Summer Glau wil be joining Thomas Dekker and Lena Headey in the upcoming "The Sarah Conner Chronicles," a "Terminator" spinoff series coming to FOX. The series will detail the adventures of Sarah Conner (Headey) and her son John (Dekker) in between the events of "Terminator 2" and "Terminator 3." The name of Glau's character has not yet been announced.

"The Terminator" was a surprise hit when it premiered in 1984. The film's premise was standard science fiction: from a dystopian future, a killer android (Arnold Schwarzenegger) is sent to our time to assassinate the mother (Linda Hamilton) of the leader of the future human resistance, and the leader's best friend (Michael Biehn) travels back in time to stop him, along the way managing to father the child who will eventually be the leader.  The sequel was a huge success, and brought back Schwarzenegger is a much friendlier role to fit his kinder, gentler new image.

Which leads us to speculation about Glau.  (Speculation and potential plot spoilers on the next page.)

Speculation is starting to surface that Glau's character in the new series will be the next model of Terminator.  This would build off her role as a trained killing machine in the Firefly/Serenity universe, and would play with audience expectations.  During the filming of the original "Terminator," cast member Linda Hamilton told the director (and her future ex-husband) James Cameron that having such a large, muscular actor as Schwarzenegger be the killer android would be less impressive than having a thin, wiry actor do the same things, and this influence can be seen in T2's Terminator as played by the far more svelte Robert Patrick (The X-Files) and in T3's Terminatrix/TX as played by Kristanna Loken. Could Glau be continuing this trend? It remains to be seen as the pilot goes into production.