This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at Ohio U chapter.
Episode four, Wolfsangel, was arguably one of the greatest episodes of the series and no doubt of the season. So many developments took place and many of my questions were answered, but as expected, a few remain.
Wolfsangel starts at Teller Morrow where men dressed in ski masks are dragging Wayne out of his trailer and pull a knife on him. Talk about an intense way to start the episode! A couple scenes later, Gemma finds Wayne hanging in the garage with his stomach gashed open. He is still alive but in obvious pain. Gemma yells at Chucky to get Jax.
By the time Jax has arrived, Tara is stitching up Wayne’s ghastly wound. He described the men as three white guys in ski masks with Nazi hooks tatted on their necks. The attack did not seem too organized and I wonder what type of message these ‘Nazis’ are trying to send. I wonder if Tara has thought about the impact she could have on the club as a whole if she divorces Jax and gets out. Having a doctor around has clear benefits.
Before Jax was called to Teller Morrow about Wayne, he received a visit from Tig at his house. Clearly he wasn’t expecting to ever see him again. Tig seemed to be catching on that Jax planted him there, seeming how the prospects never showed up. He asks Jax if they were good and Jax unconvincingly replies yah. He has gotten increasingly bad at lying to those he is close to, which brings up the question of whether he should be lying to them at all.
When he meets up with August Marks later, Jax asks him if that was some kind of loyalty test. “Well if it was, you passed,” August replied. They then bring up the gun problem. August says they need to get out of it with Pope Industries but he all of a sudden becomes interested in it himself for Marks Incorporated. What!? That was certainly unexpected but could benefit SAMCRO because it soon appears to be the only option they have.
Meanwhile, the cops have made their way over to Nero’s to ask him a few questions about Erin Burns, one of his escorts who was found dead in the desert the previous night after an anonymous report of a blue pickup truck leaving the scene. They ask him to come down to the station to answer a few questions while they take a look at his truck. He agrees because he knows he is not guilty, but what he doesn’t know is that Toric planted hair samples in his truck. When he is walking out the door, Nero tells Lyla not to tell Gemma.
None other than Lee Toric is waiting outside Diosa while Nero is loaded into the squad car. This seems extremely suspicious to me, and it appears to be to Sheriff Roosevelt, who has a decent relationship with SAMCRO.
The SoCal charter meets with Jax and tells him they voted down the gun deal. This is a big problem for Jax because the Irish wont let them walk away from the gun business unless they find them another crew to do business with. The club holds a table meeting to discuss the gun situation and what happened to Wayne that morning and think it could be connected to Erin’s death. They decide to go find Darby, former head of the Nordics, a white supremacist group.
This is the first the rest of the club is hearing about not being able to get out of the gun trade and Chibs is not happy. “You are making big decisions without bringing them here, that is not how this works,” he tells Jax. He points out that he is sounding a lot like the guy that used to sit at the head of the table. “I’m not Clay, I never will be,” Jax angrily asserts.
I don’t buy his defense. Jax has become so selfish and one track minded that it appears he refuses to self reflect because he knows he will discover that he is the exact man he so despised the thought of becoming.
Back in the garage, Wayne brings up a very serious point, what if the kids were with him this time? Gemma argues that they weren’t and they don’t need to worry about it but Wayne asserts his position saying they are just kids and don’t need to be rapped up in this and Gemma answers back unfiltered, “Yah, my kids!” while Tara is sitting right there. Tara turns to her and you could tell it took every nerve in her body tensing up for her not to open up on Gemma. “My grandkids,” Gemma corrects herself. Tara held her tongue phenomenally, which is very uncharacteristic of her, especially regarding Gemma and her kids. This supports the fact that she is concealing ulterior motives and will have a better time to tell Gemma off.
Gemma gets a call from Wendy and steps outside the garage to take. Wendy tells Gemma that Tara’s lawyer has been contacting her asking her to sign guardianship papers. I was so confused about this because I was convinced Wendy was working with Tara. Would she really not want anything to do with her sons? Is this part of the plan? Why did she lie about being assaulted then? Is Gemma going to tell Jax? Are they trying to pin the two against each other? These questions all become clear later in the episode, a note to how much of an edge of year seat feeling Sutter masterminds in his work.
Lyla goes against Nero’s request and tells Gemma that he is at the station and of course she rushes directly there. The scene jumps to the interrogation room where Nero explains that he had nothing to do with Erin’s death and that he has left his thuggish days behind him and is trying to give these women a better chance. “Don’t kid yourself, there is no dignity in what you do,” Roosevelt says. Nero mentions Toric to the sheriff and how he roughed up his Byz-Lats. Roosevelt says Toric has nothing to do with that investigation. “Maybe somebody should tell him that,” Nero replies.
It was crucially important that Nero mentioned the martial. When the evidence comes back, it is obvious that it was too easy and Toric is in the back of Roosevelt’s mind when he looks at it. “This wasn’t a vehicle that was cleaned up, this was a vehicle that was meant to be found.” Sheriff Roosevelt tells his officer.
We then catch up with the reaper crew at Darby’s place. He has left his white supremacist days behind him and started a new life by marrying one of his former Mexican workers. He has had a hard time getting away from his past, however, and has been harassed by some Nazis that live down the road from him. He is hesitant to help, but the club doesn’t give him much of an option and basically comes back into his life and screws him over.
They come up with a plan and have Tig pretend Rat is his son and go discuss their ‘like-minded interests’ with the Nazis. Tig is definitely over doing the father act but he brings in his real life experience of his daughter being burned by black guys, and makes it more believable. Juice and Darby made the stupid move of waiting out on the street however, and were caught and brought up to the house, ruining the entire plan. Obvious much!
The Sons pull their guns and manage to get out of there but they completely wrecked Darby’s new life in the process. I was surprised they didn’t shoot up the whole place right then and there. That’s not Sons style to just cowardly get out of there! Granite, it might have started a bigger war if they did that without consulting Jax, but seeming as he doesn’t consult them, it would have been warranted. They sent the least intelligent members of the club to do this, of course it didn’t work out as planned.
Jax and Chibs are talking to the Irish while this is happening and this time Jax holds his ground and tells Galen they can’t take anymore KG-9s and that SAMBERN voted down the guns. Galen says they aren’t getting out of it and Jax explains that this is exactly why his dad wanted out, “Nothing has changed! JT realized there is nothing more dangerous than a guy that thinks he has God in his pocket. The cause may have been the greater good at one point, but for a guy like you, Jimmy O, it’s just killing people with Catholic bullets to line their own pockets.”

Galen swings at Jax but misses. Jax steps away and tells him to keep his hands off his club until he tells him they need more guns. I thought Jax handled that okay and put down the hammer but later in the episode I realize he could have chosen his words a little differently.
Toric makes a visit to Clay in solitary confinement to convince him to sign the affidavit. “I am the only friend you have left Clay,” Toric says and ads that every day he doesn’t sign it is a day he is going to wish he were dead. Who does he think he is kidding? He is looking out for himself entirely. “You don’t hate me because I’m bad, you hate me because I’m familiar,” Clay responds.
At the warehouse, we meet back up with the Irish who showed up there with a delivery. Phil calls Jax to tell him and Jax says he will be right there and to tell the Irish to wait. Right when Phil flips the phone shut, the Irish shoot him and V-Lin! “Get the saw!” Galen orders.
They seemed to take Jax’s word literally, “Hands off my Crew,” and proceed to dismember Phil and V-Lin’s bodies. When Jax and the crew arrive, they see their SAMCRO leathers lying on the ground outside the warehouse with their hands lying on top. They find the rest of their dismembered bodies inside. All the guns are gone except the KG-9s
That was one sick way to send a message.
Jax tells the club they are going to finish their Nazi hunt, not caring at all about how they feel about it. A few scenes latter, they catch up with the Nazis and go in guns blazing, wiping out every member in a matter of seconds. Now that is more Sons of Anarchy style! They are going to make it look like an internal conflict, plant the 9mills and burn the whole place down.
After Roosevelt releases Nero, despite having enough to hold him with, Gemma drives him home. Nero says he has to put some distance between something and is not looking to take on the weight of another crew. Gemma asks if she is the weight he doesn’t want to take on. He says no and that she is what he does want and if he has to cut ties with the club he would want her to be with him and says he loves her. Gemma says she loves him back, but does she love the club more?
I have a feeling Nero is going to get his heart broken and screwed over. It is an interesting development though, because you can tell Gemma wants love and more love than Clay could give her but she practically runs that club (who runs the world? Girls! Yes that was a Beyoncé reference.) and I don’t see her stepping away on her own terms.
We meet back up with Clay and Toric in the infirmary where Otto is lying there miserable. “The side you can’t see looks worse,” Toric nauseatingly tells Clay. Then Clay does the most brilliant thing he has ever done and while leaning over to hug Otto he slips him his knife. At first I though he was killing Otto to put him out of his misery, but Sutter had much bigger plans than that.
Toric tells tries to use Otto to scare Clay into signing the agreement and when they get back to his cell he tells Clay he is going to get a visit from Otto’s ‘friends’ every morning too. Clay holds his ground and refuses to sign.
We then find Tara in her office with Wendy, her boss and her lawyer. So Wendy is in with them! Wayne hears the baby cry and barges in, seeing the meeting take place. Tara goes out to talk to him and next thing you know Gemma is walking up! My heart was going a zillion miles an hour during this scene! When Gemma reaches for the office doorknob, asking if Abel is inside, Wayne covers for Tara and says he is in the playroom downstairs. He clearly knows what is right for those kids and has realized Gemma is not going to provide them with the best life. “Doc, at some point I’m gonna ask a few questions,” Unser says.
Why would they all meet there? What a horrible place. Not to mention have you heard of locking your door? I was so happy to find out that I was right about Wendy and Tara working together! I wonder how this plan is all going to work and if it is going to bring down the club in the process of screwing Jax over.
When they are in the room together, Tara mentions something about going all the way back to the crow heart tattoo times. She is referencing the crow heart tattoo she got on her lower back when her and Jax were high school sweethearts, signifying she was the old lady of a club member. Does this mean they are taking the allegations of abuse and neglect back that far? Are we going to trace all the way back to the beginning of the series? I am in such wonder of how this season is going to end and how this is all going to come together.
Toric comes back into the infirmary and offers Auto the same deal he is offering Clay. It appears as though Auto agrees and can’t take any more of the brutal treatment he has been receiving. He takes the note pad and begins writing while Toric turns his back. Toric seems pleased until he reads the note that says, “Your sister’s blood tasted almost as good as her *****.”
Toric looses it and lunges for Otto, wraps his hands around his neck and attempts to strangle him, but Otto pulls the knife and shanks him in the stomach repeatedly! Otto shoves Toric away from him and into the wall, blood streaming from his stomach. He gets off of the bed and grabs Toric’s neck. A guard storms in and Toric yells at him to get out of the room. While doing so, the guard hits the alarm and Toric utters his final words, “I didn’t even see that coming.”
When we flash back to the Prison, Otto still has Toric by the neck and the police have flooded the room. Otto takes the knife and slits Toric’s throat wide open. The police fire on him and he falls to the ground. His pain has finally come to an end and he was able to get the ultimate revenge for the savagery Toric put him through.
I wonder what Toric being dead means for Nero and the rest of the club.
Wolfsangel ends with the club at Oswald’s watching as their brothers’ bodies burn in the grave in front of them. When the fire simmers down, Jax turns to the club and says, “burry them.” He then turns his back and walks away as the melody strikes in the background — “I’m sitting on top of the world.”