The drama and action elements that made up Sons of Anarchy had many highs and lows, but there are key episodes that defined the show, good and bad. Sons of Anarchy premiered in 2008 when creator Kurt Sutter took viewers to the fictional city of Charming in California to meet the motorcycle club that bears the show’s title. For 75 action-packed episodes over seven seasons of a TV drama with multiple twists and turns, Sons of Anarchy tackled the themes of brotherhood, betrayal, loyalty and revenge, and explored the complicated story of SAMCRO (Sons of Anarchy Motorcycle Club Redwood Original).
In Season Premiere of Sons of Anarchy, the club’s VP Jackson ‘Jax’ Teller (Charlie Hunnam) discovers the manifesto his father, John ‘JT’ Teller (a founder of the club), wrote for the club. But JT’s vision and mission run counter to those of the club’s current President Clay Morrow (Ron Perlman). In turn, the show is about almost nothing but the process of Jax attempts simultaneously to live up to his father’s vision, hold the club together, maintain his personal relationships, and fend off, kill and generally deal with legions of Republican cars (neo-nazis, other motorcycle clubs, and drug kingpins).
Over its seven-season run, Sons of Anarchy suffered as many highs and lows as its central characters. Of course, the bad far outweighed the good, but it also had a series of ‘best of’ moments, post-episodes, post-scenes, even post-lines when the show was never going to be the same (for better or worse) after that. Some of these milestones occurred early on in the show, setting its course; some of them came right at the end, giving some final twists before it could go out with a soulful, somehow satisfying and spontaneously inspiring bullet to the brainstem.
11 Albification
Sons of Anarchy season 2, episode 1
Albification becomes a defining episode of Sons of Anarchy because it is when Ethan Zobelle and AJ Weston appear.
The tone of season 1 of Sons of Anarchy had been set and the type of twists and turns that the show would have had, but season 2’s premiere – ‘Albification’ – instantly established itself as the show’s first defining episode. ‘Albification’ kicks off with the aftermath of the accidental death of Opie’s wife, Donna, by Tig, who was meant to be his own death, but it is Ethan Zobelle and A J Weston, members of the League of American Nationalists introduced in ‘Albification’ that make this initial defining episode of Sons of Anarchy.
Though season 1 had set up that the club’s problems would be mostly either with or among the boys, SAMCRO had not been prepared for the ‘new kind of threat’ represented by Zobelle and Weston making difficult plays for Charming – a threat directly impacting the club. It would turn out that Zobelle, Weston and the businessman Jacob Hale Jr all wanted to take back Charming from SAMCRO. Of course, the reverse was also the reality as the importance of the club to the town was stressed, and the passion with which SAMCRO insisted on protection their role in that town became palpable throughout the series. And every InSufficiently Violent episode had to be pushed a bit further in its badassery to up the ante. Case in point: by the end of the episode, Gemma is kidnapped by Zobelle’s minions and sexually assaulted.
10 Na Trioblóidí
Sons of Anarchy season 2, episode 13
At the conclusion of the second season of Sons of Anarchy, the ending sets up a relocation of the club. ‘Na Trioblóidí’ is full of complications: Zobelle is released from prison because he is an FBI informant, Liberty is released too, and Cameron orders his son, Edmond, to kill Stahl to prove his loyalty to the IRA. But Jax kills Weston, and Stahl kills Edmond. Gemma goes to Edmond’s, after following Zobelle’s daughter, Polly, there – and Polly thinks Gemma killed him. Gemma shoots Polly. Stahl walks out and pins it on Gemma for the murders of Edmond and Polly.
“Na Trioblóidí” is Irish for “The Troubles”.
When they catch up with Cameron, he’s on a boat speeding away with Abel, so this sets up SAMCRO’s trip to Ireland to retrieve Abel.
During the last episode, Cameron listens to Stahl’s report and arrives at Jax’s house. There, he holds up Tara, kidnaps baby son Abel, and stabs Half-Sack, who tries to stop him. When Jax and the rest of the club arrive, Cameron is fleeing by boat, with Abel, to set up SAMCRO to travel to Ireland to retrieve Abel and a divergent, contentious season.
9 Bainne
Sons of Anarchy season 3, episode 11
Ultimately, Jax has a wrenching, clarifying epiphany: Abel is fine and Abel will be a much happier, healthier kid far away from SAMCRO.
Season 3, the one that sent SAMCRO to Ireland, has a very different tempo to the previous seasons; Jax and the club continue to search for a while, but eventually they learn that Abel has been adopted. The parents of the child now know where the members of Jax’s club live. Jax is told where Abel’s adopting parents are staying, and shows up: he sees them with Abel, and learns something that is extremely painful but honest, something that is non-negotiable, something that brings him to see things clearly: Abel is safe, and he will be far better off as far away from SAMCRO as possible. Of course, Jimmy O’Phelan kills the couple and returns Abel to Jax.
“Bainne” means “milk” in Irish.
Another aside: ‘Bainne’ is the episode in which we learn that Maureen – JT’s embalming-table buddy, who waited for him interminably in Ireland, who bore his daughter, Bambi – had been corresponding with him by mail, right through his death. She slips those letters into Jax’s duffel, and those letters become the rock that slings the rest of the venom back to Charming where it begins to rot the bone of the series.
8 NS
Sons of Anarchy season 3, episode 13
With Unser’s help, Chibs and Opie kill Jimmy O’Phelan and Stahl, this one a particularly delicious moment for the fans, with Opie killing Stahl for murdering Donna.
The season finale of Sons of Anarchy season 3 was similarly climactic. In one scene, Jax, Clay, Bobby, Tig, Juice and Happy are all arrested and shipped off to prison after Jax makes a deal with Stahl that she tricks him on, though it’s unclear who has in fact tricked whom, and in fact it appears that Stahl has been using them all along, as Jax (and in a way the club), anticipated. And so they’re shipped off to prison, while Chibs and Opie, by the beneficence of Unser (more from the A list, and he too was reintegrated into the club), kill Jimmy O’Phelan and Stahl, the latter of whom, as mentioned above, fans of the show must have exultantly felt, got what was coming to her, as Opie was the one who did the killing after having been emasculated by Gemma, no less, as he saw her move in on his dead girlfriend, Donna.
Elsewhere, Tara is reading some letters that JT wrote to Maureen, and learns that JT suspects Clay and Gemma, and is in danger of being killed; she learns that there is a much darker, more dangerous side to Clay and Gemma, and that they may well have had JT killed for their own advantage (and indeed they did). This changes the way she views them, and the way she moves around them.
7 Out
Sons of Anarchy season 4, episode 1
SAMCRO now has a new boss in town in the form of Eli Roosevelt, the well-meaning new sheriff who has been working closely with U.S. Attorney Lincoln Potter to shut down SAMCRO’s gunrunning operation.
Another defining episode for ‘NS’ is season 4’s premiere, in which Jax and the rest are released from prison, and are welcomed by a couple of good and bad surprises. Good: Tara has given birth to Jax’s son. Bad: Charming now has a new sheriff, Eli Roosevelt, who has been working with U.S. Attorney Lincoln Potter to end SAMCRO’s gunrunning and bring it down. Roosevelt puts an end to SAMCRO’s police allies and he’s fully intent on ending the club.
Meanwhile, though kooky Potter is also one of the club’s greatest enemies, seeking to build a RICO case against SAMCRO by using Juice against them as part of an elaborate blackmail scheme. It’s only the first of many terrible choices that result in the death of one of SAMCRO’s most devoted members.
6 Dorylus
Sons of Anarchy season 4, episode 3
Calling out Juice’s fall, in Sons of Anarchy, it began in season 4’s episode ‘Dorylus’ when Roosevelt tells Juice he knows his father was Black and that he’d been lying to the club all along. Juice had told SAMCRO he was Puerto Rican. (Back in the day, there had been an arcane club rule that didn’t permit any members to be Black. Juice hadn’t ever been told that, by season four, it didn’t matter, but he didn’t have a clue.)
SAMCRO must vote on its deal with the Galindo Cartel – and vote on its future as an organisation under Clay’s command. The Sons of Anarchy is a tragedy for many reasons, but none more clearly represents it than this vote.
Meanwhile, there’s a second subplot in which Clay threatens Tara to see how much she knows about Maureen’s letters, and Gemma confronts Tara about them, telling her not to tell Jax about them. As for the deal with the Galindo Cartel – the first step towards the end of SAMCRO (at least according to Clay) since they’re dabbling in narcotics.
5 To Be, Act 2
Sons of Anarchy season 4, episode 14
Season 4 of Sons of Anarchy ended (aka the show’s best season) in two parts, but the second part is the key part. Potter’s RICO case takes an unexpected turn when it is learned that the Galindo Cartel is actually made up of CIA agents, and they shut down its operations. Yet that is not important compared with what occurs inside the brotherhood of SAMCRO. It is this chapter, more than any other, that is the reason the finale is on this list.
As stated above, the deal with the cartel proved to be the end of Clay’s reign as club president, and Jax learns that Clay put out a hit on Tara. By this point, of course, Jax knows of Clay’s involvement in the motorcycle accident that led to JT’s death (although he remains ignorant of Clay’s complicity in Gemma’s hand in getting rid of the letters that implicated her). At the club, Jax becomes president, the start of his own reign as SAMCRO’s leader.
4 Sovereign
Sons of Anarchy season 5, episode 1
So here it goes – the very first scene of the very first Sons of Anarchy episode where Jax has become the President of SAMCRO. And it isn’t even the most important part of ‘Sovereign’. Instead, ‘Sovereign’ is the introduction of the drug kingpin, Damon Pope – debatably the scariest villain of the Sons of Anarchy canon. SAMCRO has come on Pope’s radar when Tig (also very angry about Clay’s shooting, which he mistakenly assumes was done by the Niners) went to try and kill the Niners’ leader, but instead killed his girlfriend, who turns out to be Pope’s daughter.
Pope then burns Dawn at the stake right in front of Tig, helplessly watching as his own child is consumed by flames.
Pope’s revenge would be long and multifarious in its punitive creation of ways for SAMCRO to hurt. His personal affront to Tig came first. Pope has his people grab Tig’s daughter Dawn and chained up in a pit. He chains Tig outside it. He goes to Dawn and lights her on fire. Tig watches her burn to death with no power of intervention. Pope established himself as a fearsome man with few lines, avowing no barriers. And what he did to Dawn was only the beginning of much more.
3 Laying Pipe
Sons of Anarchy season 5, episode 3
Pope wants Tig to die in prison, but he also wants a Son to live and forces Jax to choose whether it will be one or the other of them who die in front of them.
‘Laying Pipe’ is easily the saddest episode of Sons of Anarchy (and that’s saying something). Jax, Opie, Chibs, and Tig are in prison (again), but even that’s part of Pope’s evil plans: he wants Tig to die in prison, but also wants a Son of Anarchy to die, so forces Jax to choose who between the four of them should die out of the eyesight of the rest. Jax plans to choose himself, but Opie steps in and beats the Guard Sergeant who was about to kill Jax, dying in the place of the man Pope wanted dead.
He is then taken into another room while Chibs, for one, stands watching, behind a pane of glass, as Jax and Tig hit their friend to death. Opie wasn’t just Jax’s best childhood friend; he was the most loyal, the kindest member of the club, and he was the member for whom SAMCRO arguably failed more than anybody else. The death of Jax’s best friend is what changed him. ‘Before Opie’s death, he always relied on the gorier, more violent alternative to all he faced’ This dark shift happens to Jax, which then proves to offer him preferable alternatives to the less violent, but also less bloody, more considered approach.
2 Aon Rud Persanta
Sons of Anarchy season 6, episode 11
Jax not only kills his stepfather in the episode but he also uses the opportunity to kill his IRA enemies and make it look as if they all killed each other.
Some of the deaths on Sons Of Anarchy, like Opie’s and Tara’s, were unfortunate and moving; others were just or expected. Clay’s death, in season 6’s ‘Aon Rud Persanta’, falls into the latter category. Given that Clay was responsible for JT’s death, he’d already violated SAMCRO’s ‘two deaths and you die’ rule; but he’d already done much, much more than that.
“Aon Rud Persanta” is Irish for “Nothing Personal”.
Yet, in this episode, he doesn’t simply murder his stepfather, but – along with staging Clay’s murder so that his IRA targets can look to each other as the perpetrators – he also takes advantage of the moment so as to wipe out more than one enemy at once, but also so that we might begin to see part of what Jax has become: a ruthless President of SAMCRO.
1 A Mother’s Work
Sons of Anarchy season 6, episode 13
Gemma holds Tara’s head in the sink of water and repeatedly stabs her on the back of the neck with a carving fork.
Viewers were just beginning to accept Opie’s death when SAMCRO delivered another blow: Tara’s prison time in the aftermath of Pamela Toric’s death has helped her clear her head to see that she has to get out of SAMCRO, and she has to take her sons with her if they are to be safe. So in this episode Jax and Tara finally talk and open up with each other, and Jax agrees to turn himself in so that she and the boys can get out – but in so doing, Gemma reminds herself that she has ratted the club out, has betrayed Jax.
Gemma turns up at Tara’s house to catch her by surprise, and the two are soon fighting on the kitchen floor. Gemma shoves Tara’s head down into a water-filled sink before stabbing her repeatedly in the back of the neck with a carving fork. Then Roosevelt, arriving on the scene, does the world a favour by telling Gemma so, but it’s too late. Jax’s mother pulls herself up and out of the door, just in time for Juice to arrive. He blows apart Roosevelt’s knee with a shotgun, and then just as he’s calling for help on his radio, Gemma drives off in the minivan. The lies she told Jax about Tara’s death are what led to both of their deaths.