As Sons Of Anarchy came to its brutal and bloody series conclusion this week, it seemed creator Kurt Sutter wanted to make one message clear: this has not been a drama about heroes.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
After seven years of showing us his vision of life, brotherhood and an admittedly warped code of honour inside an outlaw motorcycle gang, Sutter made sure his final episode included enough statements about the real nature of his characters that nobody would be left in any doubt that these were the bad guys after all.
"This is who I am, I can't change," says the series protagonist Jax Teller (played by Charlie Hunnam) after confessing that he had just murdered his own mother and his last wish was that his own children – and anyone watching the series – should never follow in his footsteps.
"I'm not a good man. I'm a criminal and a killer. I need my sons to grow up hating the thought of me."
What followed was a series of betrayals as Teller, aware his own time was up, tidied up any loose ends that might one day come back to trouble his club.
That involved shooting in broad daylight three former allies who had, for various reasons, become expendable.
The head of "The Real IRA" was ambushed and killed with no warning, a corrupt former cop who had helped the club was gunned down in his café and a mobster who had once helped The Sons before turning against them was shot as he left court.
Partnerships, viewers have been reminded starkly, can change quickly when the moral code of those involved is flexible.
Even Teller's own gang voted to kill him, then broke their code by allowing him to escape to face his own end after a questionable police chase (17 cars, vans and motorcycles and they couldn't catch a 65-year-old Harley Davidson that had been destroyed and rebuilt twice through the show's run?) and one last soliloquy.
"I realised, as I think you did," Jax told the ghost of his father as he sat waiting for the police to find him, "A good father and a good outlaw can't saddle inside the same man. I'm sorry it was too late for me… it's not too late for my boys… I promise they will never know this life of chaos."
And so, riding his father's long-suffering cycle into the front of a truck as the police chased him, Jax Teller and Kurt Sutter's ground-breaking Sons Of Anarchy came to an end.
Jax died the villain but, as Sutter said after the final episode aired, his death was the only way it could end.
"This has always been a show about direct, specific choices, and direct, specific consequences, so I realised I needed to be clear in terms of whether [Jax's death] happened or it didn't," Sutter said.
"And I just felt that it ultimately was the greatest sacrifice; and that's how it would have to end."
