‘Sons of Anarchy’ season 6: Kurt Sutter explains shocking death, road ahead
If you are a fan of “Sons of Anarchy,” then odds are you are still trying to get over what was one of the most shocking events in the history of the show Tuesday night: The death of Clay Morrow. This is something that many predicted would actually happen at the beginning of season 5, or early on during this year when he was in prison having to deal with Lee Toric. Throughout the show, there was an almost-unspoken assumption that a man like Clay would not live to see the finish line, though we must admit that we thought he would have been around for at least a few weeks longer.
Show creator Kurt Sutter is no stranger to death at this point, and in addition to killing Toric and his own character of Otto earlier this season, he’s also taken out another longtime player in Ryan Hurst’s Opie during season 5. As for how he tries to make these sort of tough decisions, he explained to Entertainment Weekly that you really have to put a lot of thought into the reasoning why a character would die, and how for Clay much of his passing was punishment for everything he had already done:
“Ultimately he made choices that hurt a lot of other people, that came back to hurt him … I don’t kill off characters – you know, at least the main characters – easily. It would be difficult if I got rid of characters like Tig and Juice and Chibs, especially with Opie gone. They feel like family to people. You have to be very careful not to be arbitrary in terms of who lives and who dies.”
Even though Sutter says it will be more difficult to get rid of some characters than others, it does still feel like this is the sort of environment right now where anything can happen, and anyone can die. That makes for an exciting situation for us as home viewers, but we imagine for the characters it’s more like a near constant danger zone where you have to mentally run for cover.
Do you want to read some more reaction to this “Sons of Anarchy” episode? Then just click here, where you can see in full what Ron Perlman himself had to say about taking a bow on this show, and why he is personally thrilled that there was some sort of redemption for the character, even if it just came in a series of glances from Gemma.
Photo: FX