If you just watched the season 6 Sons of Anarchy (almost 2 hour) finale- OH MY GOD was that good.. If you haven’t watched it, then stop reading this. I’m gonna spoil it for you.
Last night’s edge-of-the-seat episode started out with Jax writing his own memoir directed towards his boys in his tiny notebook explaining the turmoil that comes with what he does. This is him coming full circle with the memoirs that he read of his own father’s, which narrates much of the first season. The scene is set with him sitting with his back up against Opie’s tombstone at the cemetery. A symbolic place because at the end of this episode he essentially becomes Opie in a way, or at least gets his heart wrenched out in similar fashion- and then we all know that dark place that Opie went.
Just like every episode there’s a montage giving glimpses into what each character is up to. Gemma is washing dishes in Tara’s house that Tara left behind when she split. Gemma conveniently takes a break and dun dun dun, happens to leave a sink full of dirty water in the kitchen sink. We also see the items stacked up in the dish drain. We won’t know it until later, but this is significant.
Jax leaves the cemetery, we see Opie’s headstone inscribed with all his great qualities about love loyalty and family, then we see Jax riding off on his motorcycle and running over a white dove with his bike. Symbolic indeed.
Juice talks with Gemma about the night where he almost ODed, blah blah blah (I’m just going to go quick here and hopefully not too much out of order) and then a pivotal conversation occurs between the District Attorney and Jax where she tells him that his duty as a father and husband take precedence over his loyalties to the club. He sort of tells her he doesn’t need her advice, but you can tell in his eyes that he knows exactly what she’s talking about and takes it to heart. This is something that is at the core of what Jax is.
The show also plays out a series of shifts in alliances where Nero (sort of reluctantly at first) is becoming more aligned with the Mayans at the same time where the Mayans aren’t happy with Jax and the club (and make that clear) because of the MC giving the guns to August Marks and crew. Jax needs to set up a gun deal between the two to supposedly smooth things over, which after the biker boys leave, the Mayans kill the black guys and holy crap, well that just sets up a nice rivalry that will no doubt play out next season. You then see the Mayans and Nero collaborating with the Chinese guys, and like Marcus said in last week’s episode, from now on, it’s going to be brown and yellow against black and white.
You can see the tension build between Nero and Jax from very early on in the episode where Jax calls him ‘King Nero’ and Nero obviously has lost his love for Jackie Boy because of the lie he told about ordering Juice to kill Darvany; and now the only thing holding him back from cutting ties with the MC is Gemma (not for long though).
Meanwhile Tara decides she’s going to rat and make off far far away with her boys. We still don’t really know if she will go through with it because it always seems like she’s playing games with the lawyer and other authorities. She set’s up a deal with the DA through her lawyer. The club is obviously looking for her, though figures out she didn’t rat on them yet, and follows her laywer to a park where the guys (Jax and company) walk up to her and want to talk. Jax comes to the realization and expresses to Tara that he’s not going to hurt her (while she’s doing a snotty ugly cry and snot and tears are dripping into her mouth- gah). Jax just tells Tara all she needs to do is be a good mom and reassures her things will be good. Awww.
Tara follows through with her meeting with the DA, but surprise! Jax is there to let the DA know that he is going to turn himself in for the gun that was used in the school shooting in return for Tara’s immunity. The DA goes with it and agrees to let Jax turn himself in later on that night after spending some quality time with his boys. We then see Jax and Tara spend some quality time in the hotel room where they apparently make up and make out, and as the camera pans out collapse onto the bed.
this is what we had been waiting for all season, dammit!
Things seems to all be falling into place for Jax and Tara and he thinks with good behavior he might be able to get out in 7 years. I’m thinking at that point, things are going to end fine and dandy, and we might see something like a 7 year jump to next season, (but of course I was getting ahead of myself). It’s all emotional love and hugs from his bros that tell him how much they love him, yadda yadda, then he tells them to give Tara anything she needs. Things are sad, but indeed looking quite charming in Charming afterall.
The guys sort of decide that Juice can’t be trusted, and we see this scene where Jax kisses Juice goodbye and let’s him know he knows about his betrayal. Juice obviously knows it’s not good.
Nero ends up breaking it off with Gemma after asking her if she would leave it all to run away with him, essentially cutting ties with the club, as well as putting her in a state of mind that obviously isn’t good.
We symbolically see Gemma’s black bird in a cage, then For some reason Unser sticks his nose into everything and falsely tells Gemma that Tara’s made a deal with the DA and Jax is going to jail. Mama bear all too easily makes off with Unser’s truck and hides in Tara’s house, we know this isn’t going to be good. Tara unknowingly walks in smilingly at how perfect things have turned out and that’s when Gemma come at her, dunks her in the dirty sink water from earlier and then brutally stabs her to death with a meat fork. This whole time I’m thinking no, no, no and in disbelief don’t really think it’s possibly that she’s dead. Even when she’s lying on the floor in a pool of blood, I’m thinking, this is TV, there’s still a chance she can be saved and we’ll probably end up with this as a cliffhanger. That’s when the Sherriff walks in, realizes what has happened, takes her pulse, dammit she’s really dead, and tells Gemma that it wasn’t Tara that gave up Jax, but he is turning himself in. Sherriff is then almost is able to call it in on the radio when Juice shows up and kills the cop and then lends a hand to Gemma who’s on the floor just realizing what she’s done. Juice ends up taking Gemma to Unser, and cleaning up the evidence and throwing the meat fork in the dumpster, etc.
Jax says his final goodbyes to the boys not knowing that his wife is a goner and goes to the house where he’s supposed to meet Tara and the DA at 6. We see him enter the house unknowingly of what has happened, symbolically hangs his cut on a hook and calls out, “Babe” to Tara. Obviously a heart-break moment. He sees her legs in a pool of blood at first, pulls out his gun and walks into the scene of her on the floor. Inconveniently for him and absently mindedly drops his gun on the floor by the cops feet. We all see his heart break into a million pieces, (ala Opie and Dona style) and holds and caresses and kisses his dead wife. *Grabs tissues*
The DA walks in and sees this mess and of course, Jax’s gun at the sheriff’s feet. Fade to black, flash reaper symbol.
There’s our cliffhanger, of what will happen now: will the DA think it’s Jax who killed them both, will he still turn himself in and who will watch the boys now? (Wendy is in rehab, btw).
The final final end of the story is all but upon us and will all play out and wrap up in one last final season next fall. *sigh*
We all wanted Jax and Tara to make up, because this story from the beginning was about love and loyalty and family. And Kurt threw that to us when we all saw that Jax and Tara did indeed reconcile. And like I said, at first when I saw Tara get killed I was thinking, ohhhh nooooo.. but after thinking it through, it really was the only way the story could have been played out. Son’s of Anarchy was always loosely based on Shakespeare’s Hamlet, and this heart wrenching love story was done in a great Shakespearian tragic fashion, where the lovers get what they want right before dramatic death and loss. Of course we want a happy ending, but from a writing standpoint, kudos to Kurt Sutter, this was the best ending for this story.
I’m sure we can predict much of the story line for next season. Lots of blood, betrayal, and Jax converting completely over to the dark side.
Phew, what a roller-coaster last night’s episode was. Kurt Sutter has worked his magic once again leaving me feeling both satisfied with his story line for the sake of a good story, and obviously feeling heart broken for Jax at the end, where for much of the season you sort of wanted to back-hand his selfishness.
Total Shakespeare moment
