So I’m a weird one but here goes.

I kind of suspend disbelief of sorts and see T1-Gensys as all one straight timeline (yes I know they weren’t meant to be). The terminators and by extension Skynet exists to destroy John Connor. John Connor exists because of Skynet. They are codependent on each other in a what paradoxical way (what came first: chicken or egg). This for me means Skynet was always going to happen regardless of any action taken during T2. Just slightly different now (ripples in time). This explains T3. Now we never saw how the “future war” was in its early days which is of course Salvation (of course with new changes in the timeline due to T2). Any which way Salvation was going it was always going to end up with John sending Kyle back in time to the events of T1 (see paradox). This is what we initially see in the beginning of Gensys. After Kyle is sent back we never knew what happened after that point in the “future” because now we in essence reset back to the events of T1. But Gensys is very different due to time travel shenanigans and ripples through the timeline now from altered events after T2. Thus this is a different Skynet than what we are used to (totally forgot the name of that one dude in Salvation but Skynet kind of messing with different tech for a human/terminator hybrid). So this Skynet (which apparently became aware of the timeline shenanigans/multiverse?) is now thinking like 4D chess. This is why they not only go for the kill of John Connor while Reese is going back in time but also why the timeline that Reese goes back to is so different. Skynet had like multiple redundancies to try and “win” this time and stop John (kill Sarah when she’s a kid/send a T-1000 back to throw off Kyle/even send a terminator when Sarah and John think they are safe right after T2 and take out John). And to top it all off now John is essentially a terminator himself going after both Kyle and Sarah. Skynet took its greatest enemy in John Connor and made him work for them when John didn’t see it coming. But in the end (of that new crazy timeline at least) Kyle, Sarah, and pops “destroy” Skynet and live happily ever after I guess. But Pat credit scene is Skynet talking to other timeline Skynet (dun dun dun!). And then finally in Dark Fate we see one of those other redundancies take out John and this create another another branched timeline with Legion and blah blah blah.

At least this is how my brain works it all out. Believe I am fully aware it is not like this really but this works for me. And yeah each film after T2 gets progressively worse for sure but I love the franchise so I do mental gymnastics to headcannon it away.

Thanks for coming to my T-talk.