Kurt Sutter Reveals the Hardest ‘Sons of Anarchy’ Character Death He Had to Write Was Ryan Hurst’s Opie

Sons of Anarchy creator Kurt Sutter has revealed that the death of Ryan Hurst’s character Opie was the hardest one he ever had to write.

“I loved the actor and the character, but the road we had taken him down was so heavy,” Sutter confessed to Variety. “The amount of death and sense of betrayal, I just organically could not have that guy sit at the table with Clay. It just didn’t make sense.”

While it was painful to do, Sutter went on to explain that through Opie’s death the series was given new life. “Really it was about, ‘All right, the evolution of the character has reached this point [so] how do I use that to move the mythology around? How do I use that to send my hero in a different direction — or on a collision course with X?’ “

Sutter also shared what his frame of mind was like when he first set off on the journey that became Sons of Anarchy and how he was a much different person back then.

“My experience really was limited, in that I had only written for table,” he explained. “I hadn’t really done anything, nor have I really ever done anything, that was broadcast television. I was used to the creative landscape of that medium, and obviously working with FX.”

“The stuff that I learned on [Sons of Anarchy,] the education of how to tell stories, was part of that mythology. It’s hard to look at it and go, ‘Oh, if I knew this, I would have done it this way,’ because the fact is I like to think that all that sort of unraveled as it was supposed to,” he added. “And not just in terms of story, but in terms of where I was at and the creatives I surrounded myself with.”

Sutter also opened up about how as the show went on he learned to have a less defined idea of what he wanted each season to be, so that the creative aspects would have more room to grow.

“I learned that the looser my grip was on that, the better the show was,” he admitted. “Meaning, most of the time I hit all those [individual characters’] mile markers, and I moved the mythology forward in the way I wanted to, but what creatively got me excited about the work was that I never knew how we were going to get there.”

“I never knew what the stories were going to be. I didn’t know how the characters would evolve,” Sutter continued. “I didn’t know which characters would become essential in the revealing of the mythology.”

Fabs can begin the next chapter of the SoA saga when the spinoff series Mayans M.C. premieres on FX on Tuesday, Sept. 4.