Colonel Mary Randall was the commander of a Resistance team deployed to 1984 intended to subvert the genesis of Skynet if possible, and protect Sarah Connor if required.
History[]
Back in Time[]
Mary Randall grew up in the ruins of the future with a group of survivors led by a man called Vince. When she was a little girl, she witnessed the machines attack her colony and kill Vince.[1]
Colonel Randall saves Lieutenant Koufacs
Three months after the final offensive against Skynet, Randall and her soldiers captured a Time Displacement Equipment complex. Leaving behind Lieutenant Koufacs with orders to destroy the facility, Randall and her team used the TDE to travel to 1984, Los Angeles, with the intention of killing the man responsible for the creation of Skynet. After establishing a safehouse and obtaining clothing and weapons, Mary found a job as a waitress and established contact with Dr. Ed Astin, a Cyberdyne Systems employee who was immediately struck with the beautiful woman. After setting up a date with Astin, Mary and her team forced him to take them to their objective: Dr. Bertram Hollister, Ed's boss and their target. Mary's assassination attempt was interrupted by a team of Terminators that had followed them through time to defend Hollister.[2]
Mary retreated to the safehouse alongside Ed and the survivors of her team, where they proceeded to explain to the scared scientist that his Project Bellerophon would perfect artificial intelligence and cause the end of the world. Refusing to believe their story, Ed left the safehouse and unwittingly led the chasing Terminators back to it. The attack killed most of Mary's men, but she managed to escape undetected alongside Ed and fellow soldier Bart Lukens. Now convinced that Mary had told him the truth, Ed led Mary and Bart to Cyberdyne Systems, where they found Hollister in possession of the T-800's remains and protected by the Terminators and the Hybrid cyborg I825.M. Surprisingly, I825.M changed sides, attacked his cybernetic companions, and destroyed most of the T-800's wreckage. Mary and her companions, including the now renegade I825.M, escaped from the complex with the last surviving Terminators in hot pursuit. Bart died during the chase, but Mary, Ed, and I825.M managed to escape unharmed.[2]
The Battle of Mexico City[]
Some days later, the trio discovered that one of the Terminators, C890.L, had survived. Mary realized they couldn't allow any T-800 technology to fall into the hands of Hollister or anyone like him, but the situation was even worse: according to I825.M, the Terminator had now switched to its secondary objective and would try to find and kill Sarah Connor. Mary and I925.M decided to leave Ed behind and head to Mexico City to set a trap for the Terminator, who was using I825.M's cybernetic parts to track him. As they set their trap for C890.L, Mary and the Hybrid started bonding, and she eventually got him to reveal his original, human name: Dudley. Sooner than expected, C890.L arrived at Mexico City. Mary distracted the Terminator until Dudley used his invention to channel all of the city's power grid through the machine, disabling it.[1]
Mary Randall in Mexico City
Mary and Dudley, knowing that another Terminator had arrived from the future and was closing in on them, reprogrammed C890.L and left it behind to "greet" this newcomer. Ten days later, Ed Astin reunited with Mary and Dudley and soon afterwards they reached the deserted hideout of Sarah Connor but no signs of the woman's whereabouts.[1] The three resumed their search for Connor, and soon Mary and Dudley started getting closer, causing Ed to become more and more jealous of the couple. When Dudley asked Ed to operate on his brain and disable the computer within it, Mary stepped outside and reflected on the approaching war and her desire to keep on living in this vibrant world. Wondering what was taking so long, Mary walked back into the safehouse and discovered that Ed had left, leaving Dudley's brain to be wiped and taking with him a copy of the Terminator schematics stored in his memories. Mary disconnected Dudley from the computer in time to save his life and, realizing Astin was headed to bring the data to Hollister, headed back to Los Angeles.[3]
The Hunt for Hollister[]
Mary tracked Hollister to Cyberdyne's new Ellison Valley plant, realizing immediately that it was the place where they went back through time, where the TDE facility would exist in 2030. Within the plant, Mary and Dudley foundd a battle already raging on: a second team of time-travelling Resistance soldiers had already killed both Hollister and Astin and was now fighting a reactivated and self-repaired C890.L. The Terminator killed all the soldiers and was about to kill Mary, when she was saved by LAPD Detective Mark Sloane, who had been tracking C890.L since he first ran into the machine. The firefight reignited when a team of SWAT arrived in scene and Mary managed to finally terminate the Terminator by dropping it into an acid vat and emptying Sloane's grenade launcher in it.[3] Later, Mary convinced Sloane to kill Lockhurst, his FBI contact, before he could deliver Dudley's Terminator schematics and the surviving endoskeleton fragments to his superiors. Angry over having had to kill a man, Sloane left Mary and asked her to never contact him again. Thinking the war finally over, Mary drove into the distance.[4]
Brave New World[]
Two months later, Mary was trying to adapt to a normal life in Los Angeles, working minimum-wage cash in hand as a gardener for the wealthy and trying to contact Dudley, who had disappeared after the Ellison Valley fight. When Dudley finally reached out, Mary headed to San Diego, where she found that her friend had finally been taken over by his machine half. Mary and Dudley fought, but the Hybrid managed to recover to his senses when he detected that yet another Terminator had arrived in the present. Dudley shared what he'd discovered from this other Terminator: that their actions had changed the future and given the humans an advantage, but that the end of the world hadn't been averted and the fight still went on. Ironically, their victories had meant that additional information from the past had survived into the future: Skynet now knew that Sarah Connor was about to give birth in Odessa, Texas. Knowing that he was a liability, Dudley was going to self-sacrifice to prevent his reversion to Skynet control. Mary kissed him and drove away as the Hybrid blew his house up. His last words were: "Win the war, Mary."[4]
Mary reached out to her only surviving ally, Mark Sloane. Despite his reservations, Sloane agreed to head towards Odessa and meet Mary in the hospital where Sarah Connor was about to give birth. Mary and Mark deleted all medical data from the hospital's files and faced this last Terminator. The desperate fight raged through the hospital and up to the roof, when suddenly reality itself changed and the Terminator disappeared into thin air. Something had changed in the future and had made Skynet unable to send this last Terminator. Sarah's child had been born, but it was not John Connor: it was Jane Connor. Somehow Mary survived the sudden shift in reality and remembered who Detective Sloane was, but she had no idea why any of them were there.[4]
Notes[]
- It's unclear if the character of Vince seen in the comics is the same as General Vince Randall, mentioned in The Terminator RPG and implied to be Mary's father. In the RPG's timeline, General Randall is part of the final assault on Cheyenne Mountain so it can't be the same man that Mary saw die as a little girl. Whether it's just a matter of timeline differences, or just two different men both called Vincent, is unknown at the moment.
- Mary Randall's appearance in Endgame (1992) heavily resembles Sarah Connor in Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991).
Appearances[]
- The Terminator: Tempest
- The Terminator: Secondary Objectives
- The Terminator: The Enemy Within
- The Terminator: Endgame
- The Terminator RPG (Mentioned only)
Gallery[]
