When considering Skynet’s most powerful Terminators, the T-800 lands pretty low on the list, especially when directly compared to the likes of the T-1000 and the T-X. Yet, in every Terminator story, the T-800 is somehow able to come out on top, despite the T-1000 and T-X being unarguably better models. While many fans might assume this is just plot armor, there’s actually a shockingly simple explanation as to why this is the case, and it highlights Skynet’s biggest design flaw.

In Beckett Comics’ Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines #3 by Miles Gunter and Mike Hawthorne, readers are shown exactly what the T-X model Terminator was doing right before being sent back in time (which is when fans met her in the film Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines). As it turns out, the T-X had just finished proving itself in a combat test run by Skynet, which pitted the T-X against the T-1000 (which is the liquid-metal Terminator from T2). As one would rightly assume, Terminator’s T-X defeated the T-1000, thereby earning it the right to lead this temporal mission.

In both the movie and this comic tie-in, the T-800 that was sent back in time by the human resistance (played by Arnold Schwarzenegger in the film) defeated the T-X, despite the fact that the newer model was far more powerful. The T-800 did so by utilizing its surroundings, and eventually beat the T-X after literally crashing a helicopter into her. And that is the crux of Skynet’s biggest design flaw, and why the T-800 keeps beating the AI’s newer and better model Terminators.

Skynet Doesn’t Take Into Account the Terminators’ Surroundings During Test Trials

It’s clear from this tie-in Terminator comic alone that Skynet doesn’t take the Terminators’ surroundings into account when deciding which model is better. The T-X fought the T-1000 in an empty room, where it displayed how much more effective it’s housed weapons (guns, flamethrowers, plasma cannons) were compared to the T-1000’s fully-malleable form (which can only produce weapons such as swords and hooks).

With nothing around them, the T-X defeated the T-1000 because the weapons that were built directly into its body were deadlier than those that could be produced by the T-1000. The same would have been true if the T-X (or the T-1000, for that matter) went up against a T-800 in this testing area, as the T-800 has no on-board weapons in its body, and would therefore be easily destroyed by the T-X (and T-1000).

This is why Skynet so confidently sent these newer models back in time in T2 and T3, because according to the tests it ran, the newer models were obviously better. However, the T-800 always beat these newer models because it had no choice but to use its surroundings, while the T-X and T-1000 relied too heavily on the weapons their mechanical forms offered them.

Terminator Already Confirmed a Shockingly Simple Solution for Skynet’s Design Flaw

In order to truly test the strength of its Terminators, Skynet simply has to change its testing arena – and it has literally limitless options. When Skynet took over, it caused a nuclear armageddon, effectively turning the entire world into a post-apocalyptic nightmare. While this is a horrific landscape for humans, it’s perfect for Terminator testing. The decimated cities fans saw as early as the first Terminator film would be the perfect location to conduct real-world trials for new model Terminators, allowing Skynet to account for the anomalous outcome of a T-800 defeating models that were obviously more powerful than it.

As the Terminator franchise presses on, only time will tell if Skynet (or a Skynet-equivalent AI overlord) will fix this glaring design flaw in Terminator assessment trials. But, until then, at least fans now know that this design flaw is exactly why the T-800 Terminator is able to defeat the T-1000 and T-X, when before, that never made sense.