Tony Soprano Is Dead
Posted at 3:15 pm on Thursday, July 16, 2009, in Populist Culture, and tagged sopranos, tv.
When I first started this post on St. Patrick’s Day, it was titled, The Irrelevance of the Pope (and the Catholic Faith). I started the post as a result of the (unsurprising) news that the Pope would continue to decry the teaching of safe sex, which is effective, including in AIDS-ravaged Africa, and continue to support the sole reliance on the teaching of abstinence, which is not. Needless to say, I changed my mind on the direction of this here post.
Tony Soprano is dead. For those fans who are hoping for a reunion movie or HBO miniseries, if it were to come (and it won’t), it will be without Tony Soprano, because he was murdered in the final scene in the final episode of the final season.1 The screen went to black — and stayed there — precisely because we (the viewer) were Tony, and we had just been shot.2 You probably don’t even hear it when it happens, right? That is what Bobby Bacala says to Tony on Lake Oscawana at the close of the first episode of the final season.3 A flashback to this scene is shown in the second-to-last episode. David Chase (the show’s creator) was telling us something.
A few months after the final episode aired, Chase was asked what actually had happened in the final scene. His answers were, in a word, telling…
This wasn’t really about “leaving the door open.” [...] Everything that pertains to that episode was in that episode. And it was in the episode before that and the one before that and seasons before this one and so on. There had been indications of what the end is like. Remember when Jerry Toricano 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 even notice it. [...] As I recall, it was just that Tony and his family would be in a diner having dinner and a guy would come in. Pretty much what you saw. [...] Originally, I didn’t want any credits at all. I just wanted the black screen to go the length of the credits. [...] I think The Sopranos is the only show that actually gave the audience credit for having some intelligence and attention span. [...] It’s all there.
We were Tony Soprano. In a sense, that is. It was a Pavlovian response. Every time the bell rang hanging over the diner door, we saw Tony look up, and then we became Tony; we were viewing the show’s events from his point-of-view. And when lovely Meadow Soprano finally parked her car, and made her way to the diner entrance, and the bell rang, we expected to see Meadow. But we didn’t. The screen went black, and it stayed that way (for what seemed like forever). There was no sound. The bell rang, and we became Tony. But Tony was just shot; he didn’t even hear it happen, and therefore we — the viewers — from Tony’s point-of-view, didn’t hear anything either.4
Tony Soprano was shot and killed in the final scene of the Sopranos. You don’t believe me? Watch it again.
Notes- Of course, Tony could appear in flashbacks, or new dream sequences, or as a ghost, or whatever. I think an episode or two with the fallout of his death — and his family’s handling of it — would have been terrific television. ↩
- I have to take a little credit with my prediction post (which was incredibly off): “I just thought of something. Wouldn’t it be awful if David Chase decided to leave us empty, meaning Tony was in the hospital with Carmela in tears, Meadow crying and AJ confused, looking through a window at a collapsed Tony, and the screen goes black, the end?” As I blogged after the season finale (a post which was also incredibly wrong; this post is incredibly revisionist), “I may not have had the particulars right, but I nailed the spirit right on the head.” I have to take a little credit; I’m just saying. ↩
- Actually, the first episode of the second-half of the last season. The second-half of the sixth season is — for all intents and purposes — the seventh season, and I will always refer to it that way. ↩
- The man sitting at the counter — simply credited as the man in Member’s Only jacket — walked to the bathroom, passing Tony on his way in; on his way out (in an action reminiscent of the Godfather, like so many other facets of the show), he shot Tony Soprano from the side. That is what happened. It’s all there. ↩
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July 21st, 2009 at 9:19 am
I really wish this were true. i want to believe it as well. But, it was left open ended, even if it were for “literarry genius” reasons. Also, a term we use in the architecture world applies to this case….”post-design justification”! After such negative feedback from pretty much all the viewership, i wouldn’t doubt that Chase would say..” think The Sopranos is the only show that actually gave the audience credit for having some intelligence and attention span. [...] It’s all there.”
I’ve watched the episode many times, and believe it could be interpreted the way you state. It also could be interpreted based on Chase’s earlier statements regarding “does a life of crime really pay?”, is the reality that this lifestyle will always cause you to be looking over your shoulder, analyzing each situation, for the rest of your life. Thats the way I interpreted the ending. Members only jacket guy could be a killer or just a regular guy…in the mind of tony soprano…he’ll always be wondering.
July 22nd, 2009 at 2:15 pm
@”dont post this” – No. Tony is dead.
September 7th, 2009 at 8:21 am
I think Dr. Melfi shot Tony. She felt guilty about inadvertently helping him hone his skills as a con man all those years when she thought she was giving him therapy. After another dinner with her psychiatrist pals pricking her conscience with references to the rising body-count in her patient’s gang war, she polishes off a bottle of wine, takes that pistol she bought after Tony’s warnings in episode whatever, walks up to him and kapow……
October 15th, 2009 at 8:26 am
Basically, you have to assume that everything in the show is there to tell the story. For them to have thrown in all of those elements in order to just confuse the viewer would have been terrible storytelling and a waste of limited episode time.
Tony is dead. They didn’t focus on Members Only guy for nothing. The forshadowing in the conversation with Bobby early in the season, the shots taken from Tony’s point of view in the diner, the assassin’s trip to the men’s room before the killing, taken right from The Godfather…it’s all there.
I think that AJ must be dead as well. The assassin would have killed Tony’s son too in order to prevent him from avenging his father’s death. Maybe chivalry saved Carmela, or maybe she was killed to remove her as a witness.
November 19th, 2009 at 11:48 am
The thing to really pay attention to is the clever way that David Chase built up to this ending, especially throughout both halves of the final season. There are dozens of clues at least that Tony is going to be killed and why.
Here is a case in point: While in the hospital, Johnny Sack tells a story to the orderlies of how a mobster will not be wacked so long as he is making money, but when he stops making money, even years after the fatal offense, then the hit will be approved.
Another episode has Tony and Paulie on the lam while authorities interpret the significance of a corpse that they had dug up, the corpse of an early victim of Paulie and Tony. The way this issue gets resolved is that the murder gets pinned on someone already dead.
Given that Tony has made enemies of Hesh and others who had supported him, as well as his difficulties with Phil which are interfering with the money making interests at the heart of the Mob, is it any wonder that higher ups would want both Phil and Tony dead.
Who are the higher ups? One is little Carmine. he clearly has been thinking about assuming the top job. If you pay careful attention to the scenes he is in you will see that he provokes the action while seeming not to. For example, just when things seem settled between Tony and Phil it is Little Carmine who stirs things back up. Little Carmine would have learned how the leadership of the Mob works from his father. He would have realized that Tony had ceased to be effective and was spoiling things for others. He would have seen how the promotion of more prudent people like Butchie to take over Phil’s operation would also have been in his interests.
Little Carmine was a pornography producer. He was used to getting attention while controlling things behind the scene. Recall the scene where the gorgeous cop is seen dressing in the background while the supposed FBI agent calls tony to tell him where to find Phil, so that Phil might be killed. It is entirely possible that the woman was someone Little Carmine had a connection too. It’s even possible that this was part of some scheme he had to get the agent under his thumb.
In a much earlier scene little Carmine meets with Tony and tells him a story about how Little Carmine wants to stay retired. I believe this is the scene during which Little Carmine makes up his mind to have Tony wacked. The story is meant to suggest to Tony that Tony step down, that Tony retire, but instead Tony takes things at face value and tries to encourage Little Carmine to step up to the top spot in the Mob, offering his support. Tony’s support is the last thing Carmine wants because he knows too many others are pissed off and Tony needs to be gotten rid of. Realizing that Tony is going to need to be wacked before Little Carmine can step up to the throne, the scene ends with Little Carmine brooding and sullen.
Eventually this leads to the decision by Little Carmine to clean house which includes eliminating both Phil and Tony. When it became clear that Phil would not get the job done, Little Carmine set other gears in motion.
The location of where Tony is wacked is not as secret as people might seem to believe. The under aged chick that AJ is dating is there in the room when Carmela announces to Meadow over the phone where and when dinner is to be held. The under aged girlfriend looks bored until this information is revealed and then her face suddenly lights up! Check it out if you don’t believe me. She is suddenly paying attention. Why? Because she needs to pass this information on to someone. There is some sort of connection to another mobster through this girl, which escapes my memory, perhaps going directly back to Little Carmine.
Then there is the whole impending trial thing. I believe that having decided that Tony would be wacked, Little Carmine decided to pin as much dirt on Tony as possible, which would serve two purposes. It would first of all tend to prevent the feds from making a deal with Tony. And secondly, with Tony’s death all of these problems would then go away. It is entirely possible that Paulie Walnuts is the rat.
There are several possible explanations as to who killed Tony, when and why. My own favorite theory is that Tony was marked for death ever since that incident in the episode Pine Barrens where Tony’s guys had again wacked (or attempted to wack) a Russian mobster for unsound reasons. Prior to this event, the very first killing of the entire series was when Christopher shot and killed a fellow mobster, a Russian, in the back room of Satrielli’s Butcher shop. The escape of the Russian in the Pine Barrens is crucial because this would tip off the Russians that Tony was behind both the murder and the attempted murder and they would want payback. In essence the plot arc goes full circle from the very first murder to the final one. When the gravy train later ran out years later and Tony stopped making money for the mob, the Russians were given the okay to kill Tony and this was the job of the man in the Members Only jacket. The guy waited to kill Tony until the two young black men had arrived because they were assigned the task of being back up if Tony did not get killed right away or made for the door.
Much has been made of Meadows anxious state as she repeatedly screwed up the parallel parking and then ran for the door of the restaurant just as Tony is getting wacked. She was just coming back from visiting the doctor. Some suggest that her anxiousness is because she has just learned she was pregnant, but I don’t buy it. Icannot picture her running in high heels urgently needing to blurt out that she is pregnant; it just does not fit. Recall that this doctor’s office is a place where some mobsters had made a habit of going to exchange information because the place was not bugged. I believe that what made Meadow so anxious was that either by overhearing something from the other room, or perhaps via some other means she had come to the conclusion that the hit on Tony was about to go down and it was this that gave her a frantic sense of urgency. Obviously this is a bit speculative on my part, but David Chase is one to give us the pieces to a masterful puzzle without putting them all together for us and were he to have included a scene depicting this, then the entire ending would have lost its mystery. However, if you will recall in the very first scene that starts the final extended season, there is a voice over that describes Meadow as the protecting Angel in the story. Her failure to arrive in time and just barely, but in time to witness the carnage, adds drama to the final death of Tony Soprano.
December 24th, 2009 at 9:14 am
Where is everyone’s since of fairness. Tony is the best thing going, without him there is no show, unless, you let meadow come back and become boss, and with her legal sense, run the mob. I love the show, I wish it would never end….. Hbo is not stupid, they will revamp it, and let it be Aj who got shot, and the silence just be there…. But I wish I knew…. HBO IF YOU SEE THIS BRING HIM BACK…PLEASE, WE ALL NEED THE SHOW….. OTHER THAN TRUE BLOOD THERE IS NOTHING ELSE ON……
May 24th, 2010 at 9:59 pm
Tony is dead, people get over it. Theres no movie.
Chase made the hit on Tony the worst hit in the series by having the boss wacked in front of his family. Just as meadow enters, He gets clipped, and chase was able to do this with out actually showing the hit by making us become Tony Soprano in the last few seconds of his life.
Just as Chase has been saying in the series that “you probably wouldn’t hear it when it happends. When you die with a shot to the dead like Tony dead, you wouldn’t see or hear anything thats it….dead hence you don’t see Meadow.. Right on Chase!! It took me awhile to understand that the ending wasn’t a black out, but after watching it over afew times, i know understand that Tony is dead and how it would be the worst way to go.
June 12th, 2010 at 9:04 am
Tony is dead all right. I came to the Sopranos late. I caught an episode now and then, but I have finally started watching from season one on DVD. I’m pretty sure I figured out who killed Tony. I think David Chase sent the first warning in season four. I feel quite positive Furio returned to kill Tony out of love for Carmela. Look very carefull at the stills on some other websites that show the guy sitting at the counter looking over at Tony and compare with some headshots of Furio.
June 17th, 2010 at 1:44 am
Hi, I’m advancing another theory. Watch episode one of season six. the answer is right there, in front of the deli. The gang is sitting around and someone asks Gene how long he has been wearing a “Member’s Only” jacket. I believe that solves the mystery.
June 17th, 2010 at 4:32 am
Hi again. Just finished watching first two episodes of season 6. As gene killed himself, he could not be tony’s killer. my money is on his wife, deanne, who suggested gene put a bullit in tony’s head. She is angry tony didn’t let gene retire so they could move to florida. her facial features match with the person sitting in the cafe, and, most importantly, she has gene’s “Member’s Only” jacket. That jacket is key to this mystery.
June 17th, 2010 at 8:05 am
@Rob – By the time the show ends, there will be many others who wouldn’t mind Tony being dead. (Spoiler alert.)
June 17th, 2010 at 9:36 pm
True, but that member’s only jacket is telling. the still of the killer, it looks like furio with short hair, but that jacket seems to be the one worn by gene in episode 1 of season 6
July 23rd, 2010 at 11:06 pm
Glad the fat blimp is dead. Biggest pussy in the history of TV. Jim Neighbors would kick his tubby a$$ in a street fight. Did Tony wear a Victoria’s Secret bra for those big floppy jugs of his?
September 20th, 2010 at 8:33 pm
Rob- Little Carmine is an idiot, A., and B, he expresses that he doesn’t want a role that might lead to his death.