Sons of Anarchy season 4 gave Jax Teller (Charlie Hunnam) and the title club a different type of villain with Lincoln Potter (Ray McKinnon), who after all his hard work investigating SAMCRO, simply dropped it all and didn’t continue. Each season of Sons of Anarchy had a main villain, with some of their arcs extending through more than one season, and they were either involved in dangerous organizations, were criminals themselves, or were corrupt agents, but they all wanted to take down SAMCRO for different reasons, mostly personal ones.
Out of all the enemies Jax and the club came across in Sons of Anarchy, Lincoln Potter stood out for being very smart and on the side of the law, though he was willing to cross legal boundaries from time to time to get a job done. Lincoln Potter is a U.S. Attorney who arrived in Charming to get rid of SAMCRO, who he saw as a menace to the town, even though not all residents saw them that way, as Jax and company were also seen as the town’s protectors. Potter arrived with a big team, determined to destroy the club from within, but his plans were ruined after a big reveal about the Galindo Cartel, and not resuming his investigation made way for a plot hole in Sons of Anarchy.
Sons of Anarchy: Lincoln Potter’s Plan Explained (& Why He Stopped)
Lincoln Potter made his Sons of Anarchy debut in season 4 when he arrived in Charming with a task force consisting of FBI, ICE, and ATF agents, with the purpose of bringing down SAMCRO, RIRA, and the ROC in one move. The first obstacle in Potter’s way was the Galindo Cartel, with whom Clay (Ron Perlman) had made a deal to mule cocaine without telling the rest of the club. While investigating the club, he found out that Juice Ortiz (Theo Rossi) didn’t tell the club his father is Black, as SAMCRO had an outdated rule about not accepting Black people into the club. Potter blackmailed Juice and used him as an informant, marking the beginning of Juice’s downward spiral.
After Juice tried to kill himself, Potter targeted Otto Delaney (Kurt Sutter), one of SAMCRO’s members who spent the whole series in prison. Potter manipulated Otto through the murder of his wife and got him to confess to ratting on the club. When Potter and his team had the evidence they needed and were ready to arrest Jax and company, along with the Irish and the cartel, Romero Parada (Danny Trejo) and Luis Torres (Benito Martinez), members of the Galindo Cartel, revealed themselves to be undercover CIA agents and explained that the government was backing up the cartel with the purpose of bringing the others down. Parada and Torres had a legal order that forced Potter to stop his RICO plan and give them all the information from his case.
Potter left Charming after that and didn’t return in the following seasons of Sons of Anarchy, not even when the cartel’s plans were also ruined. After a shootout between members of the cartel and the IRA, Parada took the guns and money from the IRA’s leader, Galen O’Shay, and ended the cartel’s relationship with SAMCRO. This would have allowed Potter to return and carry on with his plans after all the hard work he put into them (and after all the damage he caused), but Potter seemed to have gotten over his SAMCRO obsession as he wasn’t seen nor mentioned again.
What Happened to Lincoln Potter After Sons of Anarchy
Lincoln Potter didn’t continue with his plans to take down SAMCRO once the cartel was out of the picture, but he returned in the spinoff series Mayans M.C. Potter was once more the antagonist of the show, this time heading a case against the Galindo Cartel and Los Olvidades, and using an informant from the Mayans club. Lincoln Potter continues to be a man obsessed with his cases, and even though the Sons of Anarchy club is still active during the events of Mayans M.C., he simply changed his targets and informants.