Parallel Doomsday

Terminator Zero creator Mattson Tomlin explains where the anime series fits within canon

- TARA BENNETT

"I'LL BE BACK." FORTY YEARS after Arnold Schwarzenegger first uttered that line as the T-800 in The Terminator, it's been a promise fulfilled over and over. Fans of the franchise haven't had to suffer more than six years between new Terminator films, a television series, videogames or theme park rides. The latest spinoff is Netflix's Terminator Zero, the first in-canon anime series from animation studio Production IG, director Masashi Kudō and writer Mattson Tomlin.

Ironically, Tomlin was working on his own original cyborg story, Mother/Android, in 2020 when he was approached to pitch an idea for a Terminator anime series. Interested, Tomlin tells Red Alert that he was even more receptive when he was given creative carte blanche.

"I've worked on a lot of franchises and usually there are guardrails or roadblocks, and a lot of hoops to jump through," Tomlin explains. "This was the opposite. They said, You can do anything"."

Their one caveat was to include some kind of Japanese component to the narrative, which he was more than happy to honour. "The Terminator franchise has largely taken place on the US/Mexico border," he explains. "With this I could ask, 'What's going on in other places?" It was just an invitation for me to say my piece and do my own thing, without undoing or stepping on the toes of anybody that had come before me."