Netflix premiered a Terminator anime series in 2024 called Terminator Zero. The series was set up as an eight-episode first season and was based on the original James Cameron stories, although it treated every film in the franchise as canon, despite setting the story in Japan. When the first season was released, showrunner Mattson Tomlin said that he had plans for a five-season series that would show the lead character, Malcolm Lee, as a scientist who is developing an AI meant to compete with Skynet. The series would also show him raising his kids as they grow up through the war, and then would evolve into a future war.
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It appears that Tomlin’s dreams for his overarching story will not come to fruition. According to the website Cancelled Sci Fi, Netflix has seemingly quietly cancelled Terminator Zero and Leviathan. This comes after Netflix announced its slate of originals for the 2026 calendar year. NeitherTerminator Zero nor Leviathan was listed in the 2026 releases. The site also points out that there are no entries in Production Weekly, which is a strong indicator that they are both finished on Netflix.
Terminator Zero received mainly positive reviews from critics, sitting at an 87% fresh Rotten Tomatoes rating, with a 79% audience score. However, Netflix is known to cancel popular and critically-acclaimed shows if they don’t hit a certain viewing metric, and the first season never even reached the Top 10 during its release in the summer of 2024. Tomlin talked about his plans for a second season, but Netflix never announced a renewal, and it seems that it is another one-and-done for the streaming service.
Leviathan dropped on Netflix in 2025 without any fanfare at all. It is based on the novels by Scott Westerfield, and the first season actually adapted all three books in the trilogy in its one season. That anime follows an alternate history of World War I with a sci-fi steampunk flair. Despite finishing its story, there were rumors that it would carry on and tell new stories in future seasons, but it seems that it has ended after one season as well.
Terminator Zero’s Cancellation Leaves Concern About Franchise Future
Terminator Zero looked to offer up new stories in the world of the Terminator franchise. This has been a popular idea in the past, specifically with Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, but this gave the franchise a chance to test the waters of anime and move the location across the world. The story began with Malcolm Lee and his children targeted by a Terminator assassin, with a soldier from 2022 sent back to protect them.
While it sounds a lot like the first movie, from the Terminator sent to kill the scientist to the soldier sent to protect him, it takes things in surprising and fresh directions. This leads to several questions about the future of Terminator as the last movie in the franchise arrived in 2019, and James Cameron is deciding his future following the release of Avatar: Fire and Ash.
Cameron is supposed to be making two more Avatar movies, but if he decides to move on from that franchise, Cameron said he has an idea for a possible Terminator reboot with a new cast, while resetting the continuity of the entire series. Cameron said it would not involve Arnold Schwarzenegger at all, and he wants to present new ideas about war and super intelligence that people aren’t even imagining right now. These possible plans for a new Terminator movie could have played into Terminator Zero ending on Netflix, as the streaming service might not want to compete with James Cameron at the box office.
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images courtesy of Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures
