Great post. I've been hoping there were others who shared my love of Juice.

Personally, I'm big into metaphor, allegory, deeper meanings and whatnot for shows like this. Since the whole "Jax is Jesus" concept got shoehorned (IMO) into the last bit of the season I've been trying to work out what (if anything) I believe Sutter was trying to say. That's a whole other discussion really, but something I stumbled across along the way was that Juice is perhaps being portrayed as a kind of Judas or Peter figure.

But I like to imagine, though I'm sure it's untrue, that Sutter was actually pulling a kind of thematic switcharoo that he just didn't quite manage to express. As far as I can see, the message at the end is that Jax was Jesus so much as he was the son of the clubs founder who ultimately died for the sins of the club. Personally, that doesn't sit well with me as I think most of the heinous shit that went down was caused by Jax himself, with all of his pride and wrath and vengeance. There are moments when the show seems aware of how far Jax has fallen from his original noble intentions, and yet more often than not it seems to depict Jax as an exception to his own rules - someone who condemns murder and treachery, but often sees no other choice but to commit them, as if his acknowledgement that they are wrong makes him capable of understanding when they are necessary.

Now, I suppose all this is an aside, because what I mean to say is that I truly want to believe that what the show meant to tell us was that Juice, not Jax, was the true Jesus, the sacrificial lamb, of the club. He was always relatively kind, naive, innocent and only wanted the club to be a place of camaraderie, family, support etc. Juice made a few foolish choices along the way, but ultimately Jax died for his own sins, it was Juice that died for the sins of the club, died so that the club could continue as it was intended.

I remember the moment at the end of season six when Jax tells Juice that he betrayed him. It was like a knife in Juice's heart, after all he had done for Jax, all he had sacrificed for the sake of the club, and it always looked to me like Juice had something to say but just couldn't get the words out. I was just waiting for him to say something like, "No, Jax. You betrayed me. It was never meant to be like this."

For all Jax's brooding and angst about JT's tragic lost vision for the club, time and time again he plunged the club into chaos and violence. The innocence, the childishness, the happy-go-lucky rebel, all these things that Juice embodied were so much more in line with what JT has envisioned. All throughout the series, as the club spiraled farther and farther out of control, Juice continued to champion Christlike qualities - mercy for the mother, unconditional love for his brothers, redemption for betrayer - while Jax broke from them every time. Then when it's all over Jax refuses him, sends him to his death. And even then Juice sacrifices himself so that the club can live in peace, rather than choosing vengeance on a club that has let him down in every conceivable way.

All I wanted was a scene that would imply this just might be Sutter's intention. Maybe juice laying dead with his arms outstretched, cross-like, as Jax's were on the bike. Maybe a shank to the torso instead of the neck, mimicking Christ's wounds. Or maybe just another scene or two that expressed to the audience that Jax was meant to be irredeemable at the end, not the sympathetic bad boy we loved.

Juice is truth. Juice is love. Juice is club.