Judgment Day is upon us, and you’ve survived … in this timeline, at least. Now, come with us if you want to live — or to learn more about the fate of humanity at the end of TERMINATOR ZERO Season 1.

Can humanity be saved? Should humanity be saved? This anime incarnation of the Terminator franchise asks deep questions about the relationship between people and technology as it toggles between two timelines. In 2022, a war has been raging between the remnants of human society and an endless army of machines controlled by a sentient artificial intelligence known as Skynet. In 1997 Tokyo, scientist Malcolm Lee (voiced by André Holland) is racing to launch a rival AI, Kokoro (Rosario Dawson) before Skynet becomes self-aware and begins its attack on humankind. 

To stop him, Skynet sends an assassin back in time: the Terminator (Timothy Olyphant), an android that can’t be bargained with, can’t be reasoned with, doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear, and absolutely will not stop, ever, until Malcolm is dead. Humanity’s best hope is a soldier from the future named Eiko (Sonoya Mizuno), herself sent back to 1997 to protect Malcolm. 

The final episode of Season 1 contains a ton of mind-blowing moments (and we’re not just talking about all the times a robot’s head explodes). Creator and showrunner Mattson Tomlin tells Tudum all about the revelations at the end of TERMINATOR ZERO. It’s worth putting up another warning for timeline-altering spoilers ahead.

What happened to Malcolm Lee?

Though the Terminator ultimately kills Malcolm, Eiko’s mission isn’t a failure — Malcolm pretty much redeems humanity. Tomlin always had it in his head that Malcolm would have to die at the end of Season 1. “Looking at the show now, it feels like the only conclusion,” says Tomlin. “At the end of the show, this guy has sacrificed so much. He’s sacrificed all this time and energy and his relationships with his children and has really sacrificed his relationship with his eldest son in particular, all for the objective of saving the world. And then, he kind of manages to do it.”

With his death, Malcolm helps to answer Kokoro’s essential question: Is humanity worth saving? “He manages to flip the switch on Kokoro and get her to go, ‘OK, I’m on board with this guy. He has convinced me,’ ” says Tomlin. “It’s a sacrifice. And I think that, for me, audiences on some level may want to see him punished for being a bad father — but then you go through the process of really understanding why he is the way that he is and the journey that he has been on.”

Where does Malcolm come from?

As we learn before the Terminator kills him, Malcolm is from the future — from beyond 2022. Throughout the season, Malcolm is tormented by dreams of a nuclear apocalypse, but these aren’t his fears for the future, they’re his memories of an apocalypse. This also explains how his technology for Kokoro is so advanced.

One of the biggest bombshells of the finale is the revelation that Eiko is Malcolm’s mother from the future. Eiko is as shocked as the audience is –– and in the dark as to the father’s identity.

Who is the Prophet?

In the 2022 sequences, a Resistance leader called the Prophet (Ann Dowd) lays bare the metaphysical complexities of time travel for Eiko, but a sense of mystery remains around the character. “We don’t know who she is, we don’t know where she comes from,” teases Tomlin. “It’s going to be doled out at another point in time. But just know it’s a story that’s about time travel, so let’s really play with that … for me, a character like the Prophet, that’s really seeding things for a [potential] Season 2, 3, 4.”

What is Misaki’s secret?

Malcolm’s robot nanny Misaki (Sumalee Montano) is very different from the Terminator in that she feels emotions and possesses a conscience. As is revealed in the finale, she came from the future with Malcolm — it’s her memories that Malcolm uses to inform Kokoro’s personality.

Misaki also happens to be Tomlin’s favorite character. “This really is a story about families,” he says, “and she is [the children’s] mother, and she’s also a machine.” We’re unclear at the end of Season 1 as to whether Misaki is the kids’ mother figure or literally bears the DNA of Malcolm’s wife who died in a bus accident.

Will there be a TERMINATOR ZERO Season 2?

Stay tuned for what’s to come for TERMINATOR ZERO, but Tomlin has a much larger, timeline-jumping story in mind. “If I had my druthers and I could do all six seasons that I’ve got mapped out,” he says, “it would be following these kids as they grow — they survive Judgment Day, and then what? And then they’re in their teens, and then they’re in their twenties, and then they’re in their forties, and then they’re in their sixties, and meanwhile they are jumping all over time trying to fix this mess.”

The “mess” in question has to do with the big, complicated question of humanity’s future, which has always been integral to the Terminator franchise. “Are we doing anything while we’re here?” says Tomlin. “I’m not a nihilist — I’m a humanist, and I love people, and I think that there’s a reason that we’re on this planet. With something like TERMINATOR ZERO, where you have these big themes about technology and about an apocalypse that is truly driven and created by human beings and our need to invent, press, and push weaponry, it felt like the question to ask: Can we change our fate? We seem to be marching towards doom, and we know it.”

TERMINATOR ZERO is streaming now, only on Netflix.