The series finale of The Sopranos was by far the most anticipated, most hyped-up episode of the show’s history. Loyal viewers were anxious to find out what would happen to their favorite mob boss, Tony Soprano. Would he finally get whacked by Phil Leotardo’s crew? Would the FBI finally get to him? Would he come out on top and get to continue with business as usual? Turns out none of those questions were answered by the creator David Chase, who wrote the finale. Here’s what did happen during episode 6×21, called “Made in America.” (Lots of details and spoilers, so don’t read if you don’t want to know!)
Phil Leotardo: Agent Harris tipped off Tony about Phil’s whereabouts. Tony sent out a couple of his men to look for Phil making calls from a gas station pay phone, and someone eventually did find him. Phil was shot in the head, right in front of his wife and two granddaughters. Then he was shot in the chest, and for good measure, his wife’s SUV rolled over his head, crushing his skull in the process.
Silvio: Tony goes to visit Sil in the hospital. Unfortunately, there’s no change in Sil’s condition and it’s still unlikely that he’ll ever wake up.
Paulie: Paulie freaks out about a stray cat that Tony has taken in and allowed to stay in the back office of the Bing. Paulie doesn’t like the way the cat sits and stares at a picture of Christopher all day long. Paulie also turns down a job that T offered him, saying that everyone who has ever been in charge of that gig (Ralphie, Vito, and some other guy) all died prematurely and he didn’t want to deal with that kind of thing.
AJ: AJ seemed to be coming out of his depression a little bit. He was seeing that girl he met while in therapy, even though she’s just a high school junior. They started to hook up in AJ’s SUV, but he had parked it on a pile of leaves or something and the whole thing caught on fire. The vehicle was ruined — which actually gave AJ a feeling of relief because it would force him to take the bus and help ease the country’s dependence on foreign oil. Later, he considers joining the military, but Tony, Carmela, and his new girlfriend are all opposed. Tony gets AJ a job assisting with a film production crew, so that’s where he ends up.
Meadow: Meadow and Patrick look like they’re well on their way to making wedding plans, with the parents sitting down together and all that. Meadow has been talking with a law firm about the possibility of a job after finishing law school. The starting salary would be in the neighborhood of $170,000, which impresses Tony. Meanwhile, Patrick is already working cases of his own, and one sounds like it’ll eventually lead back to Tony’s wrongdoings.
Uncle Junior: Tony goes to visit Uncle Junior in the institution. He starts asking Junior about any money he might have hidden away, but soon realizes that his uncle has no idea who he is.
Janice: Just a little while after attending Bobby’s funeral, she talks to Tony about what to do with the kids. And then she says she has to watch her weight because it’s time for her to catch a new husband. (Janice said she was joking about that line, but she probably wasn’t!)
Tony: Tony, of course, was involved in most of the above, so there’s really no point in recapping what he did.
Final scene: The final scene is obviously going to be the part that gets the most attention. Instead of wrapping things up neatly for us fans, David Chase decided to leave it wide open. Tony, Carm, and AJ are sitting in a diner waiting for Meadow to arrive. A bunch of shady characters are also in the diner, and it seems that any one of them could pull a gun on Tony in an instant. One guy goes into the bathroom while the scene intercuts with shots of Meadow trying repeatedly to parallel park her car. The bell over the diner door jingles, and the tension is incredibly high. Just when you think something has to happen, there’s a quick cut to black. Not a fade; a smash cut — and the credits roll.
My Reaction: At first, I didn’t know what to make of that ending. Like EVERYONE else on the planet, I thought there was a problem with my cable service or something. But after checking out various television forums, I quickly realized I saw the ending as Chase intended it.
So that leaves me to ponder what Chase could possibly have meant by that ending. Some people are speculating that the smash cut and silence indicates that Tony was shot and that he is indeed dead now. I can understand this interpretation, because the show was definitely filtered through Tony’s point of view (for the most part). If he was whacked in the end, that would explain the suddenness and finality of the cut to black.
Other fans insist that this ending was another example of Chase messing with our heads. The quick cut to black didn’t mean anything other than the fact that Chase didn’t want to commit to Tony’s future one way or the other. Chase couldn’t decide if Tony should go to jail, live on in the same way, or die, so he just ended the series with everything up in the air like that.
Then there’s a third group who believe the dinner scene showed that Tony won in the end, that his life went back to normal (the normalcy of a family dinner) and that he basically got to continue on in the same way that he’s always operated.
What do I believe? Well, after the first viewing, I thought it was definitely the third option there. I figured hey, Chase is just screwing with us by trying to make this scene as tense as possible. We know there’s only a couple minutes left, so something has to happen, right? When in reality, it was just a normal dinner scene for the Soprano family.
But after watching that final scene a couple more times, I now agree with those who think Tony got whacked. The smash cut instead of a more traditional fade to black — it makes a lot of sense to me. I guess I’ll have to wait for the DVD to come out in order to listen to the commentary or whatever, but until then, I believe that T is no longer in the land of the living!