10 Most Hated Sons Of Anarchy Characters
6. Damon Pope
The big bad in season five, Damon Pope is one of the most dangerous gangsters in California: the man who runs Oakland, yet from behind the scenes, publically so squeaky clean that he cant ever be connected with the violence and crime meted out on his behalf. There are pretty much no lengths that Pope won't go to in order to enforce his will and his authority, including some apparently random acts of ultraviolence at the beginning of season five that set up everything to follow and, just incidentally, giving that seasons first three episodes the high watermark in casual brutality for the entire show.
After the hapless Tig Trager murders his daughter by accident while on an unannounced revenge trip against the wrong man (for the second time in the show), Pope sets fire to Tigs own daughter in front of him, burning her alive. When the Son's are jailed, Pope has his connections savagely beat Opie to death but more, he makes Jax choose who will die first, Opie only taking matters into his own hands after it becomes clear that Jax will sacrifice himself.
Pope also makes it clear after the Sons are released that Trager will, at some point, belong to him to murder at his leisure. Pope is a businessman, and mourning the loss of his daughter, but these are steps too far. Tig is a massive douche, but hes our massive douche, an opinion Jax shares with the television audience. And Pope had Opie killed. Nothing else matters. Pope needs to die but how?
The man has a team of assassins on stand-by, ready to murder with extreme nastiness the person or persons who lays a finger on him. That's how he stays alive. It's a good thing Jackson Teller can be a fiendishly inventive man when he wants to be. As Pope himself tells Jax thats how players become kings.