'Sons of Anarchy': The 20 Most Devastating Deaths

Season 6, Episode "Wolfsangel"
Meeting Mr. Mayhem: Call Phil, the sweet prospect who helped build Abel's clubhouse playground and became a full SAMCRO member in Season 5, a victim of Jax's exit strategy. When Jax informed Galen O'Shay that he no longer wanted SAMCRO to run guns, Galen and his IRA brethren didn't take kindly to the news, and even less kindly to the potential loss of moolah. Jax held firm, and Galen responded by murdering Phil and V-Lin at a SAMCRO warehouse. But he didn't just kill them; he chopped off their hands and left the appendages on top of the men's SAMCRO cuts.

Season 2, Episode "Potlatch"
Meeting Mr. Mayhem: Luann — best friend to Gemma, wife to Otto, and proprietor of the CaraCara porn studio — counted SAMCRO as her financial partner, but that didn't stop rival porn producer Georgie Caruso (guest star Tom Arnold) from trying to steal her actresses away and charging his minions to beat Luann to death. Her demise not only greatly strained her hubby's relationship with SAMCRO, but it was also just one more tragic loss in the life of the perpetually tortured Otto.

Season 5, Episode "Small World"
Meeting Mr. Mayhem: The owner of a Charming floral shop and the wife of lawman Eli Roosevelt, Rita was interested in improving her hometown, and was the rare female who could go toe-to-toe with Gemma, as the two bonded over their love of greenery. Rita and Eli struggled with fertility issues, and in Season 5, a happily pregnant Rita was home alone reading when intruders — working with Clay — burst into her home. In a struggle to make them leave, she accidentally shot herself in the stomach, sending grieving Eli into an alliance with SAMCRO to find the culprits.

Season 7, Episode "The Separation of Crows"
Meeting Mr. Mayhem: Jury, head of the Indian Hills chapter of SAMCRO, was a friend and mentor of Jax, and one of the oldest and dearest friends of Jax's late father, John Teller. But in Jax's uber-destructive plans for revenge for Tara's death, a young thug for hire named Gib became collateral damage. Unbeknownst to Jax at the time, Gib was Jury's son, and when Jax and Jury had a showdown about Gib's death, guns were pulled, shots were fired, and Jury ended up dead. Was it really self-defense? Or did Jury not intend to use the gun he had pulled on Jax? The truth may be irrelevant at this point, because the presidents of the other SAMCRO chapters decided that a president killing a president without a very good reason is a very good reason to call for a visit from Mr. Mayhem, who awaits Jax in the series finale.

Season 4, Episode "Call of Duty"
Meeting Mr. Mayhem: SAMCRO Tacoma and Charming member Kozik had a beef with Tig, which, in one of the show's oddly sweet and funny moments, we later learned was about a girl. A girl named Missy. OK, a female dog named Missy, whom they both loved. The two eventually patched up their friendship, which meant that Tig was one of the saddest Sons of all when Kozik, while helping Jax avenge the men who injured the hand Tara performed surgery with, stepped on a land mine and was blown up. Inside joke: Johnson played beloved Strike Team member Lem on The Shield, on which SOA creator Kurt Sutter was a writer and producer. Lem, like Kozik, was killed via an explosion (a hand grenade, specifically, for Lem). So, what was Kozik's final line before stepping on that land mine? "You gotta be s--ttin' me!"

Season 2, Episode "Na Trioblóidí"
Meeting Mr. Mayhem: Half-Sack's nickname was literal: A war injury had left him with just one testicle, which was a source of amusement to the club, especially when Half-Sack got a testicle implant, which his body rejected, resulting in an infection and swelling that made even Dr. Tara wince when she got a look at it. Prospect Half-Sack was also fiercely loyal to the club, making it all the sadder that just as Clay and company had decided to patch him in as a full-fledged member, he was stabbed to death trying to protect Tara and baby Abel from rogue IRA gun dealer Cameron Hayes. Half-Sack, the first major character on the show to die, was posthumously made a SAMCRO member before his burial.

Season 1, Episode "The Sleep of Babies"
Meeting Mr. Mayhem: Tara certainly wasn't the first SAMCRO old lady to want her hubs to leave club business behind. Donna — Mrs. Opie — wanted a SAMCRO-less life for her family too, especially after Opie served a prison sentence for club dealings. Their marriage came close to collapsing when Opie couldn't leave the Sons behind, but when Donna learned that Opie had been set up by slimy ATF Agent Stahl to look like he had ratted on the club, Mrs. Opie had a change of heart. Unfortunately, that coincided with Clay's plan to kill Opie — he believed Opie had flipped — and when Donna was driving Opie's truck one night, Clay's henchman, Tig, shot and killed her by mistake.

Season 3, Episode "SO"
Meeting Mr. Mayhem: Lawman Hale, the deputy chief of the Charming PD, was not the most popular guy in town, thanks to his anti-SAMCRO 'tude. Unlike Unser, who thought the club helped keep dangerous elements (well, other dangerous elements) out of town, Hale saw SAMCRO as the root of all trouble in Charming and wanted to see them out of operation. Eventually, he came to understand that there were more dangerous gangs in town, and as he took over Unser's chief position, he was coming around to the idea that SAMCRO could be useful in keeping the town running smoothly. And then … while SAMCRO was at Half-Sack's funeral in the Season 3 premiere, a rival gang launched a drive-by shooting attack, and Hale, who was also in attendance, met the business end of the drive-by van head-on.

Season 6, Episode "Wolfsangel"
Meeting Mr. Mayhem: Former U.S. marshal Toric was one crazy motherfella and one of the most interesting foes SAMCRO ever faced. He came into the club's orbit when Otto (series creator Kurt Sutter) killed Toric's sister, a nurse, in prison. Toric wanted revenge, not just against Otto but against all the Sons, and when he found out that Tara had been tricked into providing Otto with the crucifix he had used to kill Pamela Toric, he saw the chance to coerce Tara into flipping on SAMCRO, lest she go to prison herself. Toric also tried to make SAMCRO pay some serious consequences for providing the gun that young Matthew Jennings had used in a school shooting, but he saved his harshest punishment for his sister's killer, using his connections within the prison to make sure that Otto was raped on a daily basis. Finally, as Toric's own drug problems and mental instability began to spin out of control, he and Otto had a final showdown, and Otto, despite being sans tongue, practically blind, and violated into a pitiful physical state, attacked Toric with a shiv that fellow inmate Clay had slipped him, prompting the former lawman to remark, "I didn't even see that coming."

Season 6, Episode "A Mother's Work"
Meeting Mr. Mayhem: Eli, like David Hale before him, was a mostly by-the-rules cop who also saw the utility of teaming with SAMCRO for a greater good. He worked with Jax to nail Clay after Clay's minions caused the death of Eli's wife and child, and he tried to work with Tara when Mrs. Jax was trying to get away from Charming and the club with her boys. But when Eli heard a racket inside the Teller home in the Season 6 finale, he ran inside, too late to stop Gemma from killing Tara. Juice, who had been talking to Eli outside, ran in after him, and to prevent Eli from calling for backup and arresting Gemma, Juice shot and killed Eli.

Season 5, Episode "Sovereign"
Meeting Mr. Mayhem: Father of the year, Tig was not. But he loved his daughter Dawn, even when she came to town only to try to scam him out of $12,000. And that's why Dawn became the perfect tool for Damon Pope's revenge, after Tig killed Pope's daughter. Pope kidnapped Dawn and took her to an isolated area, where he set her on fire while she was still alive, and as she was chained up, powerless to do anything but scream and plead for her life, she died a horrible death. P.S. It didn't make our list, but suffice it to say that Damon Pope's death later in Season 5 came courtesy of Tig.

Season 6, Episode "Wolfsangel"
Meeting Mr. Mayhem: Otto… for anyone who ever complained about the amount of violence perpetrated against any other character in the series via Kurt Sutter's storytelling, it must be pointed out that he tortured no one more than he did Otto, the character he portrayed on Sons. A SAMCRO member who went to jail in the '90s and routinely had years added to his sentence while he did the club's dirty work inside the hoosegow, Otto was beaten, had his eye slashed, had his other eye smashed in with a broken mop handle, lost his wife via murder by her porn-industry rival, was a frequent tool of assorted law officials who wanted him to rat on the club, bit off his own tongue to avoid having to testify against the club, slit his own wrists to gain entry to the prison infirmary (to carry out a murder for the club), landed on death row, and suffered daily beatings and rapes that were ordered by unhinged former U.S. marshal Lee Toric. Toric was acting in vengeance, and Otto turned that around and killed Toric with a shiv inside a prison hospital room. Otto was then, mercifully, shot dead by prison guards.

Season 4, Episode "Family Recipe"
Meeting Mr. Mayhem: Piney was one of the First 9, the founding members of SAMCRO, and the best friend of John Teller, who was Jax's dad and another founding member of the club. Piney, also Opie's father, had been unhappy for years with the direction in which Clay had been taking the club, especially the gun-running aspects of SAMCRO's business. Concluding that Clay's guiding philosophy was greed and not the good of the club or its founding principles — and aware of Clay's role in Donna's death — Piney gave Clay an ultimatum: pull the club out of gun running, or Piney would share a stack of letters that suggested Clay was responsible for John Teller's death. Clay decided to go another way: He went to Piney's cabin and shot him to death, and then framed a rival gang for the killing. It was the beginning of the end for Clay, whose misdeeds, even those against his own club and family, only grew more dastardly.

Season 7, Episode "Red Rose"
Meeting Mr. Mayhem: Juice was a lovable, frequent goof-up who was steadfastly loyal to his club, but it all started to go downhill for him when Eli Roosevelt blackmailed him into being a police informant. That led to lies, stealing from SAMCRO, killing another SAMCRO member, more lies, betraying the club, getting on Jax's bad side, being alienated from the club, nearly overdosing, getting involved with Gemma's murder of Tara, killing Eli, killing an innocent hotel employee, and volunteering to get himself thrown in prison so that he could commit murder on SAMCRO's behalf to try to wipe his slate clean with Jax and the others. Inside jail, it continued to go badly for Juice — more murder, and regular rapings by white supremacist Tully — and then he learned that, despite the promise of retribution, Jax was still going to have him killed, even after he became the person to finally unspool the entire truth about Tara's murder for Jax. After one last piece of cherry pie in the prison cafeteria, Juice handed Tully a shiv with which to bring him to his own merciful death. In the process, he did one last favor for the only people he considered family: Allowing Tully to get the credit for killing him, instead of Lin's men, would help ensure that Tully's crew would remain friendly with SAMCRO.

Season 6, Episode "Aon Rud Persanta"
Meeting Mr. Mayhem: He'd killed Piney, he'd beaten Gemma, he'd plotted robbings that led to the death of Rita Roosevelt, he'd hired someone to kill Tara, and, according to Gemma, he was responsible for the death of John Teller. And those are just the highlights of Clay's long rap sheet, which ended with his death, via a gunshot to the throat by stepson Jax. It was the end of an era, officially, for SAMCRO and the Teller family, even if too much damage had already been done for the club or the family to recover.

Season 7, Episode "Red Rose"
Meeting Mr. Mayhem: His ultimate undoing: loving Gemma too much. Unser was the Charming cop who operated under the philosophy that co-signing certain SAMCRO activities kept the town chugging along in a mostly safe manner. When his cop days came to end — and his wife left him because she didn't want to deal with his terminal-cancer diagnosis — Unser had nothing but time on his hands and some serious sleuthing skills, both of which the Tellers were happy to take advantage of. He was a part-time babysitter to Jax's boys, part-time info source for Jax and the club, and part-time errand boy and emotional crutch for Gemma. That last one he didn't mind, because he'd been in love with the motorcycle mama for many years. Even after Unser found out that she'd killed Tara, whom he also cared about, Gemma was his top priority. And when he tried to head off an epic showdown between mother and son, Jax shot Unser, who'd refused Jax's pleas to leave, because, he said, Gemma was all he had left.

Season 6, Episode "A Mother's Work"
Meeting Mr. Mayhem: Jax's wife and his mother, Gemma, had gone from being enemies to being friends and co-conspirators, and back to being enemies again, with many relationship shifts in between. But when Tara started to get serious about her plans to take Abel and Thomas and move them away from the violent lifestyle of SAMCRO, Gemma got equally serious about stopping her. With Lee Toric's revenge plans in full swing, Tara was faced with the choice of going to jail or turning informant against her husband and the Sons. Jax, finally seeing that Tara's plan to take their boys away from Charming was for the best, agreed to turn himself in so that Tara could be free to leave, but Gemma, who was stoned after a breakup with Nero, thought Tara was about to flip on Jax and send him to prison. In her inebriated state, and acting on misinformation, Gemma waited for Tara to return home, where she jammed her daughter-in-law's head into a kitchen sink full of dirty water, then repeatedly stabbed her in the head with a carving fork. Tara's death, and its aftermath, would lead the series all the way through its series finale.

Season 7, Episode "What a Piece of Work Is Man"
Meeting Mr. Mayhem: The very tangled web that Gemma wove with her lies about Tara's murder led directly to the death of Bobby, one of SAMCRO's most beloved members. Jax's quest for revenge against those he thought responsible for Tara's death upset the delicate order of the area's street gangs, which angered uber-gangster August Marks, who punished Jax and SAMCRO by kidnapping Bobby, removing his eye, cutting off his fingers, and, ultimately, shooting Bobby and having him fall dead into Jax's arms. There was a lot of maneuvering and backstabbing in between, but the seeds of Bobby's eventual death — the death of the SAMCRO member who was most committed to getting the club on a more peaceful path — were planted the minute Gemma stabbed Tara to death and blamed it on a rival gang.

Season 5, Episode "Laying Pipe"
Meeting Mr. Mayhem: Opie was the SAMCRO member most at odds with remaining a club member, but when he finally decided in Season 5 that he was all in, he attacked Eli Roosevelt so that he would join his Sons brothers as they were hauled off to jail. Once inside, Jax was given an impossible ultimatum by Damon Pope, who was bent on destroying the club after Tig killed his daughter: Tig had to remain in jail so that he could be tortured for the rest of his life, but Jax had to choose another member of the club to participate in a fight to the death so that the remaining Sons would be set free. Jax ultimately didn't make a choice; Opie volunteered. And Jax, Tig, and Chibs could do nothing but watch helplessly from behind the glass as Opie told his best friend, "I got this," and then was beaten to death by men with metal pipes. Jax and the club were never the same; nor were viewers, who were forced to realize that if this most sympathetic, beloved character could die in Season 5, there was probably a lot more heartbreak ahead.

Season 7, Episode "Red Rose"
Meeting Mr. Mayhem: Gemma's death wasn't inevitable because she killed Tara. It was the aftermath of the murder, and of Gemma's lie about who did it, that really did her in. Suppose, in some unimaginable circumstance, that Jax could have forgiven his mother and decided not to kill her as revenge for the death of his wife and his children's mother. The lies that Gemma told, the fingers of blame she pointed at the innocent (of that particular crime, anyway), led to numerous deaths and much warring between the many gangs and crime lords in the area. Even if Jax had decided that he was willing for his mother to continue to live after what she'd done, SAMCRO rivals weren't going to have a bygones attitude. As devastating as Gemma's death coming at the hand of her son (her Son) was, it was probably the most merciful death possible for what was also the most inevitable death of the series, heading into the Sons of Anarchy finale.