‘Mayans MC’ Creator Kurt Sutter Wants Show to Forge Its Own Latino Identity

Mayans MC Creator Kurt Sutter said the goal for his Sons of Anarchy spinoff series is for it to stand on its own as a Latino series.

Sutter said during the new series’ ATX Television Festival presentation June 8 that his job on the show is to bring the Sons essence, but the show will not be an imprint of the flagship series by any means.

“My job is to transition the mythology from Sons and honor that,” he said, according to Deadline. “We want to acknowledge where we came from and those fans and balance that with a show that’s original and different and doesn’t feel like a Latino version of Sons of Anarchy.”

He also joked that the plan is to “get the white guy out of the room as quickly as possible,” referring to himself co-creating a show with a majority Latino cast.

“I knew a white a guy from Jersey shouldn’t be writing about the Latino culture,” Sutter admitted. Despite his experience writing about the working class, he knew he wanted to bring in a voice that was “real and that was not a white guy.”

Which is why he teamed with co-creator Elgin James on the show, who Sutter said “ethnically represents everyone in the audience” and understands outlaws and survival.

Mayans MC is set three years after the death of Charlie Hunman’s Jax Teller in Sons of Anarchy and features Emilio Rivera reprising his role of Marcus Alvarez. He will be the only main character on the new show from the flash series’ cast.

“As much as I love my Sons of Anarchy brothers, the short time I’ve been with my Mayans brothers, I’m having the time of my life,” Rivera said at the panel. “One thing Kurt told me was on Sons, he hired actors to play bada—, and here he played bada— to be bikers.”

The panel also included a 13-minute preview of the series, set to premiere fall 2018. The scenes showed new character EZ Reyes (J.D. Pardo) joining the Mayans for a dangerous ride, making it clear the show shares the explosive DNA present in SOA.

Mayans MC also stars Edward James Olmos as EZ’s father, Clayron Cardenas as Angel Reyes, Sarah Bolger as Emily Thomas, Michael Irby as “Bishop” Losa and Danny Pino as Miguel Galindo.

FX has not announced a premiere date for the series yet. The network, however, did release a first teaser for the new show, which has created much buzz among fans of the original series.