Arnold jumps into the pool of lava to destroy all hardware that could potentially be used to create Skynet. The inventor of Skynet is also killed with all the source code.

It’s heavily implied they managed to prevent Skynet in that timeline. But yeah, money.

Yeah. Imo, T3/Resistance and all the other slop are alternate timelines. The main timeline ends with T2, as far as I'm concerned.

No fate but what we make is more about trying to prevent judgment day, and the need for the resistance to happen at all, from happening.

It’s like one of those pitch meetings where the conversation goes something like this:

• That would be a bad idea.
• Yes, but money.
• I’m not going to do it. Your idea sucks.
• Yes, but money. Also, I’ll just hire another director who will bend to my will.
• Oh, ok then. Money it is then.

Free will is something where people talk about it as a binary thing, but it can be both the ability to make choices, yet very deterministic at the core. If someone asks you to think of your favorite color, in your mind you visualize what that is, and it's your preference and choice for whatever reason you like it best. But the deterministic part begins when you wonder when you made that decision. Can you even narrow down the instant when it popped into your mind as the preferred choice, or what occurred before it was made? At some point there was a triggering of thought and memories from the question asked that resulted in you thinking of your color, but when did it go from predictable neuron firings to a choice? There is a gray area there.

For what it's worth, while I enjoyed some of the later Terminator movies for themselves, the saga ended with T2 in my mind. Where that future led could be just as dark, as someone else could come up with their version of Skynet eventually, like any other technology, but we are left to ponder that on our own. The actual previous future is gone thanks to the efforts made, and we're allowed to try again.

any good?