Did Jax have to die? Here’s analyzing why his suicide made the most sense on the show.
After running for seven successful seasons, the hit FX drama ‘Sons of Anarchy’ ended on such a note that fans are still thinking about it. It’s been six years since the show came to a close, and yet fans can’t get over the fact that Jax Teller, the ultimate outlaw, and part of a dangerous biker gang, killed himself in the finale. A show about bikers with lots of violence and tragedy sprinkled in, along with some amazing characters and good writing, ‘Sons of Anarchy’ was conceptually inspired by Shakespeare’s ‘Hamlet’. It’s no complaint then that the theme of tragedy, that was running all along in the show, broke through in the final episode with the death of the main character. And yet, watching Jax die seemed to pull at the heart-strings.
Jax Teller wanted to go out like his father did.
Highlights —
- The showrunners knew the end all along
- Why Jax’s suicide was inevitable
The showrunners knew the end all along
But it just so happens that the makers of the show seem to have ordained it all along. In the series finale, we see Jax Teller leave SAMCRO behind forever, and then riding his motorcycle straight into an oncoming truck, violently killing himself. The show’s executive director and producer Paris Barclay wanted to have a neat tie-up to the show’s narrative arc. “From the very first weeks in the writer’s room, when Kurt [Sutter, the show’s creator] laid out the big arc of the story, we knew this was where we were going”, he told “TV Line”.
Why Jax’s suicide was inevitable
The show always had undertones of a Shakespearean tragedy. In all its violence and blood count and moral degradation, there were tragic notes weaved in.
“It was always sort of pre-ordained. We’re telling a tragedy, and it has Shakespearean overtones and undertones. If you’re telling a tragedy, it doesn’t end happily ever after”, says Barclay.
It was just the expected end for Jax Teller in ‘Sons of Anarchy’, colliding into the truck to his death with his hands outstretched, and going out on his own terms. In this, there is also a strain of the inevitability of Jax’s death. The character was meant to die in the end, and die in this way.
Jax dies the same way his father John Teller did before him. In this sense, the act echoes what transpired with John. “The idea that he was going to go out in the same way”, says Kurt Sutter. In the last two episodes itself, there is a certain peace and calm that settles over the character of Jax Teller, which in a way is prescient of his eventual decision of committing suicide. Having said that, what else was Jax going to do? With everything that had happened to him, the way out was either something like this, or prison, since there were cops chasing after him.
One of the unsaid rules of good series finales is to never leave any loose threads. The death of Jax Teller in ‘Sons of Anarchy’ marks a poignant end to this hit drama about a bunch of outlaws in society.
