When you’re one of the most badass, adrenaline-fueled series on the air, your guest stars have to be just as sensational, if not more so. And most actors could only dream of ever playing someone as fabulous as Sons of Anarchy’s Venus Van Dam, the troubled transgender character that The Shield star Walton Goggins quickly and easily turned into one of the show’s most memorable characters. And she’ll be coming back to woo the boys from SAMCRO all over again later this year for S.O.A.’s seventh and final season.
Outspoken creator Kurt Sutter revealed the news himself on Twitter, using some non-FX-friendly language to do so. As if there’s any other way.
It’s hard to gauge what we can expect from Venus this go-around, and Sutter isn’t sharing any specifics just yet. When we first met her back in Season 5, she was the outlandishly comedic highlight of the episode, displaying some S&M charms and giving us a deeper insight into the sexuality of Tig (Kim Coates), who generally seems pleased by most breasted things. And seriously, even in a series with Katey Segal and an escort service, Ms. Van Dam has Sons of Anarchy’s best boobs.
But Venus threw everyone for a loop in Season 6, when she returned to the show not as a wild and crazy gimmick, but as the emotionally torn offspring of a porno-producing mother, Alice, whose tolerance for Venus’ lifestyle has been all but absent. Alice was keeping Venus’ son, whom Venus wanted out of such a dangerous situation. The storyline takes the dark turn that almost all Sons of Anarchy storylines take, but not before fleshing Venus’ character out into someone that feels perfectly at home within a show filled with tattooed biceps, motorcycle exhaust and the eternal flow of alcohol.
However Sutter chooses to bring Venus Van Dam back into SAMCRO’s lives is fine by me, so long as the transgender exploitation is kept to a minimum. As Justified’s sympathetic central bad guy Boyd Crowder, my favorite character on TV, Goggins has truly put himself up there with television’s elite, and that wouldn’t be hurt at all by another Venus appearance. We’re keeping our fingers crossed that Goggins earns himself an Emmy nomination as a guest performer, and that Venus eventually gets her own spinoff show once Sons of Anarchy is complete.
As Goggins told EW after his episode aired last year, “I hope to be six inches taller than some of the members of the gang on Sons of Anarchy again, but we’ll see.” Indeed, we will, once SAMCRO makes its cringe-worthy return this fall.
