The Sopranos Finale Dissected

** SPOILER WARNING: IF YOU ARE A FAN OF THE SOPRANOS AND HAVE NOT YET SEEN THE ENTIRE SERIES, DO NOT READ THIS POST. I PLAN ON GOING INTO DETAIL ABOUT THE FINAL EPISODE**

There, you’ve been warned. As I mentioned in a post a few weeks ago, I am an avid fan of The Sopranos, but I never caught it while it ran on HBO, so I started buying the DVDs one or two seasons at a time and powering through them. I’ll tell you right now, it’s certainly my absolute favorite show ever. I was enthralled with it, as were many. Well the reason I bring all of this up is because I finished the series up the other day, and I was exposed, for the first time, to the last scene in the final episode. I remember back in the fall, when the episode aired, there was somewhat of an outcry about it being a travesty to the series and it was thought to be a huge letdown. Well, I’m here to try and change your thinking about all of that. At first, I didn’t like the ending at all, but I have since rewatched it a few more times, (yes, I am a huge dork).

I “got” the show for all it’s little subtle and underlying plots and hidden meanings and symbolism and everything else our 9th grade English teachers tried to tell us about, so I knew there had to be more than what it seemed. I am going to lay out a series of thoughts that I have concluded about the final scene in particular that leads me to believe that David Chase, the creator of the show, is a lot smarter than he is being given credit for.

To bring you back to the final scene, the Soprano family, minus Meadow who is having trouble parking her car outside, is in a diner in which we have never seen them before enjoying a basket of onion rings after arriving separately and coming into the diner one at a time. At the table is a 50’s style mini jukebox, and Tony has selected Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing” and it is playing throughout the scene. For the duration of the scene, the camera seems to alternate between two different views, one depicting Tony’s point of view, and one from a third person’s standpoint. We are continually getting 2-3 second pans at a few of the patrons around the diner. Every time someone comes into the diner, the bell above the door rings and Tony looks up rather sharply to see who it is . As Meadow finally gets her car parked, she runs toward the diner entrance. The bell above the door rings, and Tony looks up sharply with a look of terror on his face, and the screen cuts immediately to black and stays there for about 5 seconds.

First, let me drop this on you, I am 99% convinced that Tony Soprano was shot. You don’t want to believe it? Neither do I. You don’t think so? Consider this:

1. During the episode in Season 6 when Tony got into the fistfight with Bobby Baccala up at the lake house, there was a scene in which the two of them were out on a boat fishing and they were talking about what it might be like to get shot. After some brief discussion about it, Bobby said something like, “I bet you don’t hear anything. Everything just goes black.” This is exactly what happened in the final few seconds. As I said, the camera was alternating between Tony’s view and a third person view. The last thing we see is the look on Tony’s face as the bell above the diner door rings and then the screen goes completely black. This is on purpose and it tells me that rather than the episode being over, we endure that 5 seconds of total silence and blackness as if the view had alternated back to Tony’s point of view. He’s dead my friends.

2. The white male sitting at the counter alone who appeared to be eyeing Tony in the restaurant, and who got up and went into the bathroom, was Nicky Leotardo, Phil’s nephew. He had only appeared in one or two earlier episodes, but was in a sit-down scene with both Tony and Phil a while back. Since Phil was shot earlier in this very episode and Nicky’s father, Billy (Phil’s brother) was killed by Tony’s cousin in season 5, this leads me to believe strongly that Nicky had a heavy hand in the shooting.

3. More characters in the restaurant that tie in with the earlier episodes: One of the two black guys who came into the restaurant and also appeared to be acting suspicious was from a prior hit put on Tony during which Tony was shot in the ear, but escaped. The trucker who entered the diner was the brother of the guy whose semi load of DVD players was robbed by Christopher in Season 2. The only reason we recognize the trucker is because he was in a brief scene in which he had to identify the body of his slain brother. The boy scouts were in the train store during the scene in which Bobby was killed. EVERYTHING about this suggests and symbolizes death.

4. Although one argument against Tony being shot is the unwritten rule that you don’t whack a guy in front of his family, this went out the window when Phil was hit in front of family at the gas station, and in fact is more of an argument in favor of why they would whack Tony in front of his family – it was an eye for an eye. As we saw more and more throughout the sixth season, Phil’s crew undertook sort of a reckless abandon in the manner in which business was conducted. A lot of tradition went to hell when Phil took over, and this only further leads me to believe that Tony would not be spared the leisure of being killed away from his family.

5. Phil’s crew deliberately sold him out by attending the private sitdown with Tony where it was agreed upon that Tony’s crew had the green light to take Phil out. One might say it is reasonable to assume that Tony’s guys would do the same thing, especially when you take into consideration Paulie’s odd behavior throughout the last episode. After every conversation with Tony, especially where he voices “I live but to serve you my liege,” Paulie winces somewhat and appears to be emotionally rattled or regretful. There is something beneath the surface there, AND when you consider that he refused to take a promotion to a huge money-making job from Tony for no good reason, it becomes clear that Paulie may have known ahead of time that Tony was going to be hit, and that he was going to advance to the head of the family, especially with both Bobby and Silvio (and possibly AJ) out of the way. It is very possible that Paulie knew what was coming and simply couldn’t say anything. Paulie is also one of the men who has no long term ties with Tony other than the fact that he worked with Tony’s father. Meanwhile, Bobby was married to Tony’s sister and Sil had been friends with Tony since their childhood. This might be another reason that when Phil’s crew set out to hit Tony’s, they decided against whacking Paulie. They said they were only going to include the “key players,” those being Tony of course, Silvio, and Bobby. Bobby was dispatched of in the hobby store, and Sil was shot a few times while trying to escape with Patsy Parisi (who made a clean getaway), and Tony’s time came in the diner.

6. Tony was wearing the exact same shirt in the final restaurant scene that he was wearing when Uncle Jun’ shot him in the stomach and almost killed him. Again, symbolism.

7. Aside from being a rockin’ hit, “Don’t Stop Believing” plays a huge part in the scene. Just as the door opens and as the screen goes black, the timing of the song landed it at a point so that the final words we heard were “Don’t stop.” This, in addition to the engrossing number of people in the diner who symbolized death, may elude to the fact that Tony cannot outrun his past and despite the fact that we would prefer the character of Tony as well as the show to go on for much longer, everything must “stop” at some point. In my opinion, this provides closure on the series.

We all want that fairytale ending for shows like this in which we feel close with the characters, but it just doesn’t work that way all the time. Sure, Chase could have set the last scene to simply fade out as the Soprano family eats, but instead he made a point of mentioning the fact that Carlo, one of Tony’s guys, has “flipped” and is going to testify in a RICO hearing against Tony and others. Silvio was still in the hospital and the last we heard was that it was looking more and more like he would not fully recover. Half the damn cast is dead, and things would be swung into full blown panic if both the New Jersey crew as well as the New York crew were without leaders. This was a very anti-happy ending that ended when it should have.

Not going to lie, I have spent my afternoon well into the evening dissecting all the episodes that I could reference and watching certain scenes for subtle hints and what-nots. Maybe this whole working in the morning thing isn’t healthy for me after all.

Anyway, there is a TON of debate out there about everything I just talked about, and let me assure you, it’s only my opinion. I consider myself to be a somewhat intelligent guy, and I spent the whole series priding myself on being able to pick up on some of the little subtleties that were peppered in over seven years, but there is a remote chance that I’ve got it all wrong. If you’re a fan of the show, give me your take. If you’re not a fan of the show, I hope you didn’t just read all of this because it probably means about jack squat to you. If that is the case, I’m sorry.

One love,

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Tags: ending, final episode, finale, season 6, Sopranos

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