14 DAY TRIAL // This week marked the end of FX’s high-rated biker series “Sons of Anarchy,” which was dubbed by critics and fans alike “Hamlet on bikes.” “Papa’s Goods,” the last episode, tied up all the loose ends and offered closure to the characters and fans, but it also drove home a point that proves the comparison to “Hamlet” didn’t stand until the very end.
Because “Papa’s Goods” made Jax Teller into a modern Jesus Christ, not Hamlet.
Now that we’ve all had some time to catch up with the bloody series finale and to process everything that happened on it, let’s talk a bit more about that. *Please note that this article contains spoilers, so read no further if you’re yet to see the finale.
Jax was no Hamlet
Comparisons with Hamlet came very early in the series, for reasons that are obvious to longtime fans: the mother-son-wife triangle, the struggle to do the “right” thing, which in this particular case meant doing several somethings “wrong” first, the murdering “uncle” who kills the father and the quest to avenge this death, etc.
However, unlike in the famous Shakespearean play, Jax Teller didn’t die the way fans predicted he would. In “Papa’s Goods,” which, yes, saw the demise of our biker anti-hero at long last, Jax died by sacrificing himself for the good of others – and series creator / writer / director Kurt Sutter went completely overboard with the religious imagery, as Vanity Fair also points out.
Starting from the opening song, Bruce Springsteen’s “Adam Raised a Cain,” to the final scene in which Jax rode his bike into an incoming semi-truck, arms wide open and a smile etched on his face, the episode worked hard to prove that he was the equivalent of a modern on-screen Jesus Christ.
Jax was Jesus
First of all, Jax sacrificed himself for his two sons and his fellow SAMCRO brothers – and the script made that clear from the start. After 7 seasons, he had finally understood that there was no changing to who he was and no salvation possible for the world he’d helped build with him in it.
So Jax removed himself from the equation, but his gesture wasn’t selfish: this was actually Jax at his best and most kind and generous. He died “for our sins,” as VF puts it – which is to say he died for SAMCRO and his father’s sins, because only his death could mean the salvation of others.
Sutter didn’t stop here with the religious comparisons: he used the figure of the mysterious homeless woman throughout the entire series as a symbol of the angel of death, but in the final episode, she’s shown eating bread and drinking wine: the Eucharist.
The same symbol appears after Jax’s death, with a single shot at a pair of crows by the side of the road (just like in the opening scene of the first episode), eating the same piece of bread, as Jax’s blood is seeping in the picture. The Eucharist again.
Also part of this argument, consider the scene with Jax and Layla and the paternal kiss he plants on her forehead, and Jax’s final “conversation” with his father, John Teller. Sutter saved the best for last, though, when he had Jax ride open-armed into the truck (see the 2 GIFs below for that).
“Sons of Anarchy,” adrenalized soap opera
This is how Sutter described the series once, when pressed about the “Hamlet” comparisons: he set out to make an adrenalized soap opera that he strove to populate with strong, well defined characters, and yes, a lot of violent imagery.
With this final episode, which showed that he had imaged Jax as so much more than a modern version of the Shakespearean hero, he managed to romanticize altogether an anti-hero that would have probably been better off left un-romanticized, at least according to many fans and critics.
Season 7 of “Sons of Anarchy” had many shortcomings, and Sutter’s tendency to want to please everyone while also upping the shock factor over and over again was the biggest.
To many fans, including yours truly, “SOA” held the promise of being a great show up until season 3. It failed to keep it from then on until the end, which isn’t to say that it was a complete disappointment, because it wasn’t. But it was less than what we were promised with the first 3 seasons.
