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In 2024, the animated series Terminator Zero premiered on Netflix and did the seemingly impossible: it presented a thoughtful, well-structured story set in the Terminator universe that vastly outdid many of the live-action sequels.
Positive reviews soon poured in for the eight-episode show, which was developed by The Batman Part II writer Mattson Tomlin and featured animation by the esteemed Japanese studio Production I.G., but fans of the show were unhappy to find out this month that there would be no more of it, as Netflix has cancelled Terminator Zero after just one season.
Tomlin took to X for a post-mortem after the news broke, saying he might write a thread in the future about his planned five-season run of the show. “The series finale was special,” he said. “It was part of my pitch to get the job. I’ve written all of the season two scripts and outlined pretty much all of season three.”
There don’t seem to be any hard feelings between Tomlin and the streamer, however, despite the show’s upsetting cancelation.
“Netflix was really great about supporting the show and giving me tremendous creative freedom to do what I wanted to do. Good partners,” Tomlin wrote, explaining that the decision was down to the show being “expensive and very time-consuming” and that making more of the series depended on it snagging a bigger audience. “The only way they could justify it was if the audience showed up for it, and they just didn’t.”
Tomlin also noted that Netflix did offer to let him wrap up the Terminator Zero story with two or three additional episodes, but that he turned them down: “I felt the story I wanted to tell was much longer, and the finale of season one actually left things in a good place.”
Set around 1997 in Tokyo, Terminator Zero follows a resistance soldier named Eiko, who is sent back from 2022 to stop a looming catastrophe by protecting Malcolm Lee, a scientist developing a new Skynet rival called Kokoro. But as Judgment Day nears, Malcolm’s work also draws the wrath of a Terminator (voiced by Timothy Olyphant in the English dub), forcing Eiko to keep Malcolm and his family alive. Season 1 ended with Kokoro deciding to defend humanity from Skynet, and another attack looming.
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