Why Fox Canceled Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles

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People don't talk much about "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles" these days. Maybe that's because it only lasted two seasons, the first of which was truncated to just nine episodes due to the 2007-2008 Writers Guild of America strike. Or maybe it was just an early sign of what later "Terminator" movies like "Salvation" and "Genisys" seemed to prove — that in the wake of James Cameron leaving the franchise and the '80s aesthetic that once defined it dropping off, "Terminator" just wasn't that big of a hit anymore.

The shame, of course, is that "The Sarah Connor Chronicles" is actually pretty solid, unlike the aforementioned films. You'd think that after "Game of Thrones" made Lena Headey a global superstar, fans would be interested in going back and revisiting the high-concept sci-fi show she headlined just a few years before being cast as Cersei Lannister. Summer Glau also co-starred in the series, not so far-removed from her turn on "Firefly." But a combination of reportedly high budgets, low ratings, and a strange time for genre TV at large led to "The Sarah Connor Chronicles" getting the chop from Fox after a mere 31 episodes.

"It was not an inexpensive show," then-Fox entertainment president Kevin Reilly told The Hollywood Reporter when the show was canceled in 2009. "We had to make some choices on the night. We looked at ratings track where it had a consistent run. And that trend line was not pointing in the right direction."

Warner Bros. Television

Looking back, it's kind of baffling to think that an original IP from Joss Whedon was renewed over a "Terminator" spin-off show starring Lena Headey. That's no shade to "Dollhouse" star Eliza Dushku, who's fantastic, or the many other talented people who worked on the show, but Whedon's star has obviously fallen in more recent years, and "Dollhouse" ended up being canceled after its second season as well. At 26 episodes, it didn't even hit the same length as "The Sarah Connor Chronicles."

What's more, while Kevin Reilly claimed that the show's large budget was a major reason for its cancelation, showrunner Josh Friedman has made more recent claims to counter that idea. "The budget was $2.65 million an episode for the first season," Friedman told Empire in October 2024. "It was not big. Warner Brothers had four new shows that year: 'Sarah Connor,' 'Pushing Daisies,' 'Chuck,' and 'Big Shots,' which was like a corporate law show. And every one of them had the same budget, $2.65 million." Obviously, a series about time-traveling androids is going to have some bigger budget demands than the other shows on that roster, though it seems that "The Sarah Connor Chronicles" had to make due without a commensurate boost, at least to start. I was unable to find concrete budget numbers for season 2, but while they may have been higher, it's doubtful that there would have been a huge shift.

Additionally, the WGA strike resulted in marketing budgets being slashed for the show's first season. In short, it was a range of forces all working against "The Sarah Connor Chronicles" in tandem, robbing us of some potentially interesting storylines.

Warner Bros. Television

Fox killed some interesting plot arcs when it canceled "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles." Showrunner Josh Friedman told Empire in 2024 that he wasn't entirely surprised when the series wasn't renewed and that he hoped the season 2 finale could serve as an ending of sorts for fans. That said, he's also spoken out at various other times about the plans that would have come to fruition had season 3 received an order.

One of those involved a more nuanced portrait of Skynet, in which some of the AI faction would begin to despair of their desperate Terminator schemes to stop the resistance and start considering other methods for peace. "I just thought if I were super intelligent, if I had this artificial intelligence, and I had an infinite amount of time to contemplate different ways to resolve this crisis, some part of me at some point is gonna think, 'Why don't we make an alliance?'" Friedman said in a 2018 interview with David Bushman of Paley Matters. "I liked the idea that the A.I. started infighting, that there could be different points of view on how to solve the conflict."

It's the kind of sci-fi thought experiment that adds depth and interest to a franchise like "Terminator," and similar storylines were already in motion through the first two seasons. While the "Terminator" timeline has only grown more convoluted and those arcs never got produced, fans did finally get another great TV show entry in the property with 2024's "Terminator Zero."