I honestly don’t know how to feel about last night’s penultimate episode of Sons of Anarchy, “Red Rose.” We’ve known essentially since the beginning of the series that Gemma would have to die because of the Hamlet inspiration, and we’ve been anticipating her demise for 51 weeks now, since the night she repeatedly stuck a carving fork through the back of Tara’s skull. When there’s that much anticipation, and after a season in which her lie spiraled into the deaths of 79 people, expectations are naturally high, probably too high to be fulfilled.
We wanted a satisfying death, one that is proportionate to her crimes. But the reality is, you can’t kill Gemma 79 times. You can only kill her once, and instead of feeling satisfied by her death, we felt sad. I didn’t want to feel sad, I wanted to be able to pump my fist and yell, “Thank you! Yes! Finally!” instead of, “Oh, maybe don’t pull the trigger after all, Jax. Let her live with her misery. Let her live in the filth of her own guilt.”
But before we get to Gemma’s demise, let’s back up a little here. It was a monstrously long episode of television — a movie, really — and the first hour and a half did little other than set the stage for a finale that seems almost beside the point now. There was a lot of negotiating with the Irish, the Mayans, and the One-Niners, all of which will come into play next week, but that felt extraneous in this episode. In short, there will be a Mayhem vote next week, and I can only assume that the vote will go against Jax because Jax not only deserves to die, he’s got very little left for which to live.
But that’s for another day. For now, we need to pay our respects to the life of Juice, a rat whose last meal should’ve been the more fitting cheesecake. After Lin’s men decided to use Juice as a pawn in another prison game — as well as a rag doll for raping (Jesus, Sutter: Lighten up on the prison rape, dude!) — Juice went to Tully, offered him a knife, and told Tully to get it over with. “Just let me finish my pie,” Juice said. And that was that: Juice ate the last bit of crust, chaos broke out in the lunchroom, and Marilyn Manson — of all people — knifed Juice in the neck (because, again, that sadistic Sutter has a thing for killing people in the neck).
Juice’s death was an immense relief. Given the sins of everyone else in SAMCRO, Juice’s almost seemed minor, and his treachery didn’t warrant multiple ass-rapings.
R.I.P. Juice.
Unser’s death, on the other hand, felt … both hollow and necessary. He survived seven seasons with terminal cancer, and I think the only thing that kept him going was his love for Gemma. Knowing Gemma was about to die, there was no reason for Unser to continue living. It’s fitting that he’d die trying to protect Gemma, but it’s just as fitting that Gemma would be his undoing.
R.I.P. Unser.
And then there was Gemma. She knew she was a goner the moment Jax found out that she’d killed Tara. It’s why she left her luggage and car behind when she took a trip with the truck driver played by Michael Chiklis (Sutter had to work in one last Shield cameo). She wasn’t running from Jax. She just wanted to say goodbye to her father (Hal Holbrook) one last time, to see the home she grew up in, and die in her rose garden.
But here’s the thing: Gemma didn’t deserve to die the way she wanted to die. But true to the spirit of Jax and Gemma’s relationship, Gemma dictated even her own demise. She was allowed to say her goodbyes. She was allowed to pick her own location. She even manipulated a reluctant Jax into shooting her. “It’s just who we are,” she told Jax.
R.I.P. Gemma.
I felt the way I think Jax must have felt after killing his own mother: A little sad, a little empty, and incredibly tired (it was midnight, after all, by that point).
In fact, I think I might have been happier if that’s where the series had ended. If Sutter gave us the unambiguous version of the Sopranos-style ending, with Jax pointing the gun at the back of her skull, and Gemma saying, “It’s just who we are.” Fade to black. Gunshot rings out. Sons of Anarchy logo. End credits.
I feel like anything that comes after Gemma’s death is beside the point. The musical montage that ended the episode with SAMCRO gunning down a bunch of people to set up next week’s episode and Jax f**king Wendy felt … wrong. So, so wrong. Tacked on. Like watching Brad Pitt’s character in Seven going home to have sex with someone else after seeing what was in the box. The Big Bad is dead. The woman who drove this entire series through lies and emotional manipulations is garden food, and what happens to Jax and SAMCRO and the Irish and the turf wars is … an afterthought. It’s an epilogue, not another two-hour episode.
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