Sons of Anarchy is never short of deaths. With lots of blood and violence, the series often depicts shootouts, crossfires, flashbacks, planned mass murders and much more. While most characters adopt the same style with a headshot, there are two exceptions and they share many striking similarities. Among the many tragic deaths that occur on screen, their death rises to the top and pushes the series in a different direction.

Opie and Jax are best friends who share the same past, and it saddens fans that their deaths also seem to mirror each other’s. Opie and Jax came out voluntarily and served a greater purpose, that of ending the violence. However, Jax’s death is much darker and many would say he had another choice.

Opie’s death is surprisingly similar to Jax’s

Opie volunteers to fulfill Damon Pople’s request and frees the rest of the club members from the same fate. As president of SAMCRO, Jax could not make a choice. While sharing the same cell in prison, Opie asks Jax who he will choose, but Jax can’t make the call. It doesn’t seem like Opie premeditated the decision to sacrifice himself, especially when he’s not directly involved in the conflict between Tig and Pope. Tig killed Pope’s daughter, and Pope exacted revenge, not only from Tig but from the sons as well. Jax is then faced with the most difficult decision: abandoning one of the club members.

Tig would have been the obvious choice, considering he was the one who started the mess in the first place. Jax refuses to give up on her and is ready to fight his way out (which is highly unlikely). Opie then offers to settle the score between Pope and the club. In Opie’s heartbreaking final scene, he is beaten to death while Jax, Tig and Chibs watch through the window, being locked outside the room and unable to help him. Being the person least connected to Tig and Pope’s feud, Opie had no obligation to make this decision for Jax, and his sacrifice has something to do with his own state of being, which makes his death similar to Jax’s at the end of Sons of anarchy.

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By the time Opie decides to sacrifice the club’s name, he is already a ghost of his former self. He suffers from an identity crisis similar to what Jax faces at the end of the series. Being in SAMCRO cost him everything, and many of the deaths that hurt him the most were not caused by outside threats but by those he called his brothers. Opie lost his first wife, Donna, who was executed by Tig while Opie himself was the real target. His father Piney, an original member of the club, was killed by Clay. Opie sees the road SAMCRO is leading to, and he can’t bring himself to sit at the same table where his father’s killer sits. By then, Opie’s journey at the club was already over, except the club was all he knew. Opie grew up in the club and followed in his father’s footsteps. The club is part of the family legacy, but its legacy only leads to more violence and death.

Jax and Opie share the same past

Jax’s father, John Teller, founded the club with Piney. SAMCRO is also Jax’s family heirloom. As children of the founders, Jax and Opie grow up in the club, and are expected to be the legacy and next generation, which is why JT’s manuscript and SAMCRO’s visions matter so much for Jax. Opie shares the same background as Jax, with the club being the foundation of who he is. They also take responsibility for continuing the legacy of the club. Opie and Jax grow up amid the violence and brotherhood that goes hand in hand with SAMCRO. However, they don’t really understand the extent of it until they become full members of the patch. Just like Jax, who is trying to figure out what he’s going to do with what JT left him, Opie is untangling the legacy. Both good at heart, Jax and Opie also seek life partners among women who are wise and have their best interests at heart. Opie’s wife urged him to leave the club and start a new life on the outside. Likewise, Tara also has the same plan as Jax.

Opie’s life story mirrors Jax’s in a strange way. The only difference is the path Opie takes to reach the conclusion about what the club has actually become. After Clay kills his father, Opie no longer has a place in the club, but he also considers his identity outside of Charming. With the club being all he knows, Opie knows he won’t be able to fit into the life Donna imagines. He will not be able to provide this to his children either. In his final conversations with Jax, Opie revealed to fans all the factors that played into his ultimate decision to die for the club. Being in the club business comes with high risks. Most members die in the crossfire. Otherwise, they die at the hands of one of their own. Many are tortured before dying. The truth is that being a member of SAMCRO reduces life expectancy. However, having grown up believing in brotherhood and family, Opie’s death preserves the core value of brotherly bonds that are deeply ingrained in SAMCRO. One of the club’s values ​​for full members is a willingness to die for each other, and Opie is proof of that loyalty as everyone else loses faith.

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Opie’s death saves Jax, Tig and Chibs and reunites them. His death not only solved the Pope problem for Jax, but also strengthened the brotherhood. Chibs becomes Jax’s right-hand man. Saving Tig also means Jax has his vote on the table. Opie’s death has a fundamental influence in securing Jax’s place as the club’s new president. However, Opie also leaves his children without a living biological parent. Jax’s death also further traumatizes Abel and Thomas after losing their mother, Tara, and grandmother, Gemma. Abel’s biological mother, Wendy, is still alive, but Thomas lost both parents at birth, as did Opie’s children.

Opie’s death adds insight into JT’s death

In JT’s letters, he reveals that he knew Clay and Gemma were conspiring to eliminate him so they could take the club in a different direction. Before Jax killed Jury in Season 7, Jury briefly mentioned that JT could have played with the dark plot. With JT’s knowledge of sabotage on his bike, it makes no sense for him to get caught up in Clay and Gemma’s plan. Opie followed JT’s path. Although Opie’s death is not premeditated, it shows that the sacrifice is also partly a suicide. Jax also happily meets Mr. Mayhem. Followed by a series of violence that only adds more bodies to the pile, Jax is at the end of his term as president of SAMCRO, with the club holding a Mayhem vote to decide his fate. While Jax could have fled or surrendered Sons of Anarchy In the final, he makes the same choice as Opie by proposing his death as a solution and an end to the violence, thus cutting his children’s ties with the club.

“We had conversations, and it wasn’t to be morbid, but I think the example I used was the idea of ​​someone in trouble or in a manic state or depressed or heavy-hearted , that when he makes this decision to end it one way or another, there is a certain peace that comes over them,” Sons of Anarchy ​​​​​​Creator Kurt Sutter said THIS in 2014. “They’re not burdened by anything anymore. We talked about it a little bit as maybe being an influence on some of the choices Jax was making.”

SUTTER: “I had the feeling from the beginning of this adventure that I liked the idea of ​​Jax being brought to the same place as his father, but doing things the right way. You know what I mean? And the idea that it was going to come out the same way – whether it was a tribute, whether it was for a road release – but I didn’t know to what extent I was going to leave room for it. people’s imagination There was a discussion about the fact. that he was on the road, and we see this truck and we leave it in order in an open way Then, in the end, I felt like this was not a series of questions and. if… This has always been a series about direct, specific choices and direct, specific consequences, so I realized I needed to be clear in terms of whether that happened or not. just felt that it was ultimately the greatest sacrifice, and that is this is how it should end.

HUNNAM: “As you know, this resonated so clearly with me in the penultimate episode, in 712. I loved the freedom you gave Jax and me in playing him in these last two episodes. The emotional crescendo that happens for Jax certainly in this season’s story, but really in his journey, that moment of epiphany where we really realized who his mother was and that she was specifically responsible for Tara’s death -. it’s sort of a moment that we were all marching towards in the season and I loved that you chose to have that moment in 711, because it created this sense of clarity of vision of what he needed to do. , responsibility, but I also think it came with this feeling of liberation if you remember, we had talked about there being different potential versions of the ending at the beginning of the season, and had a few conversations at the beginning. as the season progresses, and when I read this episode, 712, even without us discussing it, I received so clearly from what you wrote, this feeling of liberation, peace and calm.

And that’s when I really knew that you had decided to really go for it and that we were going to say goodbye to Jax at the end. That’s when I asked you to have this conversation to talk to me about whether he knew exactly at that time what his plan was, because if he did, and I had the felt like he knew it, so I needed to know it too.

Compared to Jax’s death, Opie’s death is honorable given the circumstances. They are outnumbered and trapped. Instead of letting one of his brothers down, Opie makes an impossible choice for Jax, knowing his brother would have done the same for him. On the other hand, Jax’s death is more self-inflicted, as is the violence that led to the club eliminating him. Opie was not looking for violence. He is a victim of the betrayal and violence that is eating away at SAMCRO from the inside. Even though he is at the end of his journey at SAMCRO, Opie does not lose hope. He goes down fighting. Jax, on the other hand, became an abuser and inflicted on those around him the violence and pain he had witnessed around him, ten times worse. Jax didn’t stop the violence. He made everything worse. While Gemma is responsible for Tara’s death, Jax starts a war and kills his own mother. He tortured and murdered people at his will, and in the end, Jax is simply beyond redemption. By drawing these similarities between Jax and Opie’s deaths, the series unveils the cycle of violence and tragedy that the next generation will face, wrapped up in the unfinished business of their fathers.

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A biker struggles to balance being a father and being involved in an outlaw motorcycle club.

Release date

September 8, 2008

Cast

Kim Coates, Charlie Hunnam, Theo Rossi, Mark Boone Junior, Maggie Siff, Katey Sagal, Tommy Flanagan, Ron Perlman

Seasons

7

Story by

Kurt Sutter

Number of episodes

Network

Effects

Develop