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Cromartie (Garret Dillahunt)

Gender: Male
Occupation: Cyborg Assassin
* First appeared on February 04, 2008 in the episode Heavy Metal.
* This character was last seen on April 10, 2009 in the episode Born to Run.

Within the series, Cromartie is one of many cyborg Terminator assassins sent back in time to kill future hero John Connor. In The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Cromartie is an ongoing antagonist for the series' protagonists. He is envisioned as a T-888 model of Terminator: a slightly more advanced model than the eponymous Terminator portrayed by Arnold Schwarzenegger in the film series.

Cromartie in Season 1

In the "Pilot", he is a substitute teacher in the high school class that John is attending in 1999 and identifies himself as "Cromartie". During roll call, when John acknowledges his attendance, Cromartie removes a concealed pistol and attempts to kill John. John escapes due to Cameron Phillips taking the bullets. Cameron later runs over Cromartie with a truck and briefly disables him. Cromartie follows them home and engages Cameron in battle again. Unable to destroy Cromartie, Cameron instead shocks him with a live wire, incapacitating him for 120 seconds.

Cromartie eventually tracks John, Sarah and Cameron to a bank vault, demonstrating his model's immense strength by tearing apart the thick vault door with his bare hands. Intercepting them right before they travel to 2007, he ends up shot by an energy rifle that was hidden in the vault and is supposedly destroyed.

It is later revealed, however, that Cromartie survived, although his biological covering was destroyed, and his head separated from his body. Cromartie's head was transported to 2007, along with John, Sarah, and Cameron, and is subsequently found by a salvager. The head is able to reactivate the body and able to guide it to its position. After killing the salvager and reattaching the head to its body, the Cromartie terminator, under heavy disguise, searches for new biological covering.

His search leads him to a medical scientist, Dr. Flemming, who specializes in cellular growth. When Cromartie shows him a formula that would create artificial flesh at an exponential rate, Dr. Flemming is eager to complete the task. However, after the cyborg receives his new flesh covering, he kills the scientist and takes his eyes to cover his own.

Cromartie later seeks the aid of a plastic surgeon, Dr. David Lyman, to build him a new face. After scanning through pictures of all of Dr. Lyman's patients, he chooses the face of George Lazlo, since he is a 92% structural match. He later kills Dr. Lyman and Lazlo, and steals Lazlo's identity.

Cromartie later assumes the name Robert Kester and masquerades as an FBI agent, and uses his false credentials to find Sarah and John. However, Agent James Ellison finds out, and attempts to capture him with a Hostage Rescue Team operation. The entire team is killed except for Ellison, who is left face to face with Cromartie in a final showdown. When Ellison lowers his gun in resignation, Cromartie simply stares at him and walks away without firing. Later that evening when Ellison goes to the ruins of Sarah Connor's house, he is startled to see Cromartie walk up. Ellison tells him that if he was left alive so that he could lead Cromartie to the Connors then he might as well be killed right now, for he will not do "The devil's work". The Terminator replies "We'll see", before walking away again.

Cromartie in Season 2

Later, in the season two episode "The Mousetrap", Cromartie kidnapped Charley Dixon's wife, Michelle, to lure Sarah out so he could hunt John without interference. After Sarah, Charley and Derek Reese arrived, he set off a bomb where Michelle Dixon was held. Most of them survived, but Michelle was fatally wounded by the bomb's shrapnel and died from severe blood loss. Cromartie mimicked Sarah's voice in a phone call to John to bring him out into public, but John spotted Cromartie stalking him and runs to escape. Cromartie dove into the ocean after John, and sank to the bottom, nearly dragging John down with him, though John escaped by a narrow margin. However, Cromartie was later shown walking out of the ocean, which indicates that Terminators are capable of surviving under water. He later appeared at Michelle Dixon's funeral, probably waiting to find John Connor.

In the episode "Brothers of Nablus," during his continuous search for the Connors, Cromartie saved Ellison from a double sent by Skynet. Despite the cyborg's loyalty to Skynet, it is shown that Cromartie disagrees with its belief that Ellison is useless since leaving the FBI and holds that Ellison can still lead him to the Connors even though the former agent is no longer under the employ of the FBI. These events lead Ellison to intensify his obsession to bring the cyborg down as the former agent is unwilling to be his pawn.

After pursuing John and Riley to Mexico with Sarah as a hostage, Cromartie was led into a trap by Ellison and gunned down by Sarah, Derek, Cameron, and ultimately John. The team buried the endoskeleton outside a Mexican church, promising Ellison they would return with materials to destroy it permanently, and Sarah destroyed his CPU beyond repair with the butt of an MP5, apparently "killing" him once and for all. The title of this episode, "Mr. Ferguson Is Ill Today," is in reference to Cromartie's initial appearance in the pilot episode when he masqueraded as John Connor's substitute teacher.

In the episode "Complications", Ellison exhumes Cromartie's endoskeleton for Catherine Weaver. In the following episode, "Strange Things Happen At The One Two Point", Weaver reveals to Ellison that her Babylon project team have repaired Cromartie's body and connected it to the sentient computer mind developed from Andy Goode's Turk chess computer - the artificial intelligence believe destined to become Skynet. Operating Cromartie's former head, the system politely greets a shocked Ellison and identifies himself as "John Henry", a name recently given to it by the late Dr. Boyd Sherman.

Conception and casting

Garret Dillahunt was originally considered for the pilot, but he was busy. Afterwards, his schedule opened up, and the writers wrote him into the role.

T-888

The T-888 endoskeleton, shared by Cromartie, "Vick" and possibly also "Carter", is very similar to the classic T-800/850 Model, with some minor differences. The endoskeleton structure contains some upgrades, including additional armour plating to protect the spinal column and chest, as well as bladed surfaces on the inner thighs, allowing a (presumably fleshless) T-888 to decapitate a human if it can get them in a headlock between its legs. The endoskeleton itself is smaller than the 800/850, allowing for a wider variety of disguises. If decapitated, a T-888's head can guide the body to itself, even over long distances. Apparently, this is what makes it possible for the headless body of a T-888 to navigate itself successfully around obstacles and through the city, evade detection, and attack/kill those who get in its way, even though there is no visible evidence of audiovisual sensors anywhere other than the head.

Additionally, the silicon CPU chip is directly attached to the shock-damping assembly, whereas on the T-800 this was a separate piece which required removal before the CPU chip itself could be accessed. T-888s' selection of voice synthesis is not a function of their CPU chip, as demonstrated at the end of "Strange Things Happen at the One Two Point", when the John Henry computer spoke through Cromartie's former head in the voice of the late George Lazlo, despite Cromartie's CPU having been destroyed by Sarah Connor at the end of "Mr. Ferguson Is Ill Today" and the voice having been adopted by the Terminator only after taking Lazlo's appearance.

T-888 flesh can retain its natural appearance for decades as demonstrated by Myron Stark who encased himself in a wall from May 1927 until the unspecified date ( December 1, 2008 through late 2010) in episode, "Self-Made Man".

According to the Sarah Connor Chronicles: Behind the Scenes featurette, the T-888 possesses two more additional backup CPUs with the same neural net architecture. The arrangement of the CPUs is not specified, but in order for the removal of the primary CPU to deactivate the unit, they would have to be installed in a hierarchical or series scheme.