Sons of Anarchy creator Kurt Sutter is preparing to watch his critically-acclaimed series ride off into the sunset. The upcoming seventh season will serve as the conclusion to Sutter’s sprawling narrative about the California motorcycle club and it’s Hamlet-esque protagonist, Jax Teller. On Sunday, Sutter and the Sons of Anarchy cast appeared at San Diego Comic-Con to bid farewell to the fans, and answer a few questions from journalists. You can check out the video below, and keep reading for a few highlights from our conversation.
On the frequent use of violence:
“At its core, this show is pulp fiction, so that pulp violence is really part of it. That sort of epic Shakespearian level of storytelling is a signature of the show that allows us to go there. I can honestly say that, creatively, none of those deaths were done for the sake of killing off a character or to be sensational. Every one of those deaths, we got to it organically, and the impact of them moves the mythology on. Opie, Clay, Tara – all those things were needed to bring our hero to the next place.
Now, the presentations of some of those deaths were pretty fantastic, but that’s the magic of what we get to do. It’s like, here’s the story – how can we tell that story the most interesting, and sometimes the most absurd, way possible? And as a storyteller, that’s my job. My job is to engage you, to excite you, to freak you out, to have you hate me. That’s my job.”
On saying goodbye to Otto:
“That was so much fun for me. I loved writing it, and then I hated performing it because it took so much time. I’d be in the fucking chair for two hours with the eye. I always [thought] that Otto was going to go out two ways: incredibly violently in prison, or getting the electric chair. And I was thinking about doing that for a minute, but then I felt that really, that’s not the show. Watching a guy fry in a chair with people watching him is not really what we do. So I decided to go with the violence.”
On the show’s legacy:
“I’d like to think that we’ve carved out a little piece of television history, that those characters and that world will feel somewhat iconic. Hopefully we have an opportunity to do the prequel at some point, which I think at this point will probably be just a mini-series, like a one-off rather than a series. But I think it’ll be a memorable show. The fantastic thing is that the show is international, there are countries and cities that are just getting Season One, so it sort of continues to live on. As we sort of move on, there’s other people just starting to engage and fall in love with it.”
The seventh and final season of Sons of Anarchy will premiere in September, exclusively on FX. Watch the trailer here.