Can't access terminal in 10.15.3 recovery mode

Hi gptadmin,

If you have another Mac available, you can flash a fresh copy of macOS Recovery onto a USB drive. Assuming that the other Mac is running macOS Mojave or later, follow these steps:

NOTE: These steps download macOS Recovery for 10.15.7. This is still macOS Catalina, but an updated version of it (since the software update servers refuse to provide 10.15.3).

On the other Mac:

1. Log into an administrator account.
2. Open Terminal, located in Applications -> Utilities.
3. Type this command and hit Enter, then wait for the macOS installer to finish downloading: softwareupdate --fetch-full-installer --full-installer-version 10.15.7
4. When the macOS installer has finished downloading, quit the installer application if it opened automatically.
5. Follow these steps to flash macOS Recovery onto the USB drive: How to create a bootable installer for macOS - Apple Support. When finished, the USB drive will also contain the full macOS Catalina installer.

On the problematic Mac:

1. Boot macOS Recovery normally; open Startup Security Utility and make sure that the Mac can boot from external media. (This step only applies to MacBook Pros made from 2018-2020, Intel models.)
2. Connect the bootable installer to the Mac.
3. Power on or restart the Mac while holding down the Option key. Release when you see a selection of startup disks.
4. Select the bootable installer "Install macOS Catalina", then hit Enter (Return) to start up from it.
5. If successful, you should now be running from the bootable installer, which should contain Terminal and the other recovery utilities.

gptadmin wrote:

We have a password that suddenly stopped working on a FileVault enabled macbook pro. We do not have the recovery key even though it was set. There is a command that will allow the recovery key to escrow to our MDM service, but I simply cannot access terminal.

The option to select Utilities > Terminal does not exist. Is there another way to access Terminal in recovery mode or otherwise?

You may well have to contact your MDM service tech support for your issue.