That Sopranos’ ending — what really happened in that final episode?
We’re living the pandemic cliché. We have a pandemic puppy, we’re in the midst of a renovation, and we spend our nights binging favourite TV shows. In anticipation of Martin Scorsese’s much-anticipated Soprano’s prequel, The Many Saints of Newark, we decided to reach way back and re-watch the original. And that final perplexing scene? What happens is surprisingly clear.
If you know exactly what I’m talking about, you are one of the millions caught up in the world of Tony Soprano, the fictional head of an organized crime family in New Jersey. It was ground-breaking television in 1999, created by David Chase and featuring brilliant writers such as Terence Winter (Boardwalk Empire) and Matthew Weiner (Madmen). We couldn’t get enough of Tony’s therapy sessions, Carmela’s crush on the parish priest, and everyone’s marital infidelities juxtaposed with mobsters plotting in the back of Satriale’s Pork shop, guys getting whacked for stepping out of line, and the FBI’s attempts at entrapping informants.
(A side note — overall it holds up pretty well after all these years. There are exceptions. VCRs are all the rage, and it’s pretty funny watching kill orders being given over flip phones.)
The key to deciphering that final enigmatic scene is watching the series in back-to-back episodes. It’s crystal clear that Chase had a creative vision for what would happen to the Sopranos leading up to that infamous scene.
Let’s revisit that final scene. We see Tony sitting in a booth at Holsten’s Diner listening to Journey’s Don’t Stop Believing. Carmela enters next followed by AJ who slides in beside her. We see Meadow trying to parallel park outside the restaurant. Sitting at the counter is an unidentified man who glances at Tony as he walks to the bathroom (homage to the Godfather?) Tony looks up as someone enters — and the screen cuts to black. What happened?
Thirteen years after it premiered, that final scene is still hotly debated. But watching it today, what happened couldn’t be clearer. Tony gets whacked.
There are simply too many clues to ignore.
- Take, for example, that scene earlier in the season when Bobby and Tony contemplate life and death while out fishing. “You probably don’t even hear it when it happens, right?” Bobby asks Tony. Is it a coincidence that Tony re-plays the conversation toward that last episode?
- At the sit down following Phil Leotardo’s murder, is Butch just a little too eager to make a truce with Tony? David Chase is too smart for Butch to transform from a pit bull to a poodle overnight.
- When Tony reassures Carmela not to worry because “You know how this works — they never hurt the families,” is it a bit blatant foreshadowing?
Dogged by the same question for years, Chase has skillfully avoided revealing too much. However, in an interview with The Independent earlier this year, Chase remarked, “Yes, I think I had that death scene around two years before the end…” followed by an expletive when he realized what he had said.
Later, Chase tried to explain his comments in the Washington Examiner: “Tony was dealing in mortality every day. He was dishing out life and death. And he was not happy. He was getting everything he wanted, that guy, but he wasn’t happy. All I wanted to do was present the idea of how short life is and how precious it is. The only way I felt I could do that was to rip it away.”
Of course, we don’t know how it happened. Did the guy in the bathroom shoot Tony in the head as he looked up to see Meadow coming through the door? Was it one of Phil Leotardo’s crew who walked in to “take care of business?”
Like the entire series, Chase’s cut-to-black finale was brilliant.
So what do you think? Do you have a different theory? Could a little pop culture debate about the Sopranos help us pass some time during the pandemic?
