Sept. 9 marked the beginning of the final season of the well-known biker show, Sons of Anarchy. The show started off as a hard-core biker club that was devoted to the family business of selling guns. Through six seasons of family and club feuds, death and betrayal, Jackson ‘Jax’ Teller (Charlie Hunnam) manages to find solace in the one thing that keeps his sanity on track: the love of his life, Tara Knowles (Maggie Siff).
With a connection to Tara that pulls him back to reality, Jax never wanted “the weight of the gavel”, for fear he would turn into his “weak,” dead father, or worse, the self-serving stepfather, Clay Morrow (Ron Pearlman). At the end of season six, Jax was sitting at the “head of the table.” Since coming back to charming, Tara did her best at trying to get Jax out of the club and Charming, but Gemma Morrow, (Katy Sagel) Jax’s mother, somehow always intervenes and finds a way to make him stay.
“It’s never normal, every time you think it’s going bad it always comes out good in the end,” Sarah Sabins, graduate student “It starts out like Hamlet, but never ends like it,” said.
“I love the crazy suspense, and Kurt Sutter is just really good about captivating the audience,” Hannah Roy, Pre-Vet major, said.“Keeping you guessing what’s going to happen next, and then out of nowhere something way unexpected happens, and he makes you feel for the characters.”
Kurt Sutter, creator and character Otto, a loyal and imprisoned solider to the club who turned on the club by biting out his tongue and pinning the murder of a nurse on Tara.
Throughout the series of SOA, there have been hints and speculation of whether or not the main storyline and characters are based off of Hamlet. For instances, Hamlet’s Ophelia, daughter to Polonius, lives with her father and is in love with Hamlet. While it is not a romantic relationship, the parallels with Opie Winston (Ryan Hurst) are obvious. Even his name evokes Ophelia. Also, after the death of Polonius, Ophelia goes mad and kills herself. Likewise, after the death of Piney, father to Opie, loses his way and ultimately sacrifices his own life, essentially killing himself out of loyalty to Jax.
“There’s always scenes where you’re like, ‘Hey no go back! Tell me more!’ But the way Kurt Sutter writes it is perfect,” Roy said.
It is debatable for which character each modern day actor plays in Hamlet, but a definite link between the two are Hamlet’s Claudius (Pearlman) and Gertrude (Segal). Claudius, King of Denmark, and Hamlet’s uncle killed Hamlet’s father and took his crown, much like Clay killed John Teller and took his position. Hamlet/Jax sought revenge upon Claudius/Clay, while Claudius/Clay sought to assassinate Hamlet/Jax to protect power. Both failed.
“There’s only so far he can take their development. Some main characters have become irredeemable, which must make writing extremely difficult,” Yodit Yoseph, a ju said.
In the original Shakespeare play, Gertrude (Segal), Queen of Denmark and mother to Hamlet, was not part of the plot to kill Hamlet’s father, although Sutter has combined those elements. Here, Gemma was part of the plot to kill John Teller, but she backed away from it, pinning it entirely upon Clay, although Jax — like Hamlet — is suspicious of his mother. Similarly, at the beginning of the play, Gertrude lies more with her husband than her son, as Gemma sided more with Clay in the early seasons. Gertrude is killed in the end by poison meant for Jax, which means she’ll probably be an accidental victim of crossfire.
“There are not a lot of shows about hardcore bikers and love of family in one show,”Sabins  said.