Kurt Sutter Reveals His Original Idea for Jax’s Ending in ‘Sons of Anarchy’ Series Finale

In the series finale of Sons of Anarchy, Jax Teller meets his fate with his arms outstretched on the back of his motorcycle. Six years later, Kurt Sutter recently revealed a possible alternate ending for the biker-centric crime drama.

On Tuesday, SoA creator Kurt Sutter kept his marathon Q&A session with fans going by addressing one fan’s question about whether his grim fate was “destined from the beginning.” While Sutter has answered some questions with sincerity over the past several weeks, this wasn’t one of them. Instead, Sutter joked that after the events in the finale, Jax would wake up, “and we reveal the whole series was all Lemonhead’s dream.” Sutter’s answer was both a reference to Dallas as well as Sutter’s previous work on The Shield.

The now-infamous episode of Dallas, which aired back in 1986, Pam Ewing (Victoria Principal) woke up to find her ex-husband, Bobby (Patrick Duffy) alive and in the shower, even though the character was killed off. It was due to some behind-the-scenes drama, with Duffy wanting to leave the show for other opportunities. He was eventually lured back in by co-star Larry Hagman, who played his father, J.R., and his preceding absence (and death) was written off as an extended dream.

As a result, Dallas eroded a season’s worth of continuity and alienated its viewers. It aired for another four seasons, but never achieved the ratings success it had before. Since then, it’s become a running gag regarding TV shows that attempt drastic retooling despite a coherent story. Lemonhead, meanwhile, was a reference to Curtis Lemansky, a character from the cop drama The Shield, which Sutter worked on before SoA.

Sutter gave a similarly snarky reply when another fan had asked about the religious symbolism in Jax’s death back in April. However, while he joked that if he’d “hit you over the head any harder with Christian symbolism, the Vatican would’ve sued me for copyright infringement,” he’s also spoken frankly about the decision to kill Jax off. “Mostly it was about ending the lineage of Tellers being associated with the outlaw life,” he also tweeted in April. “The mayhem had to end with him. He did not want his sons to follow in his path.”