Kurt Sutter on ‘Sons of Anarchy’ and the Series Finale

Kurt Sutter Sons of Anarchy Season 7 Interview
The final season poster for ‘Sons of Anarchy’ (Photo Courtesy of FX)

If you’re a fan of Sons of Anarchy, then you’re both looking forward to and dreading the season seven premiere of the FX series on September 9, 2014 at 10pm ET/PT. Creator Kurt Sutter is ending the series with the conclusion of season seven, and having to do without an annual fix of new Sons of Anarchy episodes is going to be tough to deal with.

Season seven has a lot of storylines to finish up, and no one but Sutter knows who will remain standing as the credits roll on the series finale. And while at the 2014 San Diego Comic-Con, I asked him about penning that final script during our roundtable interviews.

Did your plans for the series finale change over the years, or are we going to see what you originally thought of for the show’s ending?

Kurt Sutter: “I haven’t written it yet. No, I think I was very aware coming into this season that I wasn’t writing the final season, I was writing the next season, you know? I don’t think of it in terms of, ‘This is the final season. Am I going to get to that place?’ You know, we’ve been building and building and building, and I always have a sense of where I want to end each season like emotionally and relationship-wise and theme.

I’m always able to hit that. I’m never quite sure how I’m going to get there in terms of narrative because I try to leave that loose. I have a great team of writers and as we break each episode, the A story – the big action narrative engine – will tweak things a little bit and take things in a different direction. We’ll go, ‘That’s cool. Let’s try that.’ So you pile up enough of those and things always look different than you had anticipated.

To me, that’s the fun of the job is not quite knowing what it’s all going to look like. [Laughing] My production team doesn’t like that so much, not knowing what anything’s going to look like. But creatively, it’s fun.”

There’s always kind of a villainous element and everyone focuses on Jax and Gemma, but what’s going on with the brewing war with the Mayans? Will that still be relevant this season?

Kurt Sutter: “Yeah, absolutely. The fun thing for me this year is we have some new guest stars but for the most part it’s like worlds and people and organizations that we’ve already invested in. I get to bring back great actors like Emilio and so, yeah. For me, it really mirrors the relationship that MCs have. From year to year I don’t know who’s beefing with who because it really changes based on street circumstances.

I love to be able to stay real to the world and do all that. But, yeah, that is definitely the external pressure that’s going on as well as our hero coming out with obviously a few personal things going on. So, yeah, that will definitely be the pressure cooker this year.”

Can you talk about how Marilyn Manson’s character will fit in and how he’ll interact with Jax?

Kurt Sutter: “You know, for me Manson’s character is really a lot like what Otto…the role that Otto served is that so much of what these guys do pivot on what happens inside because that’s where most of the shot-callers are. So to stay real I really need to find that character inside. That’s the character that Manson plays.

A lot of it adds to the pressure cooker of black and white that’s going on outside, and obviously impacts our hero and our club. Most of his scenes are really…I think he’s in three or four episodes but they’re those scenes where we have these two shot-callers sitting down, these little kingmaker scenes. They’re a lot of fun to play and Manson’s doing a great job, so I think people will enjoy it.”