Sons of Anarchy - Season 5 - Kim Coates, Ryan Hurst and Theo Rossi Interview

Question: With all of the changes in the club now, where are your characters coming from, when the season starts off?

RYAN HURST: I think Opie has always been expanded upon, in the family aspect, a little bit more than the rest of the characters. In the very beginning, he was out of the club and trying to start a family that was completely removed from the club, even though his father was in it. As things have gone on, the concept of family has become really important to the show. They play that out through Katey [Sagal], Ron [Perlman] and Charlie [Hunnam], and they also play it out through us. We all could use a bigger family, in the general sense of the world. When Opie started losing family members – he lost his wife, he lost his second wife and he lost his father – what is he left with? And then, when his best friend betrays him, where is his family then? He has to come to terms with the fact that, even though we’re born into a certain family and have a family of origin, to some degree, at the end of the day, we choose our families. We choose who we spend our lives with. The decision that Opie has to come to terms with in Season 5 is pretty pronounced.

Source and more: Collider