More Problems With The Theory
Now this wouldn’t be a Geek Battle theory without us taking a moment to examine a few of the issues with our own theory and see if we can answer or resolve them.
Firstly, the John Morski problem. In this article I’ve spoken of John Morski to separate the idea of this original John Connor so it was clear when I meant the original version of the character who wasn’t the son of Kyle Reese. So why if John was the son of Stan Morski and not Kyle Reese is the character explicitly called John Connor and not John Morski in the film?
Because whoever the original father of John Connor was, it just means that maybe Sarah and Stan (or whoever) never got married. John would then continue to have the name Connor regardless of who his father was.
Secondly, wouldn’t Reese sleeping with Sarah mean that the story he told to Sarah about the future now wouldn’t have happened so therefore prevent him from knowing the story to be able to tell her?
Maybe. Maybe not.
There’s nothing in The Terminator series to explore the idea of parallel timelines or dimensions or that things from a future that no longer happens would be erased or disappear from the present as you experience it.
This can mean that Reese could tell Sarah about her son John who would save the human race and send him back in time. Then as long as she had a son at some point and told him to carry out this version of history it would happen. As we learn from Terminator 2 Sarah goes all GI Joe and trains John to be a soldier. You can bet this wasn’t the original John’s experience growing up.
This means that the version of John who is Kyle’s son may have ended up a better soldier than the original one as he was trained to be a soldier since birth. By this same token it may be that the original John was naturally an excellent soldier and a leader and that the Edward Furlong one we see in Terminator 2 would have been an average child but for the fact that he was trained to be a warrior.
By telling Sarah the story of who John was supposed to become she was able to make sure that her son, regardless of who the father was, would one day grow up to fulfil the same destiny and this means that it can make sense for John to send his own father back in time to create his birth!
This is a time loop which can work, and after Reese wiped out the original John Connor (AKA John Morski), this time loop would just continue the same way for infinity.
Was this guaranteed to work?
No.
If the son of Reese and Sarah wasn’t able to become the leader of the resistance and end up sending Reese back in time we would be back in paradox territory and have a loop which would continuously undo and redo itself.
Also, for example, if the child of Sarah and Reese had been born as a girl, Sarah would know this isn’t John. Would this mean Sarah would keep trying to have a son and one day have another baby boy who she assumes must be John and train him to be a resistance fighter? Maybe, and this could have the potential to work just as this theory of training Reese’s son to be the leader also seemed to have worked.
But what about Reese telling Sarah that John’s father dies before war? Isn’t this proof that the father must have always been Reese and not Stan Morski or anyone else?
No. This doesn’t mean that.
We know from the film that Reese is ultimately John’s father and that he does die before the start of the war between humans and Skynet. But this doesn’t mean that Stan Morski couldn’t have died before the war as well. Or whoever else could have originally been John’s father. All we know from this dialogue in the film is that in the original timeline that John’s father died.
One thing to note is that we have no way to know if what we see in the first Terminator film is the original timeline being changed by Reese sleeping with Sarah, or if we are seeing a version of time where the continuous loop (as described above) is already in effect.
But one last thought…
Isn’t it possible that despite sleeping with Sarah that Reese still isn’t John Connor’s father?
Ooh now we’re getting super deep into things, but yes that is very possible.
We learn in the film that Stan Morski cancels his date with Sarah, but we don’t have any information on if this was a first date, or if they had seen each other previously. It could be that Sarah was already pregnant and after sleeping with Reese just assumed that Reese was therefore the father.
This would be the best evidence that Stan Morski could specifically be the actual father of John Connor. It is also possible that Sarah could have slept with someone else within a short time before the events of the Terminator and there could be a random unknown third candidate for who is John’s father.
As it is we just have to trust that since we never see this questioned at any point that Sarah is confident that Reese is the father of John.
So, there you have it. This is the theory that Kyle Reese was actually the person who killed John Connor in the Terminator series and that he fulfilled the Terminator’s mission of killing off John Connor before he was even born.
What do you think? Any other possibilities or are there major flaws with this theory that have been missed? Let us know in the comments! I’ll be back with more theories soon!
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