Terminator Zero made its debut on Netflix this week and the highly anticipated anime series is living up to the hype. The first season is officially Certified Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes with a near-perfect 95% among critics and an equally impressive 81% Audience Score.
With just eight episodes in its first season, many fans have already binged the entire season and are now wondering if the series will continue. Prior to the show's debut, series creator and executive producer Mattson Tomlin took to social media, and while he didn't reveal any spoilers, he did reveal his overall plan for Terminator Zero's story.
At the time of his post, Terminator Zero hadn't yet premiered, so fans were wondering if this was a limited series with a definitive finale or if there are plans for multiple seasons with the potential of a renewal.
"I have a multi-season story that takes us deep into the Future War," Tomlin revealed with the caveat, "but we'll only get it if the audience numbers back it up. Be it 3, 4, 5 seasons, I know what the last episode."
Terminator Zero only just debuted on Netflix on August 29th and Netflix has yet to reveal the streaming numbers for the series. If it performs well, we'll likely get some sort of press release or announcement and even a possibility of a renewal. But as of right now, there's been no official announcement of a second season. Netflix tends to wait to see how a series performs before greenlighting additional seasons.
But one would think with such high marks from critics and fans, it will do well. That is if there's still interest in the Terminator franchise as a whole.
Executive produced by Skydance, Japan animation studio Production I.G, and creator Mattson Tomlin, Terminator Zero tells an original story set in the same universe as the Terminator film franchise. But it takes a bold approach, by shifting the story to Japan where we're introduced to a new set of characters. The synopsis reads:
2022: A future war has raged for decades between the few human survivors and an endless army of machines. 1997: The AI known as Skynet gained self-awareness and began its war against humanity.
Caught between the future and this past is a soldier sent back in time to change the fate of humanity. She arrives in 1997 to protect a scientist named Malcolm Lee who works to launch a new AI system designed to compete with Skynet’s impending attack on humanity. As Malcolm navigates the moral complexities of his creation, he’s hunted by an unrelenting assassin from the future, which forever alters the fate of his three children.
Terminator Zero stars Timothy Olyphant (Justified, Deadwood) as The Terminator; Rosario Dawson (Ahsoka) as Kokoro, the advanced AI and Japan's answer to Skynet; Andre Hollan (Moonknight) as Malcolm Lee, a father of three and computer programmer who secretly created an AI that he believes will be humanity's last hope; Sonoya Mizuno (House of Dragons, Crazy Rich Asians) as Eiko, a resistance fighter who travels back in time to prevent Malcolm from launching Kokoro; and Ann Dowd (The Handmaid's Tale) as Prophet, a philosophical guide fo the human resistance in the future.
Terminator Zero is now streaming on Netflix. For those who watched, would you like to see a second season?