Despite critical acclaim, Netflix’s animated Terminator Zero has been canceled by the streamer after a single season. Although Netflix has not officially announced the news themselves, creator Mattson Tomlin confirmed that the show will not be returning on his X account. Terminator Zero was something of a reboot for the Terminator franchise, developing a new story around new characters, but like so many other popular shows and movies that dip into animated variants, the show simply did not attract enough attention to allow it to continue. When asked about the status of the show, Tomlin said:
“It was cancelled. The critical and audience reception to it was tremendous, but at the end of the day not nearly enough people watched it. I would’ve loved to deliver on the Future War I had planned in season’s 2 and 3, but I’m also very happy with how it feels contained as is.”
Currently, James Cameron is considering how to return to the live-action Terminator franchise, but also wants to take things in a whole new direction. Can it actually continue without the involvement of the classic characters and storylines, or would it be more beneficial to allow the Terminator saga to power down and start fresh under a new name. The lack of viewership for Terminator Zero suggests that any kind of reboot is going to face an uphill struggle despite being one of the timeliest franchises out there right now.
Is the ‘Terminator’ Franchise Dead?

Arnold Schwarzenegger in Terminator Dark FateParamount Pictures

While Terminator Zero was highly rated by both critics and audiences, it continues a long-standing trend that has been the bane of many popular franchises attempting to expand into animation from an initial live-action continuity. In recent years, The Lord of the Rings: The War of Rohirrim became the first flop movie in the franchise, with a disappointing box office gross of $20.7 million against its $30 million budget back in December 2024. Very soon, Netflix will attempt to break the trend with Stranger Things: Tales of ’85, an animated interlude set between Season 2 and Season 3 of the flagship series. How it performs could well decide whether more of these animated offerings continue to be green lit in the future. As for the Terminator franchise, James Cameron recently revealed that he wants to perform a reboot on the live-action side of the saga, wiping away Arnie’s T-800 along with John and Sarah Connor. However, while he believes that his biggest challenge is keeping ahead of real world technology, it could actually be trying to make a Terminator movie that does not continue the story that everyone has come to associate with the franchise.

Although the last Terminator movie, Terminator: Dark Fate, did not perform well at the box office, it did manage to score as one of the best movies in the entire franchise. While everyone waits to see how that all pans out, it seems that the Terminator franchise is currently in standby mode, waiting for someone to come along to boot it up again.