Sons of Anarchy was a show like no other. Based freely on Hamlet and written by Kurt Sutter, who had already worked on The Shield, the show was all about tortured anti-heroes in a biker gang. Sons of Anarchy was violent, scary, and tragic, as everything bad that could’ve happened in the show’s seven seasons, happened. Especially to Jax Teller (Charlie Hunnam), the lead character. Here’s every Sons of Anarchy season, ranked:
7 Season 5
Season five was dark, with much misery, drama, and killing. The season starts with the murder of Tig’s (Kim Coates) daughter; she is burned alive, and the season never stops getting darker, offering gut-wrenching moments one after the other, that culminates in the murder of Opie (Ryan Hurst). The Sons spend part of the season in jail, and it’s in there that they’re forced to sacrifice one of their own, to settle a score with a rival gang. Opie offers himself, and his last words “I got this”, just before dying, are still chill-inducing. About killing Opie, creator Kurt Sutter told Variety: “I loved the actor and the character, but the road we had taken him down was so heavy. With the amount of death and sense of betrayal, I just organically could not have that guy sit at the table with Clay. It just didn’t make sense.”
6 Season 7
The show's final season is one of its worst, as it ends in a complete bloodbath. And a series based on Hamlet couldn’t have a happy ending. Jax spends most of the season trying to avenge the murder of his wife, Tara (Maggie Siff), but he does so in all the wrong places. Once the truth about Tara’s killing comes out, the showdown between Jax and his mother Gemma (Katey Sagal), is as sad as necessary. From the start of the show, Gemma had been poisoning his son's ear, and this end, makes perfect sense in retrospect. The TV series ends with Jax sacrificing himself, with the hope that without him or the club in his sons' lives, they’ll have a better future. Even with the character’s demise, Charlie Hunnam has been teasing the possibility of the show coming back.
5 Season 6
Season six starts the path that will take Jax to his demise on season seven, while the show gets darker and darker by the minute. Sons of Anarchy always had gratuitous violence, but it also had some fun, love, and brotherhood; ingredients that don’t appear enough in this season or the next. The whole season is defined by two killings: Clay Morrow (Ron Perlman) and Tara. Clay’s killing is a foregone conclusion, as the character has lost all his power, and is even working against the club. Jax finally kills him, in a satisfying moment, that’s been in the making since the first episode. The killing of Tara is a lot more tragic and unexpected: she’s killed by Gemma, as Jax’s mother thinks Tara is going to take Jax away from the club. Gemma beats and stabs Tara to death in a scary season finale.
4 Season 3
The third season starts with half of the Sons going to Ireland to find Jax’s kidnapped son. Although the stories there are entertaining, as we meet Belfast’s SAMCRO and learn more about the club's origins, it’s not enough to justify how many episodes they spend there. The whole season might have been ranked worse if it wasn’t for an incredible final episode; one that marks the end of one of the Sons' biggest rivals in the first three seasons: agent Stahl (Ally Walker). Opie gets revenge for his wife's killing, and Jax shows he’s the real mastermind of everything that has happened before, and that he would never betray the club, while getting shorter sentences for everyone.
3 Season 4
The season starts with the sons being released from prison, a new sheriff in town (Rockmond Dunbar), and Jax’s new son (and first with Tara), Thomas. After time in prison, the club wants to change its ways, but bad habits die hard. Especially when the leader of the club, Clay Morrow, becomes an absolute villain, beating Gemma and killing Opie’s father. Opie’s loved ones are always dying, so it’s nice to see that he falls in love again, even if his thirst for vengeance, once he learns who killed his dad, is scary. The final shot of the season is exciting, as Jax is finally the leader of the club; something he (and the fans) have been waiting for since the start of the show, and now it’s his turn to try to better the club without turning into someone he despises, Clay Morrow.
2 Season 1
Season one was a breath of fresh air, setting the world of a biker gang; its culture, mythology, and ways of doing things with great characters; a world we didn’t know we wanted to live in. The show had incredible motorcycle chases, scary acts of violence, and shocking, heartbreaking deaths, whose consequences would unfold for most of the seasons. From the beginning, Sons of Anarchy became one of FX’s best originals, showing us a new, original, and surprising world. Jax finding his dad's journals is the thing that starts changing his way of thinking about the club and its possible future. This season also marks the first of many tragedies, from Jax's girlfriend giving birth to their kid early because she’s an addict, to the death of Opie’s wife in a bullet meant for him.
About Sons of Anarchy, Charlie Hunnam told People: "I think I went into Sons of Anarchy being a pretty unaccomplished actor in terms of my skill set," he says. "I wasn't one of these people that were born enormously and innately talented. I had to really cultivate a skill set."
1 Season 2
Season two is the best of the whole show. The characters, mythology, and tone of the series are already established, so the writers can concentrate on telling the best story possible, and they do it by having the club fight their worst, smartest villain, in the whole series: Ethan Zobelle (Adam Arkin). Zobelle is part of a white supremacy group and wants to control the traffic of illegal commerce through the town of Charming, and to do so, he must end the Sons. It also has one of the worst scenes in the show, when Gemma gets beaten and sexually assaulted as a way to show Clay and the club how serious the threat is. All this is happening while Jax and Clay are bumping heads for what direction the club should go, almost ending in a war between them, until Gemma tells them what they did to her, and both go, together, against their real enemy. The moment Jax understands what happened to her mother is one of the greatest performances of Charlie Hunnam's career.