Welcome to our weekly breakdown of the minutia of Kurt Sutter and Elgin James’ Sons of Anarchy spin-off, Mayans M.C.. While Kimberly Ricci provides her always excellent coverage of the series (here’s her write-up of the the latest episode), here we’re going to endeavor to look deeper into the episode and excavate some of the details viewers may have missed, callbacks to Sons of Anarchy, and posit questions explore theories about the direction the series.
1. The episode’s title this week, “Kukulkan,” refers to the Feathered Serpent who created humanity along with Tepeu.
2. First off, a little bookkeeping here, for those who didn’t understand why the big guy at the meetup called EZ a “snitch” and got into it with him later in the episode. Remember the season’s opening episode, when EZ helped the club find a guy in another club skimming and tampering with the drugs, which got that guy killed when they injected him full of enough drugs to stop his heart? That guy was Ticker. He was the big guy’s cousin, and the big guy is pissed because EZ and his photographic memory got his cousin killed.
3. I love the way Emily casually tells EZ, “When you asked me to do this, I didn’t question it, because I owed you a favor.” Emily, EZ inadvertently orchestrated a hit and staged it as a suicide, which allowed Emily to achieve the winning big on whatever the hell an agripark is. Emily owed him a little more than a “favor.” Anyway, since EZ went to the effort of killing a man and staging it as a suicide, Emily trudged all the way out to a storage facility and looked through some old files. WHAT A BURDEN. I hope she didn’t chip a nail. Anyway, in the course of her investigation, she learned that Dita signed the checks that put into motion the hits on Marisol and Felipe.
4. Why did Dita take out a hit on Marisol and Felipe? We discovered her motive in her conversation with Felipe. Felipe and Dita’s affair actually predated Felipe’s relationship with Marisol, so he didn’t cheat on his wife. However, he did leave a pregnant Dita for Marisol, which broke Dita’s heart. That — and the fact that she didn’t want anyone to know that Felipe is Miguel’s father — is why she likely took a hit out on Marisol/Felipe. Bitterness and jealousy. (Did anyone else believe, during the rooftop scene, that Dita was going to pull out a gun and kill Felipe right there?)
5. At the end of the episode, Emily took the news that Dita was behind the hit to Felipe, who honestly didn’t seem that shocked by it. He asked Emily to give him a couple of days to figure out how to make their respective families safe, but I have no idea what that is supposed to mean. Safe from who? From himself? From EZ and Angel? Who is getting whacked here?
6. Miguel doesn’t know what’s going on, but he is unhappy that his family — and Emily — keep encountering Felipe, who tried to downplay the interaction by bringing steaks out to Emily. Somehow, I doubt that a couple of steaks is going to allay Miguel’s suspicions. Meanwhile, can we talk about how terrible Nestor is at tracking people? Dita has been meeting with Felipe on the roofs of buildings, and Emily has been meeting EZ out near the dumpsters, and Nestor didn’t pick up on anything until Emily decided to buy a couple of steaks from Felipe after closing time.
7. Potter, meanwhile, just flat-out refuses to let EZ and Angel off the hook. Now he wants intel about the Galindo cartel, Adelita, and the rebels, and he’s willing to have Felipe deported if they don’t supply it. I don’t know how this plays out, but I would assume that Felipe would rather die trying to kill Dita than survive as leverage for Potter against his sons. I’m not so sure that Felipe survives the season.
8. Thankfully, Felipe’s other son, Miguel, has some leverage against Potter now. Miguel learns that Potter apparently has a child with a blind woman named Sophia Fiero. Miguel promises Palermo he will not hurt the woman or her child, but he does plan to use it as leverage against Potter if necessary.
9. The meat of the episode, however, is the return of SAMCRO, or at least Chibs and a couple of others. We should have known that was trouble based on the foreshadowing earlier in the episode, where a couple of crows were feasting on the rotting flesh of another animal.
10. It was great to see Chibs again, so much so that I was willing to forgive the fact that, five years after Sons ended, we’re still talking about Jackie Boy, guns, and the damn Irish! Chibs brings to the Mayans an enticing arrangement: If they help SAMCRO transport guns from Mexico to Northern California, there’s a lot of money in it for them. The catch? They’d have to work with the Valtos Malditos, The Mayans killed 9 of their men in last week’s episode, so it’s safe to say the two clubs are not on great terms.
Chibs, however, insists that he can get VM to agree to a deal, notwithstanding the bloodshed the week before. After some tense negotiations in which Chibs has to ask both the Mayans and VM to take their “dicks off the table,” he manages to strike a deal and compel the two sides to come together over a lot of money. VM seems to agree, but after SAMCRO leaves to journey back to Charming, the VM execute a surprise attack on the Mayans. It appears that not only is the deal with the Irish dead, but so is Riz (probably) and Coco lost an eye (although, if there’s any character on this show that can pull off an eyepatch, it’s Coco). There have been several shootouts this season, and hundreds of bullets fired. It’s about time someone from the Mayans took one of those bullets, but also: RIP Riz (probably).
11. Next week, the Mayans seek revenge. I hope they bring SAMCRO back for this (and maybe bring Tig along!)
