Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles Episode Guide

The opening season moves Sarah and John Connor into a new period of history, introduces Cameron as their latest protector and establishes that Skynet has survived the destruction of Cyberdyne. Its abbreviated length produces a brisk run mixing machine confrontations with the quieter challenge of raising a future resistance leader.

Episode 1: Pilot

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Living as fugitives in 1999, Sarah and John are discovered by another Terminator sent to kill him. A new student named Cameron reveals her true purpose and offers the Connors a dangerous opportunity to escape their pursuer and resume the fight against Skynet.

Episode 2: Gnothi Seauton

Sarah and Cameron search for Resistance fighters who can provide the family with new identities, but the safe house has already been compromised. John visits the life his mother abandoned, while Sarah receives troubling information about her own future.

Episode 3: The Turk

Sarah investigates Andy Goode, a programmer developing an unusually capable chess computer called the Turk. John struggles with the limits of maintaining a normal school life when he knows terrible events may happen but cannot safely intervene.

Episode 4: Heavy Metal

The Connors discover that a Terminator is assembling a large supply of coltan, the metal used to construct machine endoskeletons. John takes a considerable risk to stop the shipment, proving that protecting the future leader of humanity is difficult when he keeps volunteering for fieldwork.

Episode 5: Queen’s Gambit

Andy enters a rebuilt version of the Turk into a chess tournament with a military contract at stake. His subsequent death leads Sarah to an injured Resistance fighter whose identity creates an unexpected connection to John’s family.

Episode 6: Dungeons & Dragons

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As Charley attempts to save Derek’s life, memories reveal the future soldier’s experiences in Skynet captivity and his reasons for returning to the past. The episode provides an atmospheric glimpse of the future war while exposing a hidden connection between Derek and the Turk.

Episode 7: The Demon Hand

Sarah and Cameron separately pursue the missing Turk and a severed Terminator hand held by the FBI. Ellison consults Sarah’s former psychiatrist, whose encounter with a liquid-metal machine has radically altered his understanding of her warnings.

Episode 8: Vick’s Chip

John examines the processor recovered from a destroyed Terminator and discovers the machine’s role in developing Los Angeles’ traffic-control network. Derek encourages him to destroy Cameron’s chip as well, forcing John to decide how far he trusts his mechanical protector.

Episode 9: What He Beheld

Sarah attempts to recover the Turk from the man now using it to blackmail the family. Derek gives John an unusual birthday gift, while Ellison leads an FBI operation against Cromartie with devastating consequences.

The second season explores the consequences of Cameron’s damaged programming while introducing Catherine Weaver and her mysterious artificial-intelligence project. As several future factions interfere with the present, Sarah begins to question whether Skynet is the only machine intelligence being created and whether every visitor from tomorrow is fighting the same war.

Episode 1: Samson and Delilah

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Cameron survives the attack on the Connor home, but damage to her processor causes her original mission to reassert itself. John must decide whether she can still be trusted, while technology executive Catherine Weaver acquires the Turk for a secret project called Babylon.

Episode 2: Automatic for the People

A dying Resistance fighter directs Sarah towards the Seranno Point nuclear power station and leaves behind a list of people and places connected to the future. John meets Riley at his new school, while Weaver takes a discreet interest in the power plant.

Episode 3: The Mousetrap

Cromartie abducts Charley’s wife to draw Sarah and John into separate traps. John slips away from Cameron to spend time with Riley, unaware that his pursuer is already manipulating the people around him.

Episode 4: Allison from Palmdale

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A malfunction causes Cameron to lose her identity and experience memories belonging to Allison Young, the Resistance fighter whose appearance she copied. Past and future unfold together, revealing more about Cameron’s creation and the machine faction that first encountered Allison.

Episode 5: Goodbye to All That

A Terminator begins killing everyone named Martin Bedell in an attempt to eliminate a future Resistance hero. Derek and John protect the most likely target at a military academy, giving John a closer look at the sacrifices people will eventually make in his name.

Episode 6: The Tower Is Tall but the Fall Is Short

A name on the Resistance list leads the Connors to family psychologist Boyd Sherman. His observations uncover John’s unresolved trauma, while Weaver seeks his help with both her daughter Savannah and the rapidly developing Babylon project.

Episode 7: Brothers of Nablus

The theft of the Connors’ identities threatens to expose their location, sending Sarah and Cameron after the responsible gang. Cromartie continues narrowing his search, while another machine attempts to replace Ellison.

Episode 8: Mr. Ferguson Is Ill Today

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Following an argument with Sarah, John takes Riley to a Mexican town where he once lived. His attempt at independence gives Cromartie the opening it needs, drawing the extended Connor family into a decisive confrontation.

Episode 9: Complications

Sarah suffers disturbing visions after the battle in Mexico, while Cameron and John discover that Cromartie’s body has disappeared. Jesse introduces Derek to a man accused of collaborating with Skynet, but the prisoner’s history differs from Derek’s memories.

Episode 10: Strange Things Happen at the One Two Point

Sarah becomes fixated upon three dots found among the dead Resistance fighter’s notes and pursues a technology company she believes may possess the Turk. Jesse explains her concerns about Cameron’s future influence over John, revealing that Riley’s arrival was not accidental.

Episode 11: Self Made Man

Cameron’s nocturnal research uncovers a Terminator accidentally sent to the 1920s, where it has spent decades preparing to complete its mission. The unusual standalone story demonstrates just how patient a machine can be when its assassination appointment is nearly ninety years away.

Episode 12: Alpine Fields

Sarah and Cameron protect a family whose unborn child will play an important role in the future Resistance. Events unfold across several periods, connecting a desperate present-day escape with Derek and Jesse’s exposure to a deadly biological weapon.

Episode 13: Earthlings Welcome Here

Sarah’s search for the meaning of the three dots leads her to a UFO convention and an engineer connected to a secret aircraft project. Riley’s increasingly fragile state alarms John and Cameron, while Jesse applies more pressure to keep her mission alive.

Episode 14: The Good Wound

Wounded and alone, Sarah imagines Kyle Reese guiding her away from capture. Her attempt to obtain treatment without exposing the family becomes entangled with a doctor’s troubled personal life, while John Henry begins investigating the body he inhabits.

Episode 15: Desert Cantos

The Connors attend a memorial for workers killed at the mysterious factory and quietly investigate the surrounding town. Grieving families, contradictory stories and unusual animal deaths suggest that valuable technology survived the destruction.

Episode 16: Some Must Watch, While Some Must Sleep

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Sleep deprivation leaves Sarah trapped between a medical clinic and a violent interrogation conducted by a man she believed she had killed. The episode deliberately blurs dreams and reality, placing viewers inside Sarah’s increasingly exhausted and suspicious mind.

Episode 17: Ourselves Alone

Cameron develops involuntary movements suggesting that the damage to her processor may not be fully repaired. Riley discovers the real purpose behind Jesse’s plan, while John receives a disturbing safeguard against the possibility that Cameron could turn on him again.

Episode 18: Today Is the Day, Part 1

Riley’s death deepens the distrust between John, Sarah and Cameron as they try to determine what happened. In the future, Jesse joins the submarine USS Jimmy Carter on a secret mission involving a reprogrammed machine and a sealed package.

Episode 19: Today Is the Day, Part 2

John follows the evidence surrounding Riley and confronts the person responsible for bringing her into his life. Aboard the Jimmy Carter, fear spreads through the crew after the submarine’s mysterious cargo is opened.

Episode 20: To the Lighthouse

Sarah takes John to Charley’s fortified coastal safe house while the family prepares to disappear again. At ZeiraCorp, John Henry is attacked by another artificial intelligence, suggesting that something comparable to him is already spreading through global computer systems.

Episode 21: Adam Raised a Cain

A Terminator targets Savannah Weaver, forcing the Connors to intervene before John Henry can guide her to safety. The rescue carries a sudden and deeply personal cost, while Sarah prepares to exchange Savannah for a meeting with Catherine Weaver.

Episode 22: Born to Run

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With Sarah in custody, John and Cameron must choose between escaping alone and attempting a rescue. Their meeting with Weaver finally exposes the nature of her project, while John Henry’s disappearance opens a path towards a radically altered future.

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles was cancelled after “Born to Run”, leaving John’s journey, Cameron’s fate and the conflict surrounding John Henry unresolved. The ending is undeniably frustrating, but it is also an audacious final swing that reconfigures the entire mythology and leaves the series walking towards possibilities few other Terminator stories have explored.