Before the third movie featured the T-X as a villain, a female Terminator was originally slated to appear in Terminator is a dark, edgy slasher-influenced action film from James Cameron. The helmer’s bleak tale of a robot assassin sent back in time to kill the leader of the human resistance before he was born was a huge hit, and years later he would return for an even more ambitious sequel.
However, like all of Cameron’s many projects, his plans for Terminator 2 stretched the limits of what was achievable onscreen in of visual effects. For example, the now-iconic image of the liquid metal T-1000 melting and reforming itself into Robert Patrick’s icy cool cop was almost too expensive to render. Terminator 2: Judgment Day had to cut numerous ambitious sequences too since many scenes were simply too expensive to shoot.
One of many ideas lost between script and screen, though, was the original plan for Terminator 2’s villain - or rather, villainess. Originally, the Cameron sequel intended to have a female Terminator fighting the eponymous android, only for the filmmakers to decide this ran the risk of looking comedic if it wasn't executed properly. Co-writer William Wisher had this to say about the concept while being interviewed for The Making Of Terminator 2: Judgement Day book (via Hope of the Future).
"Another idea we kicked around was that of a female Terminator--kind of an 'Arnold versus the B*tch' idea. But that seemed almost comical. So we came back to the original concept of the shape-changer.”
Readers might have assumed a female Terminator would be less muscular and imposing than Arnie, but the fact the filmmakers state they "came back" to the idea of the shape-shifting T-1000 could imply a female version of the T-1000 wasn’t what they had in mind. Furthermore, the fact Schwarzenegger wanted wrestling icon Chyna to play the T-X in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines makes it more likely the female Terminator they were considering for T2 would have been the same model as Arnie himself, rather than a lither, smaller T-1000 like Robert Patrick or Terminator 3's Kristanna Loken.
Sadly, there's not a lot of information about what either Cameron or Wisher had in mind for their female Terminator, though given the director's history with creating strong female characters, it could have made for an interesting dynamic. The duo also mulled the idea of having Arnie's heroic T-800 fighting an evil version in Terminator 2: Judgment Day, but this was largely dropped as it didn't escalate the threat. If they were both the same model, they would have been evenly matched in combat. In the end, they went for Patrick's T-1000 and created another iconic monster in the process.
