Kurt Sutter said on Thursday, August 20, that he is not involved with Legends, the new Sons of Anarchy spinoff that brings back Charlie Hunnam and several other original cast members. But he also said he gave Hunnam his full blessing before the project was taken to FX.
That puts Sutter at the center of the conversation around a series many fans will search for now, because the creator of Sons of Anarchy is publicly separating himself from a project built around the world he made. Legends is moving forward as a miniseries, with Hunnam attached as both star and executive producer, and the network has already gathered a familiar group around him.
Sutter said Hunnam came to him early in the process, while he was pitching the idea to the network, and asked for permission to proceed. Sutter said he was told the intellectual property would probably not be able to be invoked for legal reasons, and he did not sound surprised by that limitation. Instead, he said he gave Hunnam his blessing and wished him well.
He also pointed to a small sign that the project is already in motion. Sutter said his wife, Katey Sagal, is going to appear in the series, and he had seen part of the script sitting on her knitting table. He called it so well-done and said viewers would probably dig it.
The distance between Sutter and Legends is the story’s friction point. The new series is tied to the characters and the cast of Sons of Anarchy, but Sutter said it has nothing to do with the characters he created or the mythology. In his telling, the link is not authorship but legacy, a broader handoff to the show’s afterlife rather than a continuation under his control.
That makes the next step clearer than the credits might suggest. Legends is expected to proceed with Charlie Hunnam, Katey Sagal, Ron Perlman, Maggie Siff, Mark Boone Junior, Tommy Flanagan, Kim Coates and Theo Rossi returning as the cast reunites at a fan convention after more than a decade. FX Productions and 20th Television are producing the project, and FX Entertainment president Nick Grad said the network immediately responded to Hunnam’s vision. For Sutter, the question is no longer whether the spinoff exists. It is how much of the old world can be carried forward when the man who built it is watching from the side.
