10 Moments That Proved Sons Of Anarchy Was The Best Show On TV
6. The Trouble With Closure
Growing up in SAMCRO has taught Jax that if the club is family and family is the club: if someone threatens one, they threaten the other. When the bloody events of season two see his eldest son Abel kidnapped by the IRA at the climax, that ethos hits home with him, and hard. It’s his efforts at vengeance that have led him here and threatened the life of his child: but he’ll need to step up that vengeance to save him, escalating matters still further.
That’s a downward spiral of violence and retribution that Jackson never fully pulls out of, and in many ways, you can view this moment as the beginning of the end for our young hero, back when he still was a hero of sorts. It’s the moment where Jax – and the audience – begin to see how far reaching the consequences of his actions are, and that there may be no going back.
In addition to all of that, the neo-Nazi ringleader Ethan Zobelle get away in the confusion. The man who ordered the violence that marks season two and who has directly injured Jackson’s family, gets away scot free. The episode, and the season, end with Jackson empty-handed and raging impotently, lacking any form of closure as the threads of his life begin to unravel.