Mayans MC was first featured in Sons of Anarchy as SAMCRO’s rival. Now the Mayans have their own show, SOA sequel spinoff Mayans MC, from co-creators Kurt Sutter and Elgin James. The Mayans MC premiere is tonight, September 4, and you won’t want to miss it.
The show, which is rated TV-MA, picks up at the California/Mexico border a few years after the SOA season 7 finale in a post-Jax Teller world.
According to the logline, Mayans MC features EZ Reyes (JD Pardo) who’s just been realized from prison and finds himself back with the Santo Padre Charter. “Now, EZ must carve out his new identity in a town where he was once the golden boy with the American Dream in his grasp.”
Other than JD Pardo, Mayans MC stars Clayton Cardenas as EZ’s older brother, Angel.
Also in the mix is Edward James Olmos as family patriarch Felipe Reyes. There’s Michael Irby as Obispo “Bishop” Losa, President of Mayans MC, Santo Padre Charter as well as actor Emilio Rivera, who will return for his SOA role as Losa’s cousin Marcus Alvarez, founder of the Mayans.
The majority of the cast is Latino.
“This show is going to move the needle. We’re more than 22 percent of the population and less than 4 percent of the images onscreen,” Olmos told the L.A. Times in August of the mostly Latino cast. “We are in a very difficult time. This thing is going to shoot us right through the roof.”
Irby told Metro in a recent interview, “When you’re talking about the Mayans, you’re talking about a culture that has not only been misrepresented, but underrepresented. As a minority actor, you search out and try to create opportunities where you can change the conversation and allow for growth, or for a better understanding of people. This was one of those.”
For more on everything we know about Mayans MC, click through to Metro’s guide.
The opening frame is at the border. On the wall, Sutter described to The Hollywood Reporter, “in both English and Spanish, [is] ‘Divided we fall.'”
“And then as time unraveled and I’m looking at the pilot, I had this sense of, ‘Oh my God, does that feel like right from the jump I’m making some sort of political statement?'” he explained. “And I almost took it out but then I’m like, ‘[F*ck] no, I can’t do that, I can’t edit myself.'”
The time has come. Join us TONIGHT at 10pm for the #MayansFX premiere. @JDPardo pic.twitter.com/iJpAe4i4Nk
— Mayans MC (@MayansFX) September 4, 2018
What are people saying prior to the Mayans MC premiere and first season?
Though it does seem to get political, Meredith Blake wrote for the L.A. Times, “Real-life human drama at the border has been playing out, with heartbreaking power, on American televisions for months, and the opioid epidemic continues to ravage communities across the country. Yet Mayans MC seems uninterested in exploring these timely sociopolitical themes, instead telling a tale of antiheroes that feels more like a throwback than a spinoff.”
James Poniewozik wrote for The New York Times, “In the early going, Mayans spends most of its time on the story that you expect it to tell and that [SOA] largely already has. EZ must weigh loyalty vs. integrity. Bodies, living and dead, are treated like meat. There are several twists and double-crosses that are dramatic but not surprising.”
But, Jacob Oller of Paste Magazine said that fan favorite Jax Teller is very much there in spirit: “Jax Teller may be gone, but almost everything about him seems to have made it into Mayans MC. And that’s not a bad thing, because the series does just enough to set itself apart.”
Mayans MC premiere: Time, date and how to watch
The Mayans MC premiere is tonight, September 4, at 10:00 p.m. ET on FX. It runs for about 90 minutes.
If you don’t have access to a TV, you can stream the Mayans MC premiere on FX+ or on any service that provides access to FX such as FuboTV, Hulu Live TV and Sling TV.
Watch it after the fact online or through the FX app.
