There are only two episodes left in this seventh and final season of Sons of Anarchy and it appears that Gemma Teller-Morrow is about to receive her punishment for being the worst mother to ever grace our television screens.  There’s no small irony in the fact that the truth about her evil ways is coming from one of her beloved grandsons, Abel.

Gemma has always been able to convince herself, and, for the most part, everyone else, that the only thing that mattered in her life was her family.   Along the way, she’s committed all sorts of sins to keep her family intact, until she committed one murder that sent her family and the members of SAMCRO into a spiral of wanton and often unnecessary violence.  She was so driven by blind rage and some very bad information, that she killed her daughter in law, Tara.

Gemma has never favored any of the women in her son, Jax’s, life.  Wendy, who is Thomas’ mother, was a junkie, too strung out to care for her son and driven from the family in order to save him from a life with her.  Tara, however, did nothing even close to that to earn Gemma’s hatred. All she wanted was for her husband and children to get away from the outlaw biker life and as far away from the little town of Charming as they could get.

When Gemma chose to kill Tara, she did so because she believed that Tara was working with law enforcement to take the club down and put Gemma’s son in prison.  Nothing could have been further from the truth, but Gemma had reached a point where she only heard what she wanted to hear and believe.  If she though Tara was a snitch, that was good enough for her.

With Juice as her co-conspirator and fellow murderer – he did, after all, shoot Eli – things should have improved for Gemma.  But even she couldn’t live with what she had done.  The truth about Tara and her lack of involvement in the charges against Jax manifested into her own tell-tale heart.  She began to have conversation with the dead Tara, asking for forgiveness and promising to take care of her “boys”.   She also took a moment to ask baby Thomas for his forgiveness and it was that conversation that was overheard by Abel.   Kurt Sutter has never made a secret of the fact that he borrowed a lot of the storyline of Sons of Anarchy from Shakespeare’s Hamlet.  This becomes even more obvious as we see Gemma become as deranged and delusional as Gertrude did.  Gertrude also vowed to care for her family and it drove everyone around her into madness, and some to their deaths.  In Gemma’s case, her overwhelming desire to protect her family was the thing that ended up destroying it.

Abel also began to fall into the abyss of madness, acting out in school and waving a hammer around in his own effort to protect his little brother.  He was torn between the love he has for his grandmother and the awful words he had heard her speak.  He wasn’t sure how and when to articulate what he’d heard and, when an accidental injury happened, he took the opportunity to hurt himself and blame his grandmother for his wounds.  This put his school’s wheels in motion and Gemma was forbidden from going near the young boys.

Wendy, who has turned her life around, stepped in to care for them and Jax decided that it was time to tell Abel who his “first” mommy was.  While tucking his son into bed, Jax found out who had killed Tara and now we’re left to see how Jax will deal with this horrific act of betrayal by his mother.  Nero has pleaded with Jax not to kill her, for the simple fact that it would be an act Jax would never be able to live with.  It seems she has no allies left, for even Wayne Unser has thrown his hands in the air and refuse s time support any of them anymore.  Those of us who have followed this story for seven seasons have been hoping that there would be some sort of justice dealt to Gemma for her lies, manipulations and misdeeds.  From all appearances, we may finally get our wish.  Juice said that it was to late – for everybody.  I have no doubt that Sutter will deliver a punishment worthy of Gemma’s crimes.

Empress