The just-released first image from Terminator 6 not only gave audiences their first look at the older Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) alongside female leads Natalia Reyes and Mackenzie Davis, it may also have revealed that one of them is something other than human. According to previously released plot details, the movie takes place in Mexico City of the present and concerns a human protagonist named Dani Ramos (Reyes) who finds herself hunted by a new Terminator (Gabriel Luna) sent back from the future. Somewhere along the way, original Terminator stars Arnold Schwarzenegger and Linda Hamilton become involved in the action.
In true reboot fashion, Terminator 6 seeks to bridge the gap between the old Terminator movies and the new by bringing in Schwarzenegger and Hamilton to pass the torch. To help with the rebooting process, Terminator 6 will ignore everything that happened in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, Terminator Salvation and Terminator Genisys, making the new movie in essence a direct sequel to Terminator 2: Judgment Day. Returning producer James Cameron is setting the film up as the potential first chapter in a trilogy that would center on Dani Ramos and the other new characters.
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In addition to Ramos and the new Terminator, Terminator 6 introduces Mackenzie Davis as a character named Grace who is described as a “soldier-assassin” from the future. The first image released from Terminator 6 gives us a look at all three of the movie’s main female characters, including Davis’ Grace, and a closer look at the picture reveals the interesting fact that Davis’ character is covered with scars in suspiciously symmetrical patterns (the same scars were glimpsed in leaked set photos from the film’s shoot in Madrid). The obvious conclusion is that Grace, despite looking very human, is not fully so.
If not fully human, Grace could be one of two things: a cyborg (human with robot parts) or a full-on Terminator (a robot endoskeleton with an outer skin of artificial human tissue). Terminators are of course ubiquitous in the series, but cyborgs too have played a part. Terminator Salvation introduced T-H model “hybrid” human/Terminators, human beings modified with cybernetic parts (not unlike Wolverine). In the film, Sam Worthington’s character Marcus Wright is a convicted criminal from the pre-apocalypse who after being executed is given experimental surgery under Cyberdyne’s Project Angel that turns him into such a half-human/half-robot. Grace's scars certainly seem like evidence of that kind of surgery. Of course, with Terminator 6 ignoring all the movies after Terminator 2, the events of Salvation are not technically canon anymore, but that doesn't mean the new movie can’t discreetly borrow ideas from the now-ignored sequel.
The other possibility is that Grace has no actual human elements at all, but is, in fact, a full-on Terminator. In Terminator lore, there were early models of Terminators that were clunky and badly designed, being basically robots with rubber human skins. Grace is definitely more human-looking than these crude pre-T-800 models, so it’s unlikely that she is an early proto-Terminator, but she could be of the same generation of the T-800 with skin that has been damaged and badly repaired. Of course, if Grace is a Terminator, that raises loyalty questions: is she really fighting for Skynet or more following in the footsteps of Schwarzenegger’s T-800 from Judgement Day who went back in time to protect John Connor rather than kill him (and learned how to be more human along the way).
Of the two options outlined above, the cyborg theory would seem the more plausible. The idea of humans with implanted cybernetic parts has already been introduced (albeit in a movie that James Cameron has banished from canon), and Grace being a cyborg gives her the chance to be a more human character. Of course, it’s always possible that Grace is fully human and just thinks being covered in scars makes her look more intimidating. The future in Terminator lore is a pretty horrible place and it might actually be advantageous to make your enemies think you could be a cyborg. The answer to the Grace mystery will be revealed when Terminator 6 hits theaters.
