godddd terminator dark fate was a whole separate level of gay. they’d written the dynamic between grace and dani so beautifully that if they did end up making them a couple it would have been a great wlw storyline! it was such a sucker punch when they reveal the whole motherly thing? like WHAT? i was so sure that they’d imply that dani and grace were lovers or at least super close bbfs – that still would have been better than the mentor stuff. even my Heterosexual™ mother thought they were gay.

 I knowwww. It could have been this really cool intentional embrace of the romance, taking the original Sarah/Reese savior/protector roles and adding this element of like, timeline-shifting for each other, which is literally what it was! These two women just kept on trying to change time to save each other. That’s what the movie was! But in keeping it a mystery and then this VERY half-baked “you raised me” line while at the same time, Grace’s behavior toward her being like a dedicated solider/acolyte, it just confused everything. They spend too much time trying to both make it vague as well as try to show what it wasn’t. 

It coulda been this genre-busting timeloop-breaking new movie, still taking core elements from the first two while adding this new thing to justify the third one and make it stand on its own. And your mom wasn’t wrong, the romantic elements were there, even with scenes cut out and deleted. It was all right there…