David Chase has finally revealed Tony Soprano’s fate in The Sopranos series finale
The 2007 series finale left viewers wondering: What happened to Tony in that diner?
Aux News David Chase
Nearly fifteen years after the conclusion of David Chase’s mafia magnum opus The Sopranos, the creator has revealed what actually happens to Tony Soprano after the final scene fades to black, and it’s not a happy ending.
In the series finale, which aired in June of 2007, Tony meets his famiglia out at a local diner. He cues up a rather famous song as his the rest of the Sopranos trickle into the restaurant one by one. Tony (James Gandolfini), Carmela (Edie Falco), and Anthony Jr. (Robert Iler) share onion rings and chat as Meadow (Jamie-Lynn Sigler) struggles to parallel park outside. Finally, as Meadow makes her way into the diner, Tony looks up, then everything cuts to black.
The scene ended up creating one of the biggest television mysteries, as viewers asked themselves, “What happened?!” Now, Chase confirms in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, the revered mafia boss met his grisly fate that night as Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’” blasted over the speakers. I
f it seems a little lackluster for the man who ran the New Jersey mob scene over the course of seven seasons, Chase originally envisioned his demise much differently.
“Because the scene I had in my mind was not that scene. Nor did I think of cutting to black. I had a scene in which Tony comes back from a meeting in New York in his car. At the beginning of every show, he came from New York into New Jersey, and the last scene could be him coming from New Jersey back into New York for a meeting at which he was going to be killed,” Chase explains.
“But I think I had this notion—I was driving on Ocean Park Boulevard near the airport and I saw a little restaurant. It was kind of like a shack that served breakfast. And for some reason I thought, ‘Tony should get it in a place like that.’ Why? I don’t know. That was, like, two years before.”
Chase’s big reveal comes now simply because he’s been a bit tired of the morbid mystery and viewers’ fascination with Tony’s death, especially when, at the time, there were much more important things going on in the world.
“I had no idea it would cause that much—I mean, I forget what was going on in Iraq or someplace; London had been bombed!” Chase says. “Nobody was talking about that; they were talking about The Sopranos. It was kind of incredible to me. But I had no idea it would be that much of an uproar. What was annoying was how many people wanted to see Tony killed. That bothered me.”
Despite Tony’s vicious crimes and illegal financial ventures, Chase finds it a bit hypocritical to root for the man’s death in the end.
“They wanted to know that Tony was killed. They wanted to see him go face-down in linguini, you know? And I just thought, ‘God, you watched this guy for seven years and I know he’s a criminal. But don’t tell me you don’t love him in some way, don’t tell me you’re not on his side in some way. And now you want to see him killed? You want justice done? You’re a criminal after watching this shit for seven years,’” Chase says.
So that’s it, case closed. The real shame is one of the last things Tony heard was “Don’t Stop Believin’,” how grim.
354 Comments
I don’t know, I think people just wanted an ending, one way or the other. I haven’t watched the show, I was going to binge it all when it was over, but everyone I knew that watched it was so upset at no ending, that I decided to skip it.
Dumb choice. Show rocks.
Meh, I never saw the appeal of Mafia movies and shows. It all seems boring to me
Got a buddy who’s the same way. If it doesn’t resonate with ya, ain’t likely to care.
“It all seems boring to me”
He said directly after admitting to not having seen it.
Please, tell us what other things you didn’t like despite never experiencing?
99% percent of Mafia movies glorify “the life” while paying lip service to the idea that they’re incurring some sort of cosmic retribution. The Sopranos takes every hoary cliche about the Mafia mystique and renders it tawdry and gauche, just greed and mundane laziness.
Because, get it, that’s what happened to America, do you get it?
It was MADE! in AMERICA!
Sopranos still somewhat influenced fashion with the bowling shirts and tracksuits. So even then the trashiness was glorified.
Show rocks.
Sure, I guess I can show you some rocks. Any rocks in particular you would like to see?
To be fair the “no ending” thing is that the final scene doesn’t finish. The last series does a good job of tying a lot of things up nicely (while leaving a lot of things in the air – it’s “life” after all)It’s not like it just ended in the middle of the story or anything. We just don’t see the last bit of the coda.
I know I am in the minority, but I kind of liked the cut to black. In this case I think it was fine to lave it up to the audience to decide what happens next. I didn’t walk away feel like I was missing out on conclusion.
Absolutely mate, couldn’t agree more! I thought it was a great ending.I’m actually a bit disappointed Chase felt the need to clarify. To my mind, if you didn’t show in during the series, you can’t definitively say it happened after the fact.
Plus who knows what he really thought at the time? It sounds like part of his claims today are born out of some weird historical frustrations. It’s frankly bizarre to claim that people weren’t talking about Iraq or the London bombing because they were distracted by The Sopranos. Maybe in your world, David, but most adults are capable of thinking about global events AND entertainment in the same day.The best theory I heard at the time was that the ending was reflective of life from Tony’s perspective, that any moment could be the last and you just never know when it’s coming (or not). This feels like Chase saying “Fine, he died right then, okay?!”
At the time, I was just reaching the point of reading my own news on the internet. I went to CNN.com, every day, almost religiously. I knew the Sopranos existed at the time, but I’d never watched it and had no interest in watching it. (I was a sheltered kid and found it vaguely immoral — I knew it was about the mob and that’s about it.)
I distinctly remember the controversy of the finale being the giant headline news the day it aired and for several days after that. I don’t think he’s so wrong here.I also think it’s interesting that much of the coverage at the time was more or less “the creator has his head up his ass, and why wouldn’t you just end it in a normal way?” But that’s pretty much entirely given way to “David Chase is a genius,” which, in fairness, is how I felt about the ending when I finally did watch the series.
“To my mind, if you didn’t show in during the series, you can’t definitively say it happened after the fact.”
Well then, in your mind it didn’t happen, so who cares what Chase said?
So I’ve been on team “Tony died” since about 10 minutes after the finale originally aired. I think Tony’s death is so obvious that Chase did not even originally intend for the ending to be ambiguous, and rather that he viewed the final sequence as a creative way to show Tony’s death from his POV without actually *showing* his brains splattering all over the onion rings. Leaving it to our imagination, after giving us clear angles for how each character will experience the shooting, is much more haunting than a straightforward depiction would have been.Chase has consistently expressed annoyance that he felt the audience wanted to see Tony punished for his misdeeds, after rooting for him for years. The cut to black was meant to rob the audience of that catharsis. But it was not meant to create a decades long argument about whether or not Tony died. Viewers were always meant to work backwards to determine the clear meaning of the last scene and realize just how much foreshadowing and thematic resonance there was.Chase just said “fuck it, he died!” because he thinks fans have always been having the wrong argument. He thinks he already did everything but flash “Tony died” on screen, and he’s frustrated that fans think it didn’t happen if it’s not shown onscreen.
I thought it was fantastic as a final scene – that kind of “is someone going to shoot him right here?” tension was what Tony would have felt all the time.
Exactly. The clues are there in the script anyway. From season 6 ep. 13:Bobby (to Tony): I mean, our line of work, it’s always out there. You probably don’t even hear it when it happens, right?
Poor Bobby did hear it.
“I know I am in the minority, but I kind of liked the cut to black.”
You ABSOLUTELY are not in the minority.
We’ve been discussing the ending for years now, so clearly he did something right. Refusing to give audiences the closure and satisfaction of Tony’s death, after they rooted for and identified with him for years, was clearly the right move. And it showed why despite the many, many imitators, The Sopranos was so much better at handling the anti-hero at its center than so many imitators.
I really don’t understand people who were rooting for him. He’s a horrible, horrible disgusting piece of shit.
The same thing happened with Breaking Bad. Audience identification is a complex thing, and films and TV shows can make us identify and root for terrible people using subtle and not so subtle methods. After The Sopranos, there were a million copy cats, some of which were quite good (Mad Men and Breaking Bad) and others that weren’t (Dexter). But I think few really played around with audience identification as deftly as The Sopranos right up to that final, truncated shot.
The Walter White fandom at a certain point in that show became pretty disturbing. Like, he poisoned a fucking child and you’re still rooting for him and think his wife is the REAL asshole?
She slept with Ted Beneke!
I’d like to think most of the fans who think that way just watched the first season where it’s set up that he’s the henpecked doofus with an obnoxious brother in law. But no, they all saw the rest and still think he’s justified. These same people also despite Catelyn Stark irrationally
That’s funny; I was just thinking of Breaking Bad’s whole child poisoning subplot as an example of a prestige drama subplot that would have been better if it was left just a tiny bit more open ended.
I was really upset when it first happened because it seemed like such a bizarre way to end the show.But the more I read over the years about how the breadcrumbs are there in the last season the more I appreciate the ending.Bobby said something about ‘not hearing it when it happens’ I think? Not everyone gets to ride off into the sunset.
Oh I loved it. I wasn’t a big fan of the show (I mean it’s expertly made, but it has almost no redeeming characters) but my roommate at the time loved it so I watched. He loved ANYthing mafia.So when it cut to black I was laughing my ass off. He wasn’t super stoked.
But I want to know about that darn Russian who escaped in the woods?!?!?!
What people overlook is that the penultimate scene between Tony and Junior would’ve been a pretty memorable conclusion in its own right.
Watch it. The show is much less about twists and turns, much more about small character interactions. The ending is inconsequential.
Amen
I thought it was a great ending. The smash cut in the restaurant is such a deliberate choice. Things are going along, the family is coming together for dinner, then BAM. Lights out. Exactly what Tony had coming to him.
It’s as much “not an ending” as the ending of No Country for Old Men; you’d only be disappointed by it if you’d completely failed to process everything that came before it.
One of the weirdest conversations I ever had was a film student “explaining” to me that the last scene of No Country for Old Men was included for verisimilitude. When I suggested that the film was basically a fable, and the last scene was a rather elegant summary of its themes, he started talking about how Chigurh might be a figment of the Sheriff’s imagination.
I hope you failed that dumbass.
Oh I wasn’t his teacher. We were at a bar. He was a friend of a friend and perfectly nice. I wasn’t going to get into it with him, but I do think of him whenever I hear a “smart-dumb” take on a movie.
I’ve been listening/watching music videos on You Tube lately, and when I glance at comments there’s always at least one take that’s complicating the storytelling (if there’s a story) of a video with it’s “it’s a dream” or a metaphor or what have you no matter what it was. I like figuring things out too, but sometimes it seems like people make the puzzle themselves.
The internet has ruined all of our imaginations. There’s probably a fan theory somewhere that Tony is an immortal genie. It’s why a dark corner of my soul respects Game of Thrones’ decision to piss everyone off and have nothing matter.
it’s one of those that’s worth watching a second time (or a third or fourth, I’m re-watching it with my son now and I think this will be my fifth time through the whole series. in any case, when you re-watch the show it becomes VERY clear what happens in the end. Just last night we were watching an episode in season two that foreshadows the fact that Tony dies (the 3 O’Clock thing from Chris’ near death experience and Paulie’s experience at the psychic). And that’s very far from the most obvious clue. If anything, they gave us too many hints about it.
I always thought it was pretty telling that no one ever argued for “alive” just “dead” or “ambiguous.”
I argued for asteroid; repeatedly, and unprovoked.
I agree with this generally. However, I do want to say that I think there is a big difference between processing the clues in the course of a two hour movie you watch in one sitting and processing the clues over a series of episodes with days in between watching them (in the long ago days before streaming).My take on this has always been that Chase made a compelling ending with some great clues scattered during the season and the scene. But I do not think he did a particularly great job of making that ending accessible to a lot of viewers who were not inclined to go back and go through past episodes.Nothing wrong with that necessarily, but I think they could have found a way to execute this scene that made it more accessible to viewers than they did.
…and they all lived happily ever after…in Newark. Ciao!
No, you should ABSOLUTELY watch it. The ending is incredible and the people who got mad about it are idiots who can’t be bothered to think for themselves.
I had no problem with cut to black and not see Tony get it, the problem was the specific shot in which they cut to black. You build all of this tension and if Tony’s life is abruptly cut, it would have worked better had it cut on his POV shot watching Meadow enter the restaurant. The way it ends on Tony’s face, it’s the audience that cuts out, which lead to everyone thinking it was a technical issue with their cable.
This is pure speculation, but I imagine that Chase tried an edit where the last shot before blackout was a POV shot, but found that it just didn’t reverberate with the same power as the last shot being Tony’s face.
I know this is snooty and pretentious, but people need to get over the need for literal endings. We did get an ending. It is not a concrete event, but instead a feeling and a final idea. Why is that not enough?
I like how the uproar over the ending dispelled the myth that Sopranos fans were “sophisticated”. They all thought there was something wrong with their cable, despite the fact the screen went to black on beat with the song. It was an obvious production move, but people couldn’t process something like that. Apparently none of them had listened to Abbey Road or The White Album.
There most definitely is an ending, and it’s not ambiguous.
This isn’t a show that got cancelled halfway through the story with no sense of closure. I can’t watch those either if I know that’s going to happen. Sopranos has a very definitive and very final ending it’s just artfully handled.
It was an ending, even if someone didnt like it. And it was anything busy lazy storytelling.
The ending is one of the best parts of the show.
Well, it has a great ending and those people were dumb.
Did you watch Lost? Are you still pissed? FlashForward?
The people that were upset are dumb assholes.
As discussed in other comments above, the final season includes many bits discussing the abruptness of death. One character even (when talking about getting whacked) says: “you probably don’t even hear it when it happens”.The final scene of the shows tension and then abruptly cuts to black.The show was very clear on what this meant. Tony was whacked.If people were confused or are unsure if he lived or died, they weren’t paying attention.
But it did have an ending. A perfect ending, in my opinion, and it’s sad that the general public didn’t realize what the abrupt cut to black indicated. It was a very fitting end to the show.
I never really understood how it was controversial to believe Tony died. The entire final season is suffused with death in both plot and imagery. There are multiple scenes (most prominently, Bobby saying “you probably don’t even hear it when it happens” and the one where a guy gets whacked right next to Silvio and it’s several seconds before we’re shown) that foreshadow the abruptness of death. The composition of the final scene, cutting back and forth between Tony and Meadow’s perspectives until we get the sudden blackness from what should have been Tony’s POV. The Members Only jacket and nod to The Godfather. It’s all there on the screen.But really, it didn’t matter if Tony got whacked there, or some other time, or not at all. He was fucked either way. His crew was decimated, he was about to have a whole host of legal problems, Meadow had basically renounced her earlier ideals and decided to become a mob lawyer, and Melfi (arguably the person who knew him best) had finally washed her hands of him.
Except foreshadowing can work both ways. In the episode where AJ tries to kill Junior he brings up that the diner scene in tbe Godfather is Tony’s favourite. Then Tony says that’s not real, it’s just a movie.
Unfortunately, there is a vast, overwhelming amount of cultural literalists out there.
What do you expect when the country’s dominant cultural driver for so long has been….Disney, for fuck sake?
Yeah, I mean literally every conversation with Bobby — including rehashing that conversation in Tony’s head after Bobby was already killed — made it pretty clear what had happened in that final scene.It was a masterclass in tension, shot composition, direction, etc. — but it wasn’t unclear from a story-standpoint either.
So when you say “literally every conversation with Bobby” you mean that 1 episode where they talk in the boat for 90 seconds.
Yes, and then I think it’s referenced two more times in the show, and — it’s been a while — but I believe in several of the “previously on” segments. Just to make sure we got it… :p
Bobby’s “You probably don’t even hear it” line is the one argument for Tony’s death that I’ve never felt carries any water, because, in the end, Bobby himself ABSOLUTELY heard it; his death is especially loud and chaotic and messy. Outside of the guy next to Silvio at the restaurant mentioned in amoralpanic’s post, the only other person in the series I can think of who met a violent end that they were blissfully unaware of would be Phil Leotardo. Every other death that comes to mind, even the “clean” one-shot kills, the person on the receiving end had some inkling, even if just a moment of recognition, of what was coming.
Phil wasn’t “blissfully unaware”, he was well aware he was a target, hiding out and changing phone booth calling areas, and if not for Agent Harris giving out his location (Butchie wouldn’t do it but wanted Tony to act) he might still be driving around.
I meant in the actual moment of death; yeah, he knew that they were still at war and was keeping a low profile, but in that moment Phil’s not acting like he’s in danger. He’s telling his wife that when she goes to the drug store she needs to make sure his doctor was prescribing him a 60-day supply of Plavix, and then, he’s gone. He didn’t see (or hear) Tony’s guy get the drop on him. (Compare that to, say, Tony B, who also met a swift end while hiding out, but thanks to a creaky porch had just enough time to clock his cousin coming around the corner with a shotgun.)
I see what you are saying… In the moments prior, he feels like he has the upper hand, just going about his day, not thinking someone (especially FBI) would rat him out. Someone finding out at some point and making the hit was inevitable though and I am sure he knew those odds.
I never heard a single viable alternative to Tony getting killed. You would have to assume that Chase and the other creative personnel were just fucking with us and Tony enjoys his meal and occasionally berates AJ. What else could it really have been? The only question was what the creators were trying to convey about Tony’s perspective, and many of the commentators have spelled that out here. You had to pause and think about it over the next minutes and days, and 15 years, but nothing else fit.
Chase used to say “It’s all there” in response to questions about what happened, and so this is the stance I’ve had about it too. I mean, yeah, he probably does get killed, but I always took that cut to black as it didn’t matter if it happened there or down the line. Right before, he finds out that someone in his crew flipped and he was likely about to be indicted. Tony had said that guys like him either end up dead or in jail and so that’s where the finale left it.
Absolutely agree with you. In the years following the end of the series, there were so many video essays on that one scene. All of them supported what Chase just confirmed. I have always been convinced that the cut to black meant Tony bought it.Side note, I live in New Jersey and 5 minutes from the Soprano house. I have sat and eaten in Tony’s death booth more than once. Man what a great show.
Are the onion rings really that good?
More and more I feel like Melfi dumping him was the true climax of the show.
“But really, it didn’t matter if Tony got whacked there, or some other time, or not at all.”This is how I took it. Tony was going to live the rest of his life wondering if the next person to walk in the room was going to be the person who kills him. That’s the ending.
Yep, and honestly that’s so much more satisfying an ending than hearing from David Chase that yes, he died in that moment.
Tony was a very bad person who, like Chase said, was also very sympathetic. But that’s the ending he earns: to never know when it’s coming, but always be fearful it’s any second now.
All shows should end with the main character saying “We dug coal together”
That’s how I take it. What matters is that Tony Soprano, the character, is metaphorically dead. There’s nothing more about him than what has already been told. He won’t change anymore. He could die in ten minutes or in thirty years, he will be stuck in that state of mind.
My problem with this interpretation is — Tony isn’t exactly on edge during the final scene. In Holsten’s, he’s the most relieved we’ve seen him in years. He thinks all his mob enemies are dead, AJ and Meadow are both in a better place, his only real concern is Carlo flipping. But the FBI has already flipped several guys closer to him and he’s always come out on top. Agent Harris even gave him the tip that won the war.Tony is not anxious. He’s not wondering if every guy who walks through the door is there to kill him. He’s listening to Journey and thinking about how awesome he is for outmaneuvering Phil and the NY crew while still doing right by his kids.The tension is all in the editing, which is done to build suspense for us, because we know it’s the end of the last episode and that Tony’s death is only now a real possibility. It’s not a reflection of Tony’s state of mind.Tony takes no notice of the Members Jacket Guy. The guy that kills him. Right there, just as Meadow enters the diner, while he’s let his guard down. Because he broke the mob code by having Phil shot in front of his wife and grandkids, and the price is that Tony is shot in Holsten’s in front of his family.
Which is why there is so much focus on Meadow trying to park the car. Members Only has been instructed to kill Tony only when the whole family is present, as payback for Leotardo. Meadow’s crappy parking is the only thing keeping Tony alive at that point, and neither has any idea.
My interpretation of the significance of the parallel parking is that, beyond the editing adding tension and suspense to the scene, if Meadow had parked like a sane person she would have been sitting next to Tony in the booth, blocking Members Only Guy’s shot as he exited the bathroom door.If Tony scooted into the booth and let Meadow sit on the outside just 30 seconds earlier, MBG would have had to make a difficult decision about whether to take the shot and risk hitting Meadow or another family member. But, Meadow was late, so that side of the booth is empty.MBG heads to the bathroom before Meadow arrives at the diner, so he can’t know whether she’ll be there in time to witness the murder.
I think you’re both right about the editing with Meadow’s parking, but as to Tony not being on edge: you’re right, he doesn’t look particularly paranoid, but this anxiety is something he has (had) to deal with day in, day out for years. The whole issue with him is that he’s having panic attacks in part because he’s repressing these fears. So while it doesn’t show on the surface, it’s still there.
Yes! This articulates perfectly the unease I’ve always felt with the “Tony has to always look over his shoulder” interpretation of the ending. Also, seems to me the sudden blackout is too jarring a move. If we’re meant to believe that Tony is going on to live in a purgatory of anxiety, a more traditional fade would have been fine (plus some indication that Tony is even slightly on guard).
I don’t think it was ever controversial to believe he was killed but it was nice to have the ambiguity. Personally I preferred the idea the show didn’t wrap up so neatly and things just kept going on and on.But now his death has been confirmed can we get around to the all important issue of everyone agreeing Little Carmine won The Sopranos?
“Tony’s ultimate fate, whatever happened there…”
WHATEVA HAPPENED THEYYUH?
I would have been ok with the ambiguity if the narrative had left us a few loose ends but there isn’t much to choose from as to who pulled the trigger.
I think it would have been more clear if Tony had spent the last 5 minutes of the episode staring at the ceiling & paramedics, talking about how it’s the last call and also the Sun’s going down.
When you consider all the dream sequences, all the times that we saw Tony “travel to the other side”, there’s a certain Catholic preoccupation with death that permeates the entire series. The final scene is just the natural endpoint for that theme.I thought “The Many Saints of Newark” introduced a new variation on it, quite nicely. The opening scene is a direct reference to Dostoevsky’s “Bobok”, the short story where the occupants of a cemetery begin conversing amongst themselves. And that scene where the infant Christopher cries when Tony holds him, and one of the older women remarks, “They can sense certain things when they’ve just arrived from the other side.” Wonderful! I’ve always appreciated this aspect of the series.So yeah, of course the blackout meant that Tony had finally bought it.
Yeah, pretty much everyone took it as him dying. They just wanted to see his brains splatter all over AJ. Which is pretty mean to AJ
It was never controversial to believe he died, but what was annoying were all the ‘Tony-is-dead’ers who would wade into comment threads and belligerently insist that theirs was the only correct interpretation of that scene, and that it was super obvious, and that anyone who thought otherwise was an idiot. And I know that this is the internet and that that kind of behavior can happen over anything, but it really did seem a lot more pronounced and obnoxious among Tony-is-deaders than any other group.A big part of the problem was that a lot of them didn’t really seem to get how someone (like me) could possibly think: ‘Sure, him being dead is a strong possibility and enriches the show. But there’s also this other interpretation that also enriches the show, and in fact both interpretations enrich each other and the series as a whole, and since this is art and not reality, it’s possible to hold both interpretations at once.’ (Which is what you talk about in the last paragraph of your comment) Instead, a lot of them just seemed to want to know what the ‘canon’ was.This video by Folding Ideas doesn’t mention the Sopranos (IIRC) but the kind of attitude he talks about here was pretty much the exact problem with a lot of those kinds of commenters. Obviously we’re only talking about a subset of Tony-is-deaders here, but it’s disappointing that Chase has – in one fell swoop – both validated their annoying behavior and reduced his work in the process.
I definitely thought even before Chase confirmed it that everything pointed toward death, but I do think the other interpretation – that Tony is doomed no matter what happens at that moment, that he’ll spend the rest of his life looking over his shoulder – also works well thematically.Regardless, I loved it.
Its ok you didn’t get it. It just means you are dense.
It was controversial, because the show was very popular, so a lot of idiots watched it. They don’t understand anything that isn’t said outloud.
Likewise, I really liked that analysis, that we’re not seeing black. We’re still seeing Tony’s POV, as the editing establishing a pattern. And his POV is nothing, because he’s dead.
Yes! Also Butchie. (I just spent a half hour trying to track down the name of that malignant little guy.) There was no way he wasn’t going to kill Tony Soprano.
Last season was pretty dark. Darkest scene for me is when the gay mobster’s (forgot his name) gothed out son takes a shit in the shower. For some reason that gave me the most shivers.The 2d to last season had some comic relief. I’m still laughing about the Czechoslovakian interior decorator.
That scene with Silvio is truly a masterpiece the way its put together, the sound and visual beauty of it all. Innovation at its finest.
“I never really understood how it was controversial to believe Tony died.”I think this was an extreme minority view brought to everyone’s attention by the internet because bad takes get clicks.
Surprised he said it! Chase is a believer in the “kill the artist” method: don’t talk about the art and let it speak for itself.
In re-watching it last year I had completely forgotten that there is a scene in the final episode where he meets his lawyer to discuss impending charges. It struck me also that the highlighting of the member’s only dude is very deliberate. A bell literally rings as every character comes into the diner. As you expect Meadow to be the last ring the camera goes to member’s only dude. The camera tells you everything.
Tony being killed is a lame ending for the series. They basically spent that whole last season explaining how Tony’s home and business life is terrible. Plus he has no more therapy and is about to be indicted. Having to live that life is a fitting end to a guy who made so much off other people’s suffering. Death is practically an escape compared to that.Plus they already showed us that when Tony dies, it doesn’t go to black, he goes to The Inn at the Oaks and is greeted by Steve Buscemi.
I have also thought that leaving the ending ambiguous was like an insurance policy for Chase. If he ever needed money he could just say Tony lived, here are some more episodes. But then James Gandolfini died and he lost that option. So now he can tell people there is a definitive ending.
Yeah, we’re sadly never going to see old Tony Soprano and there’s now a future in prequel stories at HBO. So Chase has the tractor trailers full of cash just waiting to back up his driveway if he wants them.
I honestly wonder if he will take the opportunity. He seems like such a crockety bastard. It could go either way.
What strikes me about David Chase is that, in interviews, he doesn’t seem all that articulate about discussing his work. Maybe he’s uncomfortable and nervous; maybe he doesn’t want to be bothered. But it’s a contrast to his work on “The Sopranos,” which is some of the most nuanced and novelistic fiction ever put on television.
Oh good. Ambiguity is the worst. Why would any viewer want to engage with the text and draw their own conclusions?
Because nerds rule culture now and nerds don’t do that. Everything must explicitly spelled out for them. It’s why comics will have a picture of Superman melting a door with his laser vision while his speech bubble will literally be saying “I’ll melt this door with my laser vision!”
In my heart and mind, Tony gets indigestion. He doesn’t quite get what’s coming to him, but still, it’s pretty inconvenient. He’ll probably have to sleep propped up by pillows to stop the reflux.
cut to new york and Carrie Bradshaw just finished her first script, ‘The Soprano”. an hbo multiverse.
“As the screen cut to black, I found myself wondering; was Tony dead? Was Tony alive? Or is there a little bit of Tony alive inside us all?”
cue sex and the city theme music.*this is now canon*
Tony was the friends we made along the way.
It was all a dream of the Dream On guy.
username checks out
Then there’s a flashback and you find out she’s the great-great-great-granddaughter of Al Swearengen.
Patsy snuck in and added a bunch of pepper to the onion rings, knowing he’d need to be propped up he could see his head in the window and got him with a sniper rifle. With Meadow marrying his son he became de-facto head of the family, and with everyone but Paulie dead he was in charge of Jersey. Then DiMeo finally gets out of jail…
Because I watch shows to have the story told to me. If I want to draw my own conclusions, I’ll pick up a pen and write my own story.
You are missing the point of experiencing art then.
The Sopranos is a narrative television program, not the fucking Sistine Chapel.
The Sopranos is a narrative television program, not the fucking Sistine Chapel.Ah yes. The clear endpoints on the spectrum of “art” vs. “not art.”
lol
So you fall squarely into the camp of, “the meaning of the story is determined by the author’s original intent” then?That…checks out.
Who gives a shit? It was a fantastic series. How it ended is meaningless.
Exactly. I’m alright with ambiguity to a certain degree, but not how Chase did it with millions of viewers wondering if their televisions cut out.There’s a reason why the Six Feet Under finale is so beloved – it actually gave the audience a satisfying ending.
Ambiguity is a part of stories.
think you pretty much just summed up the difference between Casual TV viewing and Film/TV Twitter.Most viewers don’t watch for ambiguity. They just want to know what happens and why, plot wise. It’s why procedurals and sitcoms do so well. Even “hardcore” fans can care more about the Wikipedia details than the why of it all.Film/TV Twitter is always a smaller part of the audience. That wants to discuss the themes and meanings of everything. That wants to imprint their own experience on materials at time. The problem is that with Twitter and Reddit etc, people have found a way to find people that do enjoy content this way. But, can negatively decide that’s the only way content should be discussed or worse declare that their interpretation is the only valid interpretation of said media.That’s not really a knock on either way of consumption. Just that the ratio is skewed that people that just enjoyed Sopranos for the mob of it all far outnumbers that watched it for the psyche of bad men doing bad things because they’re their own worst enemies. Ambiguity can be good, ambiguity can be overrated. There’s nothing wrong either with a show just being obvious. And nothing wrong with viewers preferring one or the other.
The flip side is that complaining about the ending makes about as much sense as someone bitching about the ending of “Blood Meridian” or something.I completely agree that you’ve got “Elmore Leonard” TV and “Cormac McCarthy” TV — and, frankly, a spectrum of good to bad within each category — but after years of dream sequences and symbolism, I don’t think anyone should have been surprised when the ending wasn’t tidy and pat.
Sure, but don’t complain if a smart show doesn’t spoon feed you the narrative (although, Tony being whacked was an obvious choice, if not definitive)
LOL. I take your point about casual/engaged viewing, but the different preferences around passive narrative consumption vs. active, engaged interpretation has been a thing for as long as stories have been around. It’s a much bigger (and older) phenomenon than Twitter/Reddit, even though the latter can be persuasively linked to some TV microtrends.
I was just using the idea of Film/TV Twitter as a microcosm to make my point. At it’s worst, It’s become almost a weaponized form of this idea because of how easily it’s allowed the communication to become an echo chamber and bubble that kinda ignores the rest of the world.
Not super clear from the phrasing. I can’t speak to the dynamics on Twitter/Reddit specifically, but overall my sense is that there are far more people who prefer to consume TV passively than come up with “elaborate” fan theories. I don’t think there’s necessarily anything wrong with people who enjoy doing so connecting in those forums, though.
I’m mostly using Film/TV Twitter as a catch-all for pretty much any that wants to discuss something at more than just a textual level or maybe surface level is a better term.You’ll have splinters of that, those that focus on like what I call Wikipedia details, those want to talk about themes etc, and of course there’s the cross pollination of the two.But yeh my point being that the majority of any audience is always going to be the passive viewer that “likes” something on a surface level, whether it’s stylistic or just how the characters doing something makes them feel. But not looking deeper on the why that happens or what something in the background represents or how this character is actually that characters third cousin twice removed.
Ambiguity can be good, ambiguity can be overrated.Come on, pick a side! We have to know which is correct!
It’s a spectrum, but there’s always some degree of “finishing the story” inside the listeners head based on their own life experiences. That’s the only experience available after all!
My favorite interpretation I’ve seen is that this ending is Tony watching his own death over and over in the afterlife (something the Sopranos suggested is “hell” a few times.) The surreal decor in the restaurant filled with symbols kind of suggests that, but most of all there’s a cut directly from Tony walking in- with sigh and a look of distress on his face- right to him in the booth in an entirely different mood. It feels like this ending that goes “on and on…” could be an endless loop; Tony walks in, watches himself die, walks in again… for eternity.I don’t think this is what Chase intended but the ambiguity lets you find these kinds of possibilities.
A few days ago I got dragged on the Succession thread for suggesting the sequence of events leading to the titular “disruption” might not be as straightforward as they appeared.I now find myself extremely disappointed that Chase has spoiled one of the best “open ended but not really” series endings of all time. At least I’m consistent, I guess? (For the record, I think Sopranos-style ambiguity is way more interesting/enjoyable than the Westworld “puzzle box” style of TV storytelling.)
Let me start by saying, I hate the slow death of inference we’ve been privy to over the past 2 decades. However, the problem with “ambiguous” story telling is A) a lot of times it comes off as lazy. The writer wrote themselves into a corner and they didn’t know how to write themselves out again. The is usually the result of writing things out in a bubble instead of planning things out long term. And B) it leads to a plethora of “muh headcanon” posts. Stupid fan theories that make little to no sense and when you try to point that out, they get all defense and fall back on “but that’s my opinion” as if it’s some explain it all away card. Which leads to things like “if that’s your opinion then your opinion is bad and you should feel bad”.
Right? I always just assumed Tony blacked out because he couldn’t handle the awesomeness of Journey. It’s a pretty common reaction to Journey. That and pants shitting.
good thing the author is dead!
I personally love the ending and honestly I’m not sure what more anyone could’ve wanted. It’s perfect. Anything more literal would’ve been disappointing to me.I always viewed it like he certainly could have just died. And if not in that moment, then any moment after that, potentially. It was in the exact spirit of someone suffering from anxiety, like any moment something terrible (or even final) could happen. And in Tony’s case, that feeling is not even unreasonable.In any case, this new reveal doesn’t change how I’m looking at it at all. Still, interesting to know.
The ending was fine, and it’s irrelevant because the show is one of the all time greats. Anyone that claps back at this is mentally stuck in the 00’s. Keep in mind, this is the same news cycle that generated the controversy around the Janet Jackson Super Bowl performance, Britney Spears’ shaved head, and a slew of other bullshit that no one should have given more than a day’s conversation to No one gives a fuck anymore, and if they do, they’re just clamoring for attention. I feel bad for Chase. He should tell all these journos to pound sand.
Nowadays, every creator’s gotta go to interviews and press junkets where they trawl back over their storytelling decisions in a way that ultimately diminishes them. What happened to Gary Cooper? The strong, silent type.
Bravo.
He never had the makings of a varsity athlete.
Ohhh, poor him!!!
I think he still works at ACN.
Don’t forget, he’s a strict catholic!
I heard he was gay.
Super-duper
Nobody’s gay, I don’t like that kind of tawk!
There was nothing Chase could do. Tony was a made man and he wasn’t.
I agree. There’s no scraps in my scrapbook.
David Lynch hasn’t AFAIK. He still refuses to interpret his works for us.
He probably died when he jumped out of that plane.Oh, Gary Cooper. Never mind.
Wasn’ that suppose to be Don Draper?
I’m trying hard to look like him.
With Chase it’s cut, zip, over and out.
He was gay, Gary Cooper?
Can we get David Simon to address that scene when Rawls is shown in the leather bar and then is never mentioned again? What was that about?
There’s an interview somewhere around a decade old where he’s said this. Heck, it’s in Matt Zoller Seitz and Alan Sepinwall’s book from a few years back.Now if you really wanna get weird, bop on over to the Sopranos subreddit, where people believe things like AJ’s girlfriend was instrumental in the hit on Tony, or that the man in the Member’s Only jacket is related to Eugene (brothers wear matching jackets, apparently).
But then he denied that’s what he meant.
…no, he goes on to outline how he’d originally wanted Tony to drive to a meeting it was heavily implied he’d die at. In fact, here’s an article where the AVClub rehashes today’s “scoop,” two years ago, where they quote and link to the interview:https://www.avclub.com/david-chase-originally-had-a-death-scene-in-mind-for-1831583889
Yeah but that’s still not confirmation as to what actually happened. It just says that he had an idea at one point for Tony to die.
I think the Members Only guy was a Russian mobster getting revenge for that guy they dumped in the pine barrens
Now if you really wanna get weird, bop on over to the Sopranos subreddit, where people believe things like AJ’s girlfriend was instrumental in the hit on Tony, or that the man in the Member’s Only jacket is related to Eugene (brothers wear matching jackets, apparently).There’s a pretty big gap between the plausibility of those two theories. I buy the “Eugene’s relative” one. Not because brothers wear the same outdated brand of jacket, but as a way to link the two characters on a tv show it works. Since they drew attention to and named the episode where Eugene died after that brand. But more than that, the guy looks like Eugene. He wasn’t an actor either, he ran a pizza place and they thought he had the right look. We’ll never know for sure but I think it’s very plausible that Eugene’s wife (who had already suggested killing Tony to Eugene) was bitter about what happened to her family and told Eugene’s brother or cousin who she felt was to blame.
I think this title is a bit of clickbait. It doesn’t seem like he’s confirming what happened to Tony, he’s just confirming a different idea he had for an ending
In fairness, he definitely confirms it in the article/interview (if only because he’d already confirmed it years prior in 2018).
And he hinted at it a few times before that. And even before hinting at it, its VERY clear to anyone who re-watches the show and looks for the foreshadowing. Yes, it’s subtle and somewhat ambiguous, and I know there is a lot more too it if you want to really get into the subtextual stuff and all that. But for those who just want know whether he dies or not, the answer is right there in the show. how anyone thinks this is news at this point is beyond me…
I think the detail about changing the setting of Tony’s death to a restaurant is new. And that’s a HUGE connection between his original idea and the final product.
…an ending where he died differently, yes.
Chase repeated what he’s said in other interviews, that he once had a plan that Tony would drive into New York City, a mirror image of the show’s opening credits, and the series would cut off at that ominous point, suggesting he was likely killed. I think the detail that Chase refined the idea after seeing a restaurant and deciding that Tony would die at a place like that is a new revelation. He said that occurred to him about two years before the finale, so I think the takeaway is that Chase DID plan for Tony to die, and at a diner. Perhaps he hedged a bit and let the actual scene play out more ambiguously, but that was what he had in mind. To me, there are so many hints and clues throughout the final season, from all the talk about abrupt death, to the mirrored scenes with men in Members Only jackets, etc., that I think the argument that Tony lived on with anxiety is more of a stretch, although a perfectly valid interpretation.
This version worked better.
Yeah, he’s done this a million times and every time he does everyone announces that he finally revealed what happened.
Agreed. It seems likely that Chase think Tony dies, but he definitely doesn’t unambiguously confirm it.
Plus the word “soprano” is ableist and deeply offensive to the mute.
I never found the ending ambiguous! It seemed obvious to me that that was what happened. It surprised me that people argued over what it meant.
yeah, my question was always, “did the rest of the family get whacked as well?”
Highly unlikely. Tony was seated alone on his side of the booth. It’s more likely the Members Only Guy came out of the bathroom with his gun drawn and blasted Tony where he sat. Then walked out the front door and left the gun, Godfather-style.
…but took the cannoli!
My assumption was that Carmela and Anthony bite the dust because they’re terrible people. Meadow witnesses it all go down but is spared by fate because she’s the closest to being a non-monster. But I feel less strongly about their fate — I’m not going to die in a ditch over a debate about whether or not Carmela/Anthony/Meadow die. But Tony dying seemed blinding obvious to me and baffling anyone would argue otherwise. The only thing worth even discussing was whether or not he literally gets killed at that moment or becomes something of a metaphysical dead man walking, in which case it doesn’t matter.
They imply Meadow becomes a monster via being a mob lawyer though. AJ was just a fuckup, not a crook in waiting. Carmela deserves to have her shitty spec house collapse on her
Perhaps.I think the only other truly interesting ending, aside from Tony dying/“dying”, would be him not dying but one or both of his kids getting killed, and him actually having to own the ramifications of his shitty behavior and the bad karma of all the innocent people he preyed upon.
They could go full Godfather 3 and have Meadow get killed, and he dies a sad/broken old man. Someone on the show did call the film misunderstood!
My assumption was that Carmela and Anthony bite the dust because they’re terrible people.
But like Tony said, in either that episode or the previous, that they had nothing to worry about because they don’t kill family. Carmela, AJ and Meadow weren’t killed even if Tony was.
I don’t think so, there wasn’t a lot of family-whacking among wise guys, even their messed up morals had a certain line that you don’t cross when it comes to family, unless they were in the game too. There were so many hints, from Bobby saying “you never hear the one that gets you,” to the guy in the Member’s Only jacket going into the bathroom (why focus on him in the last minute of the series if he isn’t significant?), the allusion to the Godfather… I think people just didn’t want to believe that Tony got whacked.
Right. They mentioned previously that the family was safe. If Tony was whacked, the worst that would happen to Carm would be some brain splatter.
That is exactly my question! I have been operating under the assumption that the entire family gets whacked at the diner for years. I should re-watch the series because it would be interesting to see if I come to same conclusion.
To me that’s the only thing that bothers me about the ending, what happens to the family after Tony i whacked? The show is called The Sopranos after all, not just Tony Soprano, so they don’t need to go super in depth there. But a little more closure on the rest of the family would have been nice.
So that’s it, case closed. The real shame is one of the last things Tony heard was “Don’t Stop Believin’,” how grim.Hey, I like that song! Now I want it playing when I die out of spite…
There’s….no….South….Detroii…(sputters)
South Detroit is just Windsor, Ontario.
Chase really needs to pick a lane here. He seems to resent the viewers, no matter where their sympathies lie. He used to speak very harshly about people liking Tony (omg, don’t you know he’s a villain?) and now he’s saying ‘why do you want to see him dead, didn’t you admire him at all?’ Chase made some great TV, but just seems like a miserable dude who is always going to complain about something. I’m more than a little sick of creators of ultraviolent content trying punish the viewers that consume and enjoy it. You know what you’re doing; get over yourself.
Or maybe he understands that if you watch a show for seven years you must have SOME affection for the characters, because what kind of psychopath would watch a for seven years if they didn’t?
Yep. He creates this charismatic, complex, compelling lead character to build the show around, gets mad when people like him, spends the latter half of the series beating us over the head that he’s terrible, then gets mad when people “okay well maybe Tony is an asshole”.
In hindsight it isn’t too surprising that he did a masterful job of writing a character that can never accept happiness, is it?
Bingo. It’s his own psychology at work. See his inspiration for Livia as his own terrible mother.
This is also a very Tony Soprano-like opinion. Judging people for being passionate about something he was obviously passionate about himself. I mean he just made a prequel and is still doing podcasts about it, it’s not like he’s moved on. It’s like Tony complaining that AJ isn’t strong enough while he whines to Melfi.
Heh, never thought of it that way, but I think you’ve nailed it, South of Heaven.I guess I’m just a criminal for watching the show he worked so hard to make all those years.As for the reveal, he either should’ve said something right away, or kept silent forever. This bs excuse that he didn’t do a full reveal explanation when it aired because of the state of the world is beyond belief. Does he really think the world is in a good spot right now?
He’s picked my lane! I didn’t watch the show and don’t give a shit what happened to Tony Soprano, so presumably I’m his exact favorite demographic, as the one thing left!
Hot take: you don’t have to take the creator’s opinion as the final word on the piece. More importantly, you don’t have to take the creator’s opinion on the piece.
1. he’s clearly joking a little bit.2. His take on Tony is necessarily different than yours.3. Most important: art is subjective.
Sometimes he goes about in pity for himself
It’s rather pugnacious, but it’s not actually inconsistent; Chase has talked before about how he considers the viewers who liked Tony and the viewers who wanted him to get a bloody comeuppance to be one and the same. To his mind, it was their way to have their cake and eat it too—to cheer Tony for years on but then distance themselves from him in the end by also cheering his demise.And behind the pugnaciousness, it seems to me, is a disappointment at viewers who didn’t go along with Chase’s own sense of fairness as articulated by his chosen ending: I’ve asked you to put yourself in Tony’s shoes for six seasons, so it’s only right that I portray his death from his point of view as well.
And now you want to see him killed? You want justice done? You’re a criminal after watching this shit for seven years,’” Chase says.Sir, this is an Arbys.Seriously though, sorry we reacted to your story so passionately. Settle down, Beavis.
Heh heh. Yeah! Fartknocker!
What’d you expect? Tony climbs up on his dragon and burns down Atlantic City? Come on.
So which is it, Chase? I thought he had a problem with people rooting for Tony.
This feels a lot like a grumpy old man who, in fairness, is tired of having the same conversation a dozen times a week for over a decade.
I agree with you. I also think David Chase is infinitely bitter that his movie career never took off despite how beloved The Soprano’s is even 20 years later.
Well, then make a better movie than Not Fade Away, aside from that one great James Gandolfini scene.
I agree with you. Sour grapes indeed.
The real issue is that he’s not done anything for 13 years after except write another sopranos episode they made into a mediocre direct to video movie.
This is that classic passive aggressive shit he pulled when the show was on that I couldn’t stand. He spent the last season rubbing our nose in how awful Tony was in reaction to people rooting for him, then he gets mad when people do want Tony to pay for his actions.
The kindest interpretation is that he’s annoyed people flipped so easily and so drastically. Perhaps he hoped really highlighting how awful Tony was would move people from “Tony rules” to “Tony does not rule” and not all the way to “Tony MUST die right now!”
He also shoehorned his decidedly non-telegenic daughter into the final episode just so she could renew her SAG card. Absolute waste of screen time, and an insult to the professional actors who earned their credit.
This isn’t quite as bad as Matthew Weiner acting shocked that people interpreted the ending of Mad Men as a black-humor, cynical “nothing ever changes” message.
I didn’t take that as black humor exactly. Yes, the world doesn’t change that much, capitalism wins, but I took the ending as Don learning to accept the world as it was and try to find some actual joy in it. I truly want to believe that, at the end, he moved back to New York, wrote the Coca-Cola ad campaign to end all ad campaigns, and started being a better, more attentive father to his kids in the wake of Betty’s impending death.
To me it felt like a bit of a joke (a good one!) that he goes through another of his downward spirals, his cross country pilgrimage, his dark night of the soul, etc. and his big moment of enlightenment is just another ad campaign. My MOST optimistic take is that he’s learned a little and opened himself up a little, so maybe he’ll be just a little bit better off the next time he repeats his typical cycle. But the cycle will repeat.
I’ve always seen it as everybody at the end of Mad Men is a better person than they were at the start, but it’s only like a 5% difference. And even in that final episode, Don’s revelation makes him a slightly better, more compassionate person, while not fundamentally changing who he’s always been. Which fits, honestly, with how a lot of people really change past their formative years.
I like to think that after the cut to black, Tony suffered a fatal case of food poisoning due to eating some bad gabgool. He literally shits himself to death in that diner.
But he keeps blaming it on the Indian food.
“What was annoying was how many people wanted to see Tony killed. That bothered me.”This is why Death Of The Author is a thing, Dave. Glad you’re all caught up.
“They wanted to know that Tony was killed. They wanted to see him go face-down in linguini, you know? And I just thought, ‘God, you watched this guy for seven years and I know he’s a criminal. But don’t tell me you don’t love him in some way, don’t tell me you’re not on his side in some way. And now you want to see him killed? You want justice done? You’re a criminal after watching this shit for seven years,’” Chase says.
Well, that’s a really fucked up attitude.
Tony’s dead to exactly the same degree that Dumbledore is gay.
Yep. Dude got offed. Knew it.
I don’t know why there was any ambiguity at all. In the series, Tony says:1. “There’s only two ways guys like me end up: dead, or in the can.”The last episode did not see him arrested.2. “You never hear the one that gets you.”Cut to black.I mean, they couldn’t make the bread crumbs any bigger, folks.
While I agree, he did have an indictment hanging over his head, with Carlo ready to testify.
I have an encyclopedia of mobsters (which I got with an encyclopedia of serial killers but that’s not important right now).That’s true for most if not almost all of them but there was at least one lucky guy who sailed through a lifetime of crime without even an indictment, I think.Makes sense statistically, if you have enough mobsters, sooner or later one will get through due to random chance and sheer mass effect sooner or later.
“I saw a little restaurant. It was kind of like a shack that served breakfast. And for some reason I thought, ‘Tony should get it in a place like that.’ Why? I don’t know. That was, like, two years before.”Sadly, this place also served him ‘johnnycakes’, inspiring another, less-successful concept.
I never really watched The Sopranos so there was always one thing about this scene that seemed weird to me that you die-hards could shed light on. Is Tony Soprano the kind of guy that would go out of his way to pick “Don’t Stop Believing” on a jukebox?
Yes, he was very much a classic rock guy. Journey songs made appearances in other episodes as well, although I’m not sure if he was shown listening to Journey in another episode or not (the other time a Journey song ends an episode it is non-diegetic).
Personally, I’ve sung it at three weddings. And I’m not a DJ or wedding singer.
Why would you admit that
It wouldn’t have been the first song I would think he would play, but it isn’t out of character either. I could easily see him spotting that on a jukebox & saying “Eh, fuck it”.
Yeah, I wasn’t there but my impression was the song wasn’t huge until around this time when it became internet-famous. But he still would’ve known it from his youth and probably enjoyed it
It was still a very popular song. It had been used on plenty of TV shows and movies before The Sopranos. But it’ll always be tied to that finale from now on.
Did something happen with it in 2005? For some reason I don’t remember it before then, and suddenly all my friends knew it. I remember Open Arms and Faithfully and Lights from my childhood, but not that one.
It was a top 10 hit & classic rock radio staple long before The Sopranos. I remember it being pretty prominently being used in an episode of Scrubs, and it gets played during every San Francisco Giants game. The Sopranos skyrocketed it into the pantheon of all-time classic rock songs but it definitely wasn’t some deep cut obscurity.
I’m from the Bay Area and that song has bee the SF Giant’s equivalent of Sweet Caroline for the Red Sox for as long as I can remember.
I’d be willing to trade songs. I’m just so over Sweet Caroline.
It had a different context before The Sopranos (and more importantly, before Glee). It was a well-known rock song, but not really considered a classic. Today it’s sort of a camp classic, but at the time it was just a lame late boomer song.
It’s exactly the kind of music he and Carmela would have listened to in their 20s-30s
He choked on his diner lobster and no one’s arms were long enough for a Heimlich maneuver.
You never order diner lobster…
Ugh, not really a fan of his attitude now. The creator who starts to dislike his fans. Plus, coming out and saying yeah, “He’s dead,” is kind of a terrible move, too. He leaves us with a extremely ambiguous ending and then becomes annoyed that people want to know what happened? And then he gives us the self-indulgent Many Saints of Newark, deciding to not really tell us a story anyone was interested in except for him.
What Chase revealed in this interview was more about his creative process, in which Tony indeed died in two earlier versions of the scene. He didn’t directly comment on the final scene. There’s a tiny bit of ambiguity left, if not much.
I will agree with you about The Many Saints of Newark. It wasn’t very good. The interesting aspect is young Tony and he doesn’t have enough screen time. If they do another movie about Tony in his 20s that would really peak my interest.
I honestly preferred the first half when Tony was just a kid on the periphery, and the focus on other characters whose fates aren’t well known to us.
it is obvious why it was streamed. it would have flopped in movie theaters.
Probably didn’t help that all of the marketing before it dropped made it seem like it would be all about young Tony.
I thought the Many Saints of Newark was kind of tedious, but I keep running into people who were disappointed because the show wasn’t more about Tony Soprano. What did they think the name “Moltisanti” means?
I see your point and I think it was the marketing. The marketing for this movie made it seem like Tony was a more central figure rather than supporting.
I think Chase really wanted to tell the Newark riot story (which was very good) but the studio browbeat him into forcing in more Sopranos references, so he decided to go all-in and make it as cringe as possible. I loved the first half when it was simply in that world and less of a prequel.
I agree completely
Well, I’d love to sit here and care about a show that ended 15 years ago; but I gotta go check out the brand-new season of the inexplicably-still-on-the-air Grey’s Anatomy, which is still on the air.
Half of them die in a plane crash for like the fifth time.
He didn’t say Tony got murdered in the diner, though. He originally had an idea for an ending that would have showed Tony murdered on the way to a meeting in NY. They ultimately did NOT go through with that ending, though, specifically because he wanted it to be ambiguous.On my last rewatch, my interpretation was that he did die over that plate of onion rings (which is not the conclusion I came to initially back in 2007.) But I like the ambiguity and that we can still talk about it years later. If someone else took the ending to mean Tony’s life will go on stuck in a marriage nobody particularly wants with kids who are trying to pull away from him (to some degree or another) ruling an “empire” that’s been dead and decaying for decades surrounded by people he can never trust, I’m fine with that.
“Tony should get it in a place like that.”
Tony is certainly dead by 2021. That we know for sure. Sadly that’s also because of James’ passing, but a guy like Tony wouldn’t live to this age either.
But Phil and Junior and others had made it—luck (or lack) of the draw.
Actually, reading the quotes here, and if there’s more in the linked article, so be it, it sounds like it would have ended with him driving into NYC. The implication being he never drove home. The restaurant scene is much less ambiguous.
I haven’t watched the show in years, but if I remember correctly, the leaders of NY and NJ families were essentially decimated after the war. If Tony ended up living he’d have zero inroads to any mob business in NY and no protection from rivals in NJ.
Lmao you guys will just keep grasping for anything
He originally had an idea for an ending that would have showed Tony murdered on the way to a meeting in NY.Oh you must mean this section of the article: “Because the scene I had in my mind was not that scene. Nor did I think of cutting to black. I had a scene in which Tony comes back from a meeting in New York in his car. At the beginning of every show, he came from New York into New Jersey, and the last scene could be him coming from New Jersey back into New York for a meeting at which he was going to be killed,” Chase explains.Yes your description is much shorter. And also doesn’t seem as confused about whether Tony is going to New York or coming back from New York. Yeesh.
My hot take is that the final scene is great and the cut to black is great and the ambiguity of his death is great because it suggests that even if he doesn’t die the life he lives will be one always steeped in the certainty that he or his loved ones will die and the uncertainty of when, which is both specific to his situation (they’ll likely be gunned down) and relatable to everyone in general…but the final season or so was boring trash and the show got lost in its attempts at mini art films. While very few acknowledge the weakness of the final season, I think people have misplaced their discontent with it on the final scene. The ambiguity of the episodes prior led to an unconscious desire to have a defined ending. A better narrative beforehand would’ve allowed more room for the ending to be what it was. As far as Chase’s comments here – dumb and bowing to pressure, and I don’t respect it. The text doesn’t suggest that Tony definitely dies or definitely doesn’t, regardless of what his original intention was. That’s the whole point of the scene!
My estimation of Chase as a man has just fucking plummeted
What’s weird about his comment too is the assumption that people wanted Tony to die and they wanted to see it. I don’t think they did – I think they responded to a scene that was specifically set up to ramp up unbearable tension which never got released (and set up the expectation that it would be released via violence). Which again, I like! But they’re responding to what you set up. Plenty of people would probably have been a bit too happy for Tony to have both survived and thrived on the other end of the spectrum too!
I think it’s pretty clear he was whacked.
I know at least one person who understands the whole point of the scene better than you do
Would Chase say the same thing if Gandolfini never died, which would have left the door open for post-Sopranos shows/movies instead of a prequel without him? I’m not so sure.
I doubt it. If there was a possibility that James Gandolfini would ever want to play Tony Soprano again, you leave that door open.
I always like the cut to black, you know…
Did I dream it, or was this not already confirmed years ago?
#meadowsurvived
I could see there being a sequel where Meadow is a ruthless mob lawyer, with many parallels in white collar crime to low-class thuggery. Tony will be confirmed to be dead, but no mention as to how or when.
I would watch the hell out of that series.
Better Call Mead
Mmmmmm….Mead….(however you define this statement is correct)
I’m surprised there’s been little discussion about this over the years, but Meadow’s survival is questionable. She enters the diner just as her father is shot in the head, and she has a clear line of sight to Members Only Guy. More than that, she is now blocking his only exit, because she’s standing right in the narrow doorway.Members Only Guy is holding a loaded gun. He’s just committed a public murder. He wants to exit the diner as quickly as possible.Does he say “excuse me” on the way out the door, while Meadow is screaming because she just witnessed her father’s murder? Does Meadow stand aside and let him pass? He might conclude, in the moment, that it’s easier to leave one fewer witness.
He’s a big dude and could probably just knock Meadow over.
To be honest, I was more concerned about Meadow’s ability to parallel park.
That’s how I figured it ended. And as for lackluster, well, better than some flashy Godfather 3esque helicopter assassination. Low key is usually how a mob hit tries to go down in the 21st century.
How many times have I seen this article?
I’ve only seen one episode of the show and it’s Pine Barrens. Odds are it’s all downhill from there in both directions.I’m actually more interested in what happened to the Russian, even I got from that very episode it was going to be an eternal mystery but I did actually unintentionally get an answer of sorts which is satisfactory enough for me in the end.
That’s kind of true, it is probably THE best episode, though there are many others that come close
It’s not even close to the best the series has to offer – it’s just the funniest episode
Bustout was another great kind of one-off type episode. Like any series that ends up having more than a few seasons, the later episodes can be totally confusing/boring if you haven’t been watching it since the beginning.
“Odds are it’s all downhill from there in both directions.”lol no
I never really got how people couldn’t figure out that Tony got whacked in the diner. Everything pointed to it. The whole finale was like the Godfather finale—all accounts were getting settled. We spent the better part of an hour watching pretty much everyone else get knocked off. How could Tony NOT be on the list?The only real question for me was whether they took out the entire family or just popped Tony and left it at that. My guess is the hitter was just expecting Carmela to show up and was surprised the kids were there, so it could break either way. He wouldn’t want to be there any longer than he had to be once he pulled the trigger, so I’m thinking it was Tony and maybe Carmela that got it.
I think “they” wouldn’t do that to her. The revenge would likely be by New York for killing Phil in such an ugly and public way in front of his family, so thus they’d do the same to him.
I agree. The only reason I’m thinking Carmela may have been included is because she would be a witness. But then, so was everybody else in the diner. Besides, she’d know enough to keep her mouth shut, even if she knew the hitter by name.
It’s not really a issue of not figuring it out. At the time nearly everyone knew it was a strong possibility, but I think a lot of people just wanted to know for sure. And, come on, it’s the entertainment industry itself that is responsible for that. How many times has a show/movie/book/comic/game left something ambiguous, like the death of a character, and then brought that someone back or otherwise revealed they didn’t actually die later on? ALL THE TIME. As a result I can hardly blame people for wanting a final word on the fate of a central character in a beloved show. Chase is just a dick for not acknowledging that reality.
I get your point on the ambiguity of some characters’ fates. It’s not uncommon for a character we all though twas dead and gone to miraculously reappear. But in the case of Tony Soprano I’ve always assumed the cut at the end of the finale was his perspective—a sudden loss of consciousness due to acute lead poisoning.
Um SPOILER ALERT everyone!!!
It’s weird when creators get mad when people think the monsters they created are monsters and deserve to die.
But they also get mad when people like the monsters and root for them if they’re too compelling: Walter White, Draco Malfoy, Archie Bunker
I can find a character compelling and not root for them at the same time
I knew a horrible kid in grade school who looked and acted just like Draco Malfoy. Since the movies already eatablished that they would kill off teenage characters, I was SO rooting for Draco to die.
Hving read the interview, I don’t think Chase confirms that Tony dies at all.
It was never a mystery. People who aren’t morons already knew this.
I
never watched the show, but I have seen the infamous ending. I’m all
for interesting and unique creative decisions, but I gather that the
people who are pro-abrupt ambiguous cut to black are just fans of the
show that are willing to accept whatever and however, and not so much
have a critical opinion one way or another on the merit of skipping a
denouement in favor of nothing.The argument seems to be
that there are hints and such that he just dies there for one reason or
another and that’s how the show ends. Okay, fine. Is that good, though?
Is that specific part of the ending entertaining and satisfying? Chase
complains about people wanting to watch him die, even though the
complaint isn’t wanting justice or schadenfreude sadism, but an ending.The ambiguity isn’t the problem, either. Inception and Pan’s Labyrinth both have ambiguous endings, but neither leave the viewer hanging and no one would ever mistake those endings for their cable going out. The ending doesn’t so much make you think about outcome A or B, but make you think about whether or not refusing to show outcome A is a better ending than if they did. I have no horse in this race, so I don’t care, but it was and always will be a perplexing choice that will never be repeated.
You can’t comment on this if you’ve literally only ever watched the final scene
I never did catch the final season, but I remember the uproar at the ending, and I also remember thinking that anyone who was mad didn’t watch the same show I did. Every season built up to some spectacular “who’s gonna get whacked?” just for a perfectly suited anticlimax instead. It was always a grounded, character-driven show that doesn’t let you get lost in the Godfather-style glamour and mystique of the mafia. It was just ugly people doing ugly things until that ugliness (usually) caught up with them.
I’ve been re-watching bits and pieces now. I think the show was truly ahead of its time.
i never liked tony – he was an interesting character but a very bad guy. i really wanted to see him get what was coming to him.
Sex with Dr. Melfi?
What did Melfi do to deserve that?
I’ve had more than a few arguments with folks about this – there’s literally a conversation with Tony and Bobby on a boat a few episodes before where he foreshadows the ending. He says that when the ending comes, everything just goes to black. Ironically, that’s now how Bobby went, but Tony’s ending went to black, and people just did not want to believe he was killed because they didn’t see it on the screen.
Our true enemy has yet to reveal himself.
I bet the real story is that they didn’t want to show Tony get killed on screen so they could come back years later and continue the series
That wasn’t really a thing back then
James beat them to it, unfortunately.
The real issue is that he’s not done anything for 13 years after except write another sopranos episode they made into a mediocre direct to video movie. And he’s cranky about it.
Was this character who tortured, maimed, and killed people bad? He smirked sometimes, and said capicola funny, so it is impossible to say.
These kind of discussions drive me insane. Every time someone mentions the end of The Sopranos, or The Thing, or Inception, or Lost in Translation, or The Shining, or Blade Runner, everyone tries to prove definitively what the ending means and rejects any other interpretations. Why does know one understand that these endings are left ambiguous for a reason?? The cut to black can represent a ton of things, from the imminent moment of a bullet entering Tony’s skull to the all-encompassing fear that will come with a lifetime of him looking over his shoulder. The whole point is that we don’t know, and so we’re left with a feeling of unease and dread. I feel like I’m taking crazy pills.
all stories, if continued far enough, end in death, and he is no true-story teller who would keep that from you.
The Sopranos is a great show, and I think looking back at the ending it is pretty clear that Tony died in that diner. As has been laid out in the comments, there were some good clues pointing to that both in the scene and laid out during the season.I have no problem with that being the outcome as it fits with the overall story, but I do think Mr. Chase can be rightly criticized for failing to communicate with his audience in the execution of his ending. Half the country thought that their cable had gone out at a critical moment, and many who did not were not thinking about things that Bobby said about death five episodes before when warching the last scene. As a result, there was a lot of confusion at the time of the ending, and I think that is on the storyteller. I am not saying that every story has to be aimed at every person-it is good to have stories that have subtle and complicated clues and themes. That people have to think about after it is over. I thought a lot of the clues that were left over the last season were well done once I had a chance to think about it. But storytelling is a form of communication, and I assume the creator wants people to get whea they are saying. The mass confusion over Tony’s fate has always pointed to poor execution, at least to me. The sudden cut to black as his POV cuts out is cool in theory, but the fact that so many were dialing the cable company when it happened means there was probably a better way to do it.
Yeah, Tony got killed, either right there in the diner or later that night, or the next week, whatever. I think the decision to not show the actual killing was a good one. We didn’t need the catharsis, if that’s what it would be, of seeing him lying in a pool of blood.Or at least I didn’t.I just finished a rewatch of the whole show, and came away with a renewed appreciation of Gandolfini as Tony Soprano. That scene with Christopher, after the car crash? Tony’s eyes just go… sharklike. Absolutely chilling moment, and there were many like that. But Tony could be charming, funny, sweet, and really anything he was required to be. The role of a lifetime – I can’t think of anyone else who could have played Tony Soprano.
No. Tony did not die in the final scene. In the final scene, the Journey song ended and the screen went to black. It’s likely that a character like Tony is about to meet his end soon, based on everything that has come before and all the things he has done. But he did not die in that final scene nor will he (unless HBO re-releases it with a new ending a la Lucas or Spielberg, which knowing HBO, who knows?)
You can’t retcon an ending to a fictional work that didn’t happen 14 years later, even if you’re David fucking Chase.
I can not believe it was ever a question for longer than a week. Its so obvious by the way he directed and edited the final scenes. The Pavlovian effect on the viewer, the nod to the godfather, the “this is your life” aspect, the sudden cut off to black. The setup from Bobby “you probably dont even hear it coming”. It was genius at the time and is genius now. I can think of nothing that would have worked better. Tony in a hail of bullets? Boring.
I strongly suspect that had James Gandolfini not died IRL, Tony’s “fate” might have “actually” been different–or at lease left vague.
I thought the “ending” was great. It was a fantastic “F-U” to people who need things wrapped up with a bow. The entire *series* was loose ends; too many to list, but the most obvious one is “Pine Barrens”. Any definitive ending that Chase could have filmed would have pissed off half the audience no matter what. He gets killed, people would be upset over who got the shot in. He lives, people are pissed that a killer walks free. Then there are the questions about AFTER; does Meadow take over? Does Furio make a last minute appearance and sweep Carmella off her feet and take over instead?It was best just going dark.
I know the closest thing we’re likely to get for an answer to Pine Barrens if you want to hear it.
Sadly I started watching this a couple of years ago, got through a couple of episodes, and moved on. I had (have?) every intention of going back and watching it. And The Wire. And finishing Breaking Bad.Anyway, with the description above with Meadow coming in the door and Tony looking up with a fade to blank—has the implication been all these years that Meadow killed him? Seems like a weird way to end a series.Guess I gotta go watch it now!
He didn’t actually do that, your headline is just lying, you click-baiting sellouts.
“They wanted to know that Tony was killed. They wanted to see him go face-down in linguini, you know? And I just thought, ‘God, you watched this guy for seven years and I know he’s a criminal. But don’t tell me you don’t love him in some way, don’t tell me you’re not on his side in some way. And now you want to see him killed? You want justice done? You’re a criminal after watching this shit for seven years,’” Chase says. Are you fucking kidding me? He’s a murderer. Yes, we wanted to see him dead. And yes, it’s justice because bad people are not supposed to live happily ever after. At some point in their lives, there should be a reckoning.I recall when Ian Richardson was approached about playing Francis Urquhart in the UK House of Cards trilogy, he loved the idea of playing a villain but wanted assurances that the character would meet his end with some sort of justice. He did not and refused to agree to play the role unless he knew for certain that he’d die at the end.It sends a very harmful message to audiences when they see a villain get away with everything right up to the end. They aren’t meant to be heroes or viewed in a favorable light. That’s why I always felt Dexter was all wrong as a TV series. You aren’t meant to set up a serial killer as a hero simply because he targets other serial killers. He’s still a sick fucker who needs to be removed from society. And Tony Soprano was no different. The number of lives he snuffed out cannot be erased because he was portrayed as a charismatic figure in a series. He was a killer and needed to meet a violent end because that’s the nature of the life he chose to live in and to bring his family into.What was criminal was trying to make him lovable and somehow sympathetic. So yes, people wanted to see him die, just as we’d watched him kill other people for seven years. It’s the only way to justify doing a series for 7 years about such a character.
It was a brilliant ending. Glad HBO let Mr Chase do this.I wonder what Mr Chase thinks of all the theories that surfaced back then, all the scene deconstructions by fans and reviewers (the decor of the diner, etc)…
The reason the cut to black didn’t work, is because I, and many people I talked to, thought their cable had gone out at a pivotal moment. It wasn’t until a few seconds later that I realized that it wasn’t the case, but the moment was lost.
Chase pretty much implied this on Marc Maron’s podcast a few weeks ago.
Am I the only one who remembers the Soprano’s ending with Tony going to get his mail and having a heart attack outside on the street? Like I swear to god I remember that ending and how it fades to black before it showed if he died or not and how pissed everybody was and the endless think pieces about it? Like I know Gandolfini died of a heart attack in real life later on, but I swear to god I remember that ending for the Sopranos. Is this some mandela effect shit? Am I crazy?
“You want justice done? You’re a criminal after watching this shit for seven years,’” Chase says.”You get what you paid for, HBO.
It just so happens that diner, which is named Holsten’s, has the best ice cream in New Jersey, and I don’t say that lightly.
Better than Kohr Brothers? Or is frozen custard a separate category?
Frozen custard is totally different but Kohr’s is the best.
i grew up in an italian neighborhood. i knew guys like tony, the talk, the look, the ‘side gigs’ that skirted the law. that episode was like a punch in the gut to me. there are some characters that you just bond with…
I mean, we already knew his fate. It was “alive until the credits and then unknown.” People are acting as if David Chase revealed whether or not Tony lived or died after the credits and no, he didn’t.
So the next question is “Who had him whacked?” Lots of bad blood between Tony and Butchie but they negotiated a truce in that cold garage. Maybe Butchie welched? Or maybe Tony was killed by someone in the NY family who didn’t get the message that it was ok to kill Phil Leotardo and was looking for revenge/make a name for himself?
The big question from the finale that I’d like an answer to is…What happened to the cat locked in the trunk of Meadow’s car?I have a theory that it’s both still alive and dead.
I am hopeful David Chase is clarifying this because he’s got another series or movie planned as a follow up to Sopranos!
It didn’t happen. Toni still lives, and I don’t care what the writers say…
He’s a lumberjack now.
I watched The Sopranos for the first time earlier this year. Had always heard of the controversy and knew how the series ended because of it. It was kind of shocking how much it made sense though when I got to it and it seemed incredibly obvious that Tony got shot and likely killed at that diner.
What was annoying was how many people wanted to see Tony killed. That bothered me.Really? Americans love to watch people get gunned down. They like watching that more than watching people fuck. That tells you something and it shouldn’t be surprising.Also, many, many people cannot handle an open ending. They need closure for whatever psychological reasons I won’t speculate about here.
David Chase certainly manuged to get the drip on us loyle viewers with that ending.
I’m sure his response was full of impatient condescension that we, the great unwashed, still haven’t made sense of his genius that he meant for Tony to be dead. I hope this is the last we’ll hear about this (he probably does too).
I thought perhaps the lack of clear resolution was the point: Tony was never safe, he could be offed at any time from any direction. That was what his life had been reduced to, sort of living on the edge of death, never knowing when he’d stumble in.
I’ve just never cared if Tony died or not. It doesn’t really matter, because he’ll always be looking over his shoulder, and death will always be looming for him. The lack of clarity is what makes it great for me. But I dunno, maybe I’m just a pretentious prick.
Sorry to disappoint everyone but I read the article and he doesn’t confirm anything at all.What he says is that he initially had an ending where Tony gets killed but then he changed his mind and thought of that scene in the restaurant. The initial idea isn’t canonical and it doesn’t mean that, because he was meant to die at one point, that he didn’t actually survive the real ending.I’m sorry but you’re going to have to accept the ambiguity.