Sons of Anarchy - To Be, Part Two (Season Finale)

Did you watch the season finale of Sons of Anarchy this week? What surprised you the most? What are you still wondering about? And how are you going to pass the time between now and the beginning of Season 5?

Probably the biggest surprise for me was when Romeo & Company revealed their association with the CIA. We knew that Romeo had “a guy inside” the CIA—he’d told Jax that in the prior episode. What we didn’t know was that Romeo was working with the CIA. That was a great plot twist because it complicated everything enough to tie Jax’s hands and prevent him from killing Clay.

Because of Romeo’s connection to the CIA, the RICO sting that would have arrested many of the Sons was thwarted because the CIA needs the gun/drugs deal to go down between the Sons, the Irish, and the cartel. But the Irish will only deal with Clay. They want nothing to do with Jax. When Romeo revealed the truth of it all to Jax, it became obvious to Jax that Clay had to live to make the deal go down. If Clay died, the Irish would walk away from the deal, the RICO sting would be back in play, and Jax and his brothers would go to prison. Jax was forced to stay in Charming.

We wondered here at home if Jax would tell Tara the truth about the CIA and the RICO sting. We were happy when he told her everything, but we expected her to leave. (And yet, we couldn’t really see Maggie Siff leaving the show.) When Tara walked into the chapel at the end of the show and put her arm possessively around Jax, staring Gemma down, the juxtaposition of Tara and Jax with Gemma and JT was a great effect. Jax is at the head of the table; Tara’s his old lady; Gemma’s looking on from the periphery.

I loved, loved, loved it when Jax prevented Tig from taking the Sergeant-at-Arms position to his right and instead asked Chibs to take that place. It was a brilliant move—Tig is way too loyal to Clay to take that seat, and Chibs is an upstanding dude. The noticeable hole at the table was the empty VP seat. Will Opie show up? Will he take the office? I think he will, but it was cool that they didn’t wrap that up for us in this episode.

We all knew that Jax wouldn’t really be able to kill Clay this season. Ron Perlman’s portrayal of Clay Morrow is much too integral to the whole plot of the show to lose him. But it wouldn’t have been true to Jax’s character to just have him change his mind and not do it. The disclosure of the CIA’s involvement in the deal and the threat of RICO arrests hanging over the Sons was a perfect vehicle to prevent the murder. Jax would never sabotage his club.

The next best thing to killing Clay, though, was Jax stripping the president’s patch from Clay’s cut. It was even better than the minor slice he gave to Clay’s neck. Gemma almost got everything she wanted—Jax is staying in Charming, and he’s sitting at the head of the table. But Clay isn’t dead, and I can’t wait to see what that means for Season 5 of the Sons of Anarchy.