Terminator Zero, explained

Kenta Lee is brokering a truce with Skynet

It's safe to say that Terminator franchise likes to be based on a forlorn messiah in the future who fights evil robots. John was that person in the Cameron era. The new movies killed John and made this hero Dani. Terminator Zero has his savior in the future. It is none other than Kenta Lee. In this anime, he is the grumpy eldest son that Malcolm has. Malcolm is busy trying to create an AI, Kokoro, to fight Skynet. So, he ignores Kenta and his sons. It's not total neglect, but he doesn't pay attention to them emotionally after their mother's death.

As a result, Kenta is bitter. He grows to hate machines and artificial intelligence because of how they mentally took away his father. Kenta even tries to kill their nanny, Misaki, once he finds out she is a machine. He is unaware that Misaki and Malcolm have traveled from the 2040s to the 1980s. Malcolm took her CPU chip to Japan, erased her memory, and began working on Kokoro with Cortex Industries until the present: Judgment Day in 1997. At this point, Kenta seems like a shallow character when the Terminator comes back to hunt him down.

And it doesn't kill Kenta when it gets its hands on him. It actually needs a favor. The machine wants to set off an EMP to destroy Kokoro at the Cortex Industries base. It will also fry the Terminator's circuits, so the bot needs Kenta to activate it. The bot can't commit suicide, according to its coding and directive. But Kenta can bypass its algorithm. This leads to the bombshell revelation: it keeps Kenta alive because Kenta is its boss from the future. Kenta is working on a secret deal years later to save humanity in a twisted way.

How Terminator Zero Turns Kenta Lee Into a Distorted John Connor

Kenta Lee is the opposite of what the Resistance stands for

Future Kenta has grown tired of the rebels' efforts. He knows the war will never end if both sides continue to fight. It will be genocide, extinction, and a world on fire. Because of this, Future Kenta has worked out a deal: a truce for the machines and humans to stop fighting. It subverts and turns everything fans have ever known about the future on its head. John was adamant that they had to kill all of Skynet. But this Future Kenta sees no way out, other than barter. He will save lives on both sides. Sure, this creates a bit of a Terminator Zero mysteries, as fans wonder if the Terminator is telling the whole truth, if Kenta really became this broker, and how Kenta could be okay with the deaths of so many people in 1997.

No matter what, Future Kenta must ensure that Kokoro is destroyed. That way, Skynet will lose an enemy and prosper, which creates the future that will allow Kenta to make his deal. It's all business, nodding to the deal Neo made with his AI enemy in Matrix film. But essentially what he's doing is sacrificing lives in the present and creating collateral damage. The feud between the Terminator and Kokoro in 1997 leads to mass carnage. So while it's good that this “John” is finding a way to peace, it's still a bloody price to pay.

It's all about the chronological change and when that debt will be collected. The off-canon Terminator The films saw a corrupt nanotechnologist John become a villain himself in Genisys. But this Kenta is more of an antihero for now. He paints a sympathetic and tragic picture, suggesting that humanity is running out of ideas. He also teases that with humanity defeated and deflated, Kenta may have created a civil war in the Resistance. No one would want a deal with an AI that could trick them and plot to break them again. It would be easy to do, given Skynet's firepower, which makes the Kenta of the future rather polarizing. Either way, this deal offers no liberation; it's just temporary, shaky tolerance.

How Terminator Zero's Kenta Lee Creates a More Intriguing Skynet

Kenta adds a sinister, human side to Skynet

This made fans excited to see Future Skynet in season 2 of Terminator Zero. This can only be done in flashbacks, as young Kenta lets Kokoro live, changing the future she is supposed to have. These gripping memories will reveal a new side of Skynet. The audience would be shocked to see it subjugated after performing calculations and programming that suggest it cannot win. People usually see it as a godlike being with answers to everything.

One treatise suggests that this is not the case, which may illustrate the levels of humanity, depth and dimensions of AI that Terminator film and the Sarah Connor Chronicles Never-before-seen TV show. Could reverse how Malcolm worked with Kokoro and helped her realize she needed to fight Skynet. Future Kenta and Skynet could have had similar discussions, which would be ironic given how disappointed Kenta was with his father. Kenta is also a genius, so it would make him much darker and more hopeless in this legacy story.

What's interesting is that there's still room for Kenta to go bad in the past. Kokoro enslaved Japan to protect it from Skynet's nuclear weapons. But if Kenta thinks she's taking his robot apocalypse too far, he could come back to take her out and then get things back on track. That would put him on the path to war and the subsequent deal with Skynet. That direction would suggest that perhaps Terminator Zero has ways of creating new closed loops rather than branching timelines.

Kenta's story will clearly influence the war to come. It is unknown if his brothers will agree with his choices in the present or future. Aside from that domestic dispute, he could have also gone into hiding and achieved this on his own. Again, these are parallels to Malcolm, who did the same just to bring Misaki back to the past. It shows once again the similarities between father, son and how they misunderstood each other.

Kenta may not realize that he is becoming an evil thief of what Malcolm was. Only, while Malcolm worked to shut down Skynet, Kenta would enable and encourage it. The road to Hell is paved with good intentions, after all. Ultimately, that kind of John, working against the Resistance in the future for the greater good, would be tempting. The trust that Skynet creates would be just the final piece of the puzzle. Ultimately, it will bring Kenta's story full circle and show that, as much as he hates the AI, he needs to establish a relationship with Skynet for some sort of balance in the future, something the Connors and other Lee's would never tolerate.