‘Sons of Anarchy’s 10 Wildest Moments, Ranked

Sons of Anarchy aired from 2008 to 2014, and the story of a ruthless motorcycle club, Sons of Anarchy aka SAMCRO, felt like a Shakespearean tragedy, especially at the very end. With seven difficult and devastating seasons, creator Kurt Sutter wrote a gripping story of a motorcycle club’s ups and downs, making its members morally gray characters people enjoy cheering for. The show stars Charlie Hunnam, Katey Sagal, Ron Perlman, and other exceptionally talented actors who helped shape the show into the brilliant work of art it is.

A lot happens over the course of seven seasons, and most of the major events in the show are absolutely wild. With the foreshadowing of future events, especially the fate of the lead, Jax Teller (Hunnam), Sons of Anarchy shows that the life of an MC member isn’t easy nor clean; with a lot of deaths and violence, there’s no lack of wild moments. Some of the wildest include good things, too, but these are the ones that make the show both good and heavy.

10

Tig and Venus Are In Love

Season 7, Episode 10, “Faith and Despondency”

While Tig (Kim Coates) and Venus (Walton Goggins) being together isn’t ‘wild’ in the most perfect sense of the word, the circumstances of their relationship kind of are. Venus Van Dam is, in her words, “a man who knows she’s a woman,” while Tig Trager is a ruthless, often cruel member of SAMCRO. With SAMCRO being exclusive when it comes to certain kinds of members and generally being very outward representations of toxic masculinity, for Tig to develop a relationship with a trans character is beautiful. Venus is one of the best characters in Sons of Anarchy, and getting a happy ending was immense for both of them.

In season 7, episode 10, “Faith and Despondency,” Tig and Venus talk about their future, with Venus openly saying she believes she’s nothing more to Tig than a means for him to feel better about himself; she also confesses her love for him. At that moment, Tig confesses his love back, saying that he can’t believe she loves him after seeing everything he is, and through tears, the two makeup. For Tig to have a beautiful love story and a happy ending at the end of a devastating season (and a devastating show) is a bit wild because it’s away from the events that took place during it. Still really nice, though.

9

Tig Makes a Fatal Mistake

Season 1, Episode 12, “The Sleep of Babies”

In the penultimate episode of the first season, “The Sleep of Babies,” people are shown the lengths the MC members will go to protect themselves. Of course, no one likes a rat, and when club president Clay Morrow (Perlman) got word that Opie (Ryan Hurst) might be one, he couldn’t hold off on making his statement. Clay sends Tig to take care of Opie, which really means killing him. With Tig waiting in front of Opie’s home, he sees a pickup truck driving away from it.

As Tig pulls up to the pickup truck, he puts on a balaclava and shoots the driver from behind, only to pull to the side and realize he has killed Opie’s wife, Donna (Sprague Grayden). This was one of the initial massive shocks of the show, but Donna was often a source of common sense for Opie. With ideas of leaving the club, her death cemented his position as a SAMCRO member, sending him into a deep depression for a while (until he meets Lyla).

8

Juice Doesn’t See a Way Out

Season 4, Episode 7, “Fruit for the Crows”

With Juice Ortiz (Theo Rossi) often being a kind of naive and defaultly loyal member of SAMCRO, he was observed as more innocent than the rest; his fate in the show was devastating, and so were the circumstances of his transformation. Learning what it’s like to have a boot on his neck, Juice gets into trouble when one of the show’s biggest antagonists, FBI agent Lincoln Potter (Ray McKinnon), presses him to become an informant. Potter threatens Juice with revealing damaging personal information about him to SAMCRO unless he snitches, and Juice finds himself between a rock and a hard place.

During season four, Juice’s mental state is frequently depicted as degrading, with Potter on one side asking him to be a snitch and SAMCRO on the other being ready to kill him if he doesn’t fit their standards. In season 4, episode 7, “Fruit for the Crows,” Juice sees no other way out than to hang himself with a chain. Fortunately, the attempt fails as the branch breaks, but this is one of the wildest moments in SoA, and for Juice himself, as it marks his transformation into a more cold-blooded MC member.

7

Otto Loses the Power of Speech

Season 5, Episode 13, “J’ai Obtenu Cette”

The creator of SoA, Kurt Sutter, also acted in the show as one of the imprisoned members of SAMCRO, Otto Delaney. Otto was a no-nonsense man, loyal to the bone and unbothered by violence and blood. The other members loved him, perhaps more for his relentless ideals and silence, and it’s safe to say Sutter didn’t spare his own character the suffering and pain in a show where those were recurring themes. Out of all the characters that met their inevitable fates early in SoA, Otto was surely among the most shocking ones.

Since he was in prison throughout the entire show, Otto was often the target of various police officers, federal agents, and club enemies, wanting him to snitch on the club. To prove the extent of his unwavering loyalty, in the season five finale, “J’ai Obtenu Cette,” Otto slams his face on the interrogation table, causing him to bite off his own tongue. Even more brutally, Otto launches his tongue into the one-sided glass, giving the message that they’ll never hear him talk about SAMCRO.

6

Jax Stops Wendy from Seeking Custody

Season 5, Episode 12, “Darthy”

Anyone who’s seen the show knows Jax had his first child, Abel, with his ex-wife, Wendy (Drea de Matteo). Wendy was a drug addict for a long time, but her struggles were rarely met with any sympathy from Jax or his mother, Gemma (Sagal). Jax himself tried patching things up with Wendy many times, and they seemed to have succeeded when Wendy finally got clean. Even Jax’s new partner, Tara (Maggie Siff), was willing to let Wendy hang out with Abel and get to know him again after returning from rehab.

However, after getting sober, Wendy becomes intent on getting Abel from Jax and Tara, potentially fearful that Abel’s proximity to SAMCRO will hurt him. In an effort to get to her son, Wendy started throwing threats around, which Jax didn’t receive the warmest of reactions. While arguing, Jax injects Wendy with a speedball, ignoring her pleas to stop after trying hard to get clean. This is one of Jax’s worst moments, for sure, which changed people’s opinions and attitudes towards him. Though it’s understandable he’d do everything to protect his family, this kind of thing was a wild move, especially against the mother of his son.

5

Clay and Gemma Get Into a Fight

Season 4, Episode 10, “Hands”

Gemma Teller’s biggest love was John Teller, Jax’s father and her ex-husband. With John, the former SAMCRO president, now dead, his Vice President Clay Morrow replaced him in that position. Soon enough, Gemma and Clay developed a romance and get married. Throughout the show, Clay and Gemma enjoy a loving relationship in which they both seem to be equals; though Gemma is Clay’s “old lady,” she’s also a big part of SAMCRO and is familiar with most events in the club. She and Clay’s relationship begins to erode by season four, though, which culminates in season 4, episode 10, “Hands.”

With Clay’s downfall being slow but certain across the season, he commits some of the worst crimes out of desperation to stay afloat. Just after killing one of the founding club members, Piney (William Lucking), Gemma comes to confront him about many of his wrongdoings before. As their fight escalates, Gemma pulls a gun on Clay, and he starts seeing red; throwing her on the table, and then on the floor, Clay beats up Gemma with the back of his hand full of heavy rings. Gemma’s face is cut up, and the scene is difficult to watch. This moment marks a wild turn in a relationship that was already on its last legs.

4

Gemma Is the Target of Revenge Against the Club

Season 2, Episode 1, “Albification”

SoA frequently shows that being related to the club, one way or another, hurts. Though Gemma is a big part of SAMCRO, she’s still collateral in season 2, episode 1, “Albification,” becoming the victim of white supremacists who wish for the club to do as they please. Of course, targeting Gemma hurts more than one person – she’s Clay’s wife and Jax’s mother, but also a friend to the rest of the club’s members. Getting her instead of one of them hurts harder, and since SoA is generally a violent story, Gemma often finds herself as the victim as much as the perpetrator.

When Ethan Zobelle (Adam Arkin) and his crew of white supremacists visit SAMCRO during a celebration, they ask them to stop dealing arms to clubs of different races. With Clay and the rest of the club laughing in their faces, Zobelle and the others retreat, only to kidnap Gemma later and subject her to a brutal sexual assault; they tell her to give the message to SAMCRO that they should do according to Zobelle’s wishes. Anyone sensitive to sexual violence (and even those who aren’t) would whimper at seeing this. It’s truly one of the most shocking moments of the entire show.

3

Tig Gets Revenge Served “Hot”

Season 5, Episode 1, “Sovereign”

One of the biggest villains of SoA, Damon Pope (Harold Perrineau), has one of the most intense first appearances of any antagonist; Pope is powerful and rich, and always seems polished and collected. At the final moments of season four, SAMCRO targets their rivals, the One-Niners; in an attempt to kill the MC’s leader, Tig kills his girlfriend instead. It’s later found out that she was Damon Pope’s daughter, Veronica Pope. With Tig having two daughters himself, Pope finds it fitting to exact an ‘eye for an eye’ type of revenge.

One night, Pope’s men lure and kidnap Tig and chain him to a pipe. Pope arrives and reveals to Tig that he has his daughter Dawn in the trunk. Pope’s men proceed to throw Dawn into a dug out ditch and cover her with gasoline. With his final words, Pope throws a cigar at Dawn, and she is burned alive, with Tig being forced to watch. There were many retaliations in SoA, but this is one of the worst and wildest ones.

2

Gemma Thinks Tara Is the Rat

Season 6, Episode 13, “A Mother’s Work”

Tara Knowles was often one of the characters that got the most undeserved hate, but she was also the only one looking at the club from an outsider’s perspective at first. In that sense, one might claim Tara was the most normal of all the show’s characters, though the more she got dragged in, the more her bad side came out, and she couldn’t resist being Jax’s right hand in certain situations. Tara went from a respected neonatal surgeon to losing her reputation and, ultimately, life.

In the final episode of season six, Tara is ready to go away with her sons and Jax; they seem to be on the same page when it comes to living a life outside the MC’s wicked activities. Tara was Jax’s pillar and bearer of common sense, which could’ve been another reason that drove Gemma to visit her. Suspecting Tara had snitched on SAMCRO, Gemma comes to Tara and the two enter a heavy physical fight. Gemma first tries to drown Tara in the kitchen sink filled with dishwater, and then takes a carving fork and stabs Tara in the head repeatedly. After learning that Tara never ratted anyone out, Gemma’s hit with a startling realization of her actions.

1

Opie Says “I Got This”

Season 5, Episode 3, “Laying Pipe”

Opie Winston was, undoubtedly, the most likable character in SoA. Often balancing between being a badass MC member with unwavering loyalty and dedication and being an emotional man ready to settle down with his family, everyone could see and often forgive Opie’s good and bad sides. The biggest problem for Opie was, indeed, the loyalty he expressed, even when he felt the most betrayed by the club (like in the instance of Donna’s mistaken killing).

Opie’s death if definitely the most brutal and shocking moment of the entire show. Beyond that, it was soul-crushing in a way that turned the show around for many viewers. His demise is also, symbolically, the beginning of the end for the club’s dynamic as it was known thus far. Opie takes the fall for his club brothers when he, Jax, Chibs, and Tig end up in County. Pope still wants revenge, and the four men are cornered when having to choose which one of them will die. Before Jax can head out, Opie attacks the guards, setting himself up to be the one killed. Pope’s men in the prison corner and kill Opie while Jax, Tig, and Chibs watch. Out of all the deaths in the show, Opie’s was definitely the most emotionally devastating.

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