The Saddest Moment Of This Season Of ‘Sons Of Anarchy’ Happened Off-Screen

It’s been a very mixed fifth season of Kurt Sutter’s Sons of Anarchy, one in which each episode tries to shark jump over the previous episode. But, as I argue every week in our recaps, for all its foolishness, Sons of Anarchy is ultimately a very entertaining drama, and one in which we’ve managed to get invested in a lot of characters, none more so than Ryan Hurt’s Opie. SPOILER It turns out, however, that the death of Opie wasn’t the saddest moment of the season. It was the death of Opie’s beard.

Over the course of five years, as you’d expect, the cast members of Sons of Anarchy clearly grew very close, as Hurst tells EW.

“These people are much closer than just friends or acquaintances. I’m one of those all or nothing kind of people,” says Hurst. “I’ve been with my wife for 18 years and my manager for 22. When I buddied up with these people, I was like ‘Okay, we’re going to know each other until we’re actually dead.’”

But what you might not expect is for someone to grow so attached to his facial hair, as Ryan Hurst did with his Opie Beard, which he’d come to associate with a character he couldn’t exorcise himself from despite being cast in a new TNT series. So, Hurst went over to Charlie Hunnam’s (Jax) house, Mark Boone Junior (Bobby) gave him a Samurai Sword to mark the occasion (and to use to perform the deed), and they cut off Opie’s beard. It was weirdly more affecting than you’d think, though obviously much of the tear-shedding was not over the beard, but Ryan Hurst coming to terms with the fact that he’s no longer a member of SAMCRO.

You have to skip over to EW to watch the full beard-cutting video, but here’s a few screen shots that, in a weird kind of way, makes us love Opie even more.

RIP HARRY ‘OPIE’ WINSTON.

(Source: EW)