Sons Of Anarchy’s End Was Inevitable

[Midnight Man 2]

The conclusion to the seven-season journey of Sons of Anarchy had a certain sense of inevitability to it and that's exactly what the show's creative team intended. In other words, the finale, which saw Jax Teller tying up a lot of loose ends for both the club and in his personal life before ultimately sacrificing himself to give his kids hope for a life away from the bullets and blood was always going to end with Jax dead, but even though Jax's fate was seemingly written in the stars, what about those he left behind? Will Jax's grand gesture be enough to save his boys from becoming outlaws? And will the club go back to the simpler organization it was originally intended to be? The creators always saw it as a tragedy in the Shakespearean sense. So they wanted to close out the story of Jax Teller in particular in a way that was satisfying for the audience and satisfying for the rules of a really good tragedy. A really good tragedy tends to end with a hero's death because that's what Shakespeare said and he's usually right. How it actually happened was much discussed. What you finally saw was the product of a lot of hours and weeks of agonizing to make something that would be true to the character and also resolve a lot of the problems that Gemma made and the lies that she spun. So, there's a lot of cleanup to do in that ending but also a lot of resolution. They didn't want to leave you hanging. They didn't want to give you a full Soprano; they wanted to give you something that felt like it was a real closure.

It’s best to end something that's as mythological and as big as Sons of Anarchy in a manner that's poetic. So, the whole conclusion of the story was much more elegiac and it's slower-paced and really provided Jax some chance to close out his life. That's why they took the time to go to the graves of the people that he really cared about, to really bring them into the conclusion of it. They didn’t want to just get rid of August Marks and try to clean up the Irish question, but to also let Jax say goodbye to the people that he really cared about, especially to his children.

It’s very tough, and it's not going to be satisfying for everybody because a lot of people just don't want to say goodbye to Jax Teller. When Jax says, "The bad guys lose," I think he's thinking a little bit about himself as well as the people who have actually caused him so much pain. But he did want to leave a legacy and the legacy that he wants to leave is one that allows his children to hate him, which is unusual because usually people want to leave with the children still loving them and having a fond memory of them. But Jax wanted to make sure that didn't happen. He was trying to break that cycle even in his last moments. That's what makes it a real emotional split, because in order for him to do that, he thought the best solution would be to die at his own hands, in his own peaceful manner. Mythologically, that's very satisfying as opposed to the cops shooting him or whatever. He sort of takes control and ended the way that he wants to end it.

The plan will eventually work for Abel, in this moment, with what Abel knows, which is really very little, I think he's questioning and curious and he's been given a new toy. He's toying with it and he's looking out the window and wondering what the heck is going on. But as he grows up, I would think that the story would be told to him of who his father was and what his father meant. That's the instruction that Jax gave Nero, which will turn him away from that life, but maybe it is in the genes and maybe he is fated to be his father's son.

Hopefully the club is on better footing, even though theoretically the biggest obstacles have been removed for the time being and there seems to be peace in the valley. Possibly, the choices Jax made in the end are going to end up being problems for the club that would cause it to be incapable of doing anything like what it's done before. The club is going to be a bit of an outcast club now that they have black members, which is going to be an issue. They're going to have the Irish to deal with. It's not perfectly aligned for everything to be perfect for the club; it could be a troubled path for them.

Hamlet of Shakespeare was an obvious influence here and to end on the fact that a lot of these choices, even the choices that Gemma made, as twisted as they were, were made out of her own twisted sense of love and her own allegiance to her family and to the men in her life. Jax is very similar. A lot of the choices he made to avenge Tara's death, even though they were mistaken, were made out of how much he loved her. Love is the biggest force that works on Jax, despite the fact that other things come into it and color it and twist it. That's what he's driven by and that's why those words ended up being so appropriate.

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