The End of The Sopranos

I think I’ve finally figured this one out.

To recap: in the final scene of the final episode, Tony Soprano is meeting up with his family (his blood family, that is) in a diner. However, Tony is still mindful that the New York mafia has put a target on his head, and is cautiously watching the other people around him. In the last few seconds, we see Tony’s daughter Meadow running towards the diner, hear the door open, see Tony look up, and then… nothing. Just a few seconds of darkness and silence and then the credits roll.

Many theories have been put forward as to what the black screen means: some say that it means that Tony gets whacked, some say it doesn’t, and some say we can’t be sure. But amidst all the things that have been said and written on the subject, there are a couple of comments that stand out to me.

In The Sopranos: The Complete Book, series creator David Chase makes the following comments about this scene:

‘There have been indications of what the end is like. Remember when Jerry Torciano was killed? Silvio was not aware that the gun had been fired until after Jerry was on his way down to the floor. That’s the way things happen: It’s already going on by the time you notice it.’

Wow! David Chase seems to be saying that the blank screen really does mean that Tony gets clipped. But not so fast. Chase continues:

‘I’m not saying anything. And I’m not trying to be coy. It’s just that I think that to explain it would diminish it.’

In his commentary for the second last episode, Arthur Nascarella (who played Carlo Gervasi) sheds some further light on Chase’s thought processes:

‘[After the cast read the script] Jimmy Gandolfini looked at David Chase and asked ‘Why did you end it that way?’ … And David Chase said to him: ‘I didn’t want to show that crime paid, and I didn’t want to show that crime didn’t pay’.

That seems to make it a fifty-fifty bet. But after thinking about it some more I reckon that’s what David Chase’s comments imply as well. Since The Sopranos is Tony’s story, the natural presumption is that if we don’t see him die, he must live on. What I think Chase is trying to do by emphasizing that Tony wouldn’t see death coming is balance the scales and point out that we can’t know either way. So I’m going to go with the ‘we can’t be sure’ brigade on this one. Personally though, I like to think that Tony survived.