The fate of Tony Soprano (1959-?)
The series creator revealed its "real" ending almost fifteen years after the finale. But does his opinion even matter?
The HBO series The Sopranos aired between 1999 and 2007. That eight-year period contained my best years of competitive running, a disputed presidential election, the destruction of the World Trade Center by Islamic terrorists, the advent of blogging and online coaching, the introduction of GPS devices for civilian motorists and foot-travelers, new long-term effrontery by the U.S. military in the Middle East, Hurricane Katrina, the salad days of MySpace, and the early portions of Tom Brady’s professional football career (remember him?). Not much has really changed, even if every snapshot of collective daily life looks different. We’re all just louder and more isolated from each other at the same time.
I started watching the series last month and finished it last night, as the temperature was dropping to levels that made Rosie reluctant to put her paws on solid surfaces during our very brief sunrise stroll this morning.
I’m putting this picture here because everything below it is a spoiler, and some of you have not watched The Sopranos. If not, you should probably find the time to watch it. As you may have heard from various people who rode this comedic-dramatic train while it was making weekly stops in real time, The Sopranos represents some of the best television ever made.
I was granted free, unsolicited access to HBOMax toward the end of last year by my wireless provider, and after a friend who was already a few seasons into the series kept emphasizing how maestoso it was, I dug in. I knew little about The Sopranos in advance other than its focus—various members of an Italian-American organized-crime family in metropolitan New York City, itself not a novel concept—and the fact that its ending left many fans upset and unfulfilled, which fans always are when and however their favorite shows end. I watched over eighty episodes of the show knowing this, but knowing none of the details about what was apparently in some minds a conclusion without a resolution.
If you’re still reading, you’ve either seen the show, have no plans to watch it, or don’t mind sitting through many hours of fictional events while knowing exactly what happens at the end. Well, not exactly. Tony Soprano is dead, if you want him to be, as well as still alive, if you need him to be.
The final few minutes of the series finale, “Made in America,” includes some devious screenwriting and directorial trickery, invitations to recall snippets of dialogue from various past seasons, and—if you don’t panic—an uncluttered path toward choosing your own right ending. Taking place in a crowded New York diner, the scene presents a male patron entering the restaurant bathroom who looks like a contract killer; two black men at the counter whom Tony, seated at a booth with his wife and son, also notices with mild apprehension; and several unsuccessful attempts by Meadow Soprano, Tony’s college-age daughter, to parallel park outside the diner before she gets it right. When Meadow enters the building, Tony looks up as the entry indicator bell rings, and then the screen cuts to black.
No fade, no sound. “Don’t Stop Believin’” by Journey, the song Tony selected for play before being joined by his family, freezes after the words “don’t stop” in the chorus. The last thing anyone ever sees of Tony Soprano is a look of mild surprise layered over the tired-but-not-defeated arrogance that increasingly defined his character in his off-the-job moments—not that there were many of those left by Season 6, Episode 21.
These were my flash impressions minutes after I finished watching the scene and the series, which I am likely to revisit in a few years. To the extent any of this mental masturbation over imaginary wise guys matters, I wanted to commit to my own biased viewpoint before checking out what They had said about it, both in 2007 and in the nearly fifteen years since.
I don't think Tony is supposed to die. The one white guy is shown going into the bathroom, but Tony notices him pass. Then two black guys come in, but I don't think they represent a real threat—that's Tony's prejudice against “the Mulignan.”
Meadow being unable to park properly and then the scene cutting to black when the door dings on her way in seems to signify Tony's absolute inability to connect with his family. His senile uncle has forgotten him. He snookered and rejected his therapist. Most of his friends are dead or flipped; ditto his enemies. There was really no one left to want to put a hit on Tony at that point. But he had clearly not won over the one thing he keeps saying is most important—his family.
"Don't Stop Believin'" by Journey playing on the old-school (even for 2007) jukebox means that Tony still has his stubborn conviction that he can fix things even though he may be headed to jail soon and his empire is basically gone.
A more optimistic reading is that one door is closing and another is opening -- it's the other way around, and all Tony has is his family, even if he will always be a manipulator and adulterer with increasingly poor impulse control who is consciously trapped in a familial cycle of crumbling emotional facades.
And that's the right answer.
After sleeping on it, I am still going with this ending. And that’s despite series creator David Chase admitting just months ago, in a perfect made man’s “you know what I’m sayin’?” non-admission, that Tony Soprano took a bullet in the head in that diner. He never saw it coming and never felt a thing, and the ending of the series provided the best cinematic presentation of that storyline.
But because that remains strictly an inference, however powerful and well-sourced, I get to reject it.
I think that Tony had resigned himself to the fact that his life was going to end just like every other mob boss's—in street violence, in prison, or in some other institution (like his Uncle Junior). That came up in the dialogue of an earlier episode, I think also in season 6. He had just seen his two capos whacked (Silvio wasn't dead, but might as well have been). With Phil Leotardo dead, the New York side was falling apart too, but not in a way Tony seemed capable of or even interested in exploiting. Sitting at the table, he knew he was never going to be Tony Soprano of the DiMeo Family, not primarily. He had his real family, but despite his frequent bluster about those people being number one in his life, was ill-suited to the task after being a professional liar, shameless philanderer, and multifaceted shitbag all his life.
The bathroom scene was plainly meant to evoke memories of the hidden gun in The Godfather. But if series creator David Chase had wanted people to lean toward "Tony is dead," rather than inviting a personal choice, he could have had the final scene be a Tony lying on the floor of the restaurant looking up with a bullet hole in him, but still obviously alive. Sort of the way Nurse Jackie ended (did she fatally OD, or did she just OD?). He left viewers to decide. It's fun to argue but anyone who claims to know the answer is making it up. The story ends, as presented, with Tony alive.
Chase, his recent comments notwithstanding, probably wanted everyone to be able to settle on an ending while privately, and inevitably, having his own convictions about the immediate "next." But that's not in The Sopranos, that's a personal hack of something he happened to make. He spent years in the frustrating (sic) position of telling everyone there was no right answer while being held responsible for keeping that answer to himself. But as many times as he articulated this with perfect clarity, people wanted more. That's the price Chase paid for making such an incredible show. They will never stop wanting more when you give them something great.