It is difficult to know what to say in summary of this series on Terminator. It began by reconstructing an original timeline for what many claim is a fixed time film. It then tracked the changes made to history as the events of the original Terminator shifted judgment day forward to 1997, and then Terminator 2: Judgment Day pushed them back again to 2004. An infinity loop based on a grandfather paradox was avoided by assuming that John lied to his mother, and that brought us back to something resembling the original history and date.
That brought us to Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, where we had to work our way through a few potential anomalies. If in the original history they were not being chased by a machine, how did John and Kate get together? If in the second history they were not assisted by a terminator, how did they escape from one? And how did those names get listed as John's lieutenants if they were already executed?
Thus half of our examination addressed the first three films before we reached the new one, Terminator Salvation. We discussed the sequence of events from SkyNet's perspective, and the suggestion in Marcus Wright's conversation that SkyNet already knew about assassination attempts it had not yet made. We asked whether SkyNet knew that Reese was Conner's father, and whether that mattered, and whether the fact that everything worked meant this was actually a fixed time story. Finally, we considered how entirely improbable it was that Kyle Reese could be born both before the late Skynet launch date and after the early one, and whether there was an alternate solution if we allow the possibility of a slightly different Kyle Reese.
We are thus faced with the fact that it is extremely difficult to reach the moment that is the beginning of Terminator Salvation; however, most of those difficulties fall in the previous films. If we accept that all of the events of the first three Terminator movies (and the alternate histories they demand) have happened, that we have reached the starting point for this film, then the events portrayed are not impossible, not even terribly improbable, and they fit comfortably into the existing story without disrupting anything that has become necessary.
The possibility also exists for future franchise films. I have long liked the notion of the resistance sending someone back to the past to plant a weakness in SkyNet's programming that they can access in the future; it would put them on the offensive and have SkyNet sending something back to stop them. If SkyNet can act between the moment the resistance sends their man back and the moment they can take advantage of the weakness, the chase is on sometime in 2004 while the resistance in the future has to hold its position long enough for their trick to take effect.
Unfortunately, it would have to be after the death of John Conner, so the only character known to us who could be in it would be an aging Kate Brewster Conner, and maybe John Conner's child.
The series is probably not over as long as it continues to make enough money. I expect we'll see a fifth movie of some sort.
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