Depending on your general attitude toward reboots, companion series and spinoffs, news of a Sons of Anarchy spinoff focusing on the Mayan motorcycle gang will either elicit a few groans or make your day. Whatever the case, Entertainment Weekly can confirm that an offshoot of the popular series is indeed on the cards, barely six months after Jax Teller and Co. raced off the small screen after the seventh and final season.
Taking a leaf from AMC’s book with Better Call Saul – which performed remarkably well, even escaping the Heisenberg shaped shadow of Breaking Bad – this new take on Sons of Anarchy will exist in a separate universe while still retaining the overall tone of the core series. In fact, by focusing on the Mayans, a Hispanic motorcycle gang that were recurring characters in the original series, FX is giving the new project the perfect chance to stand on its own two feet.
According to EW, series creator Kurt Sutter has cooked up the nascent idea for the spinoff, with plans to executive produce the Sons of Anarchy offshoot once the wheels are in motion, allowing another creator to fill the role of showrunner. While it’s still incubating in the early stages, the concept of focusing on the Mayans, longstanding rivals to SAMCRO, is a tantalizing prospect. All signs point to this particular spinoff coming to life in the form of a prequel, charting the various origin stories of the gang’s lead members, though this is merely conjecture at this point.
Currently, Sutter has his hands full with another FX show, The Bastard Executioner, due for its premiere on September 15. As for his embryonic Sons of Anarchy offshoot, we’ll likely learn much more about the series and the direction it plans to take once the early kinks have been worked out.