(Spoiler alert: Don’t read any further if you didn’t see Tuesday night’s “Sons of Anarchy” season finale and don’t want to know what happened.)
Season 6 of “Sons of Anarchy” wrapped up with another shocking and brutal death, as the showdown between Gemma and Tara ended in particularly gruesome fashion.
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It was a fitting end for a season that, even by “Sons of Anarchy” standards, was loaded with “Oh my God!” moments.
Here are six jaw-droppers from “SoA” Season 6.
1. The school shooting. Season 6 signaled that it would be a brutal one early on. A young boy of mysterious origin entered a school, and a hail of gunfire erupted. It was a taboo-shattering moment for television, and particularly jarring in the wake of the Newtown, Conn., school shooting.
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2. Otto’s rape. The season premiere offered another shocker, early on in the episode, with a scene depicting the rape of tongueless inmate Otto (played by series creator Kurt Sutter). The jarring sight was given an added layer of menace when former U.S. marshal Lee Toric — whose sister, Pamela, was killed by Otto — entered the room and told Otto that the sexual assaults would continue in the future.
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3. Charlie Hunnam‘s naked rear end. Even more shocking than the fact that Hunnam’s Jax Teller was seeking comfort in the arms of a woman other than his wife was the sight of Hunnam’s bare backside bobbing in coital abandon as he did so. Probably unnecessary, but hey — a little something for the ladies.
4. Clay Morrow’s death. Yes, the demise of Ron Perlman‘s grizzled biker-club patriarch Clay Morrow wasn’t entirely shocking, in the sense that it was a long time coming. But the execution-style killing — at the hands of his successor Jax, no less — still gave viewers a jolt when it finally went down.
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5. The slaughter of the Chinese gang. Jax’s efforts to extract SAMCRO from the gun trade took a particularly messy turn when the Chinese gang was killed off wholesale in an ambush and a blaze of gunfire that was as unexpected to the viewers as it was to the gangsters. And the “Sons of Anarchy” body count takes a big leap forward.
6. Tara meets her end. Poor Tara. Just as she reunited with her husband and appeared to be finally pulling herself and her sons from the gang lifestyle, her mother-in-law/arch nemesis Gemma, working off of faulty information, extinguished any hope for a happy ending. And she did it in especially brutally fashion, stabbing Tara in the head with a fork. We just might get over it by the time Season 7 premieres.