Why you're right and wrong about the ending of The Sopranos (and why it doesn't really matter either way)
We're not making a Western here
I knew how The Sopranos ended long before I ever watched the series.
It's been endlessly parodied, mocked, and lamented in every form of media known to man for it's infamous use of a sudden cut to black in the middle of the
But, having binged the series in several stints over the last year, I'm here to tell you that EVERYONE has missed the point.
The final scene of the Sopranos sees titular New Jersey mob boss and champion mouth breather, Tony Soprano, meeting his family in a diner.
Fresh off the back of a bloody spat with the New York families which saw Steven Van Zandt fall into a bullet-induced coma, it's a moment of peace after a lucky escape from a situation which had threatened to spiral hopelessly out of control (as opposed to just mostly out of control).
Tony's battered, bruised, and undoubtedly massively weakened - but the immediate threat is over.
Time for some onion rings 🤤
He arrives first, picks a table, and puts on the Journey cover of the Glee Cast's smash hit "Don't Stop Believin'" on the jukebox.
The diner is busy.
A young couple sits at one booth, a man in a baseball cap sits alone at another. In the corner, a scout leader brings over some food to his troop.
As Tony sits, the bell above the door rings to announce someone new entering the building - each time it does, he looks up to see if it's his wife or children.
Ding.
The first woman to enter is not Tony's wife or child. Although she does look weirdly like his sister.
I don't think that's meant to be relevant, just similar hair.
Anyway.
Ding.
She's followed by Tony's long-suffering wife and undeserving champion of far too many ‘Most Hated TV Characters’ lists, Carmela Soprano.
She sits, informing Tony that the two Soprano children are separately on their way, and the couple share a few words about what looks good on the menu, and the latest mobster to 'flip'.
Ding.
The door swings open again, Tony looks up.
Two men enter. One is Tony's son, AJ.
The other is a stranger (who will make you briefly question why Volodymyr Zelenskyy has wandered into a bar in New Jersey) with a slightly vacant look on his face. He walks with purpose, shoving the door open with a straight arm, and never pausing to look around. He knows where he's headed.
(It's the bar)
AJ strolls over to his family, sits down, and delivers one of the all-time great lines:
“Mmm...onion rings”
The family shares a few words in which Tony forgets something he said in season 1 when he was slightly less of a monster. Whatever. Something something character development. Yawn.
And then two things happen.
The final member of the Soprano family, Meadow, arrives outside. She’s having trouble parallel parking.
She’s just like me, for real.
At the same time, the guy who looks shockingly like the future president of Ukraine starts getting shifty.
He glances over at the Sopranos’ table a couple of times, then gets up from his seat and heads to the toilet, leaving his drink at the bar.
This is visual language we’ve seen countless times before over the course of the show, and it usually ends one way - with a hole in the head and a half-hearted funeral.
Then, just as the tension is at breaking point, Meadow finally manages to park her car, and makes a dash across the road towards the diner.
Tony takes one final look up from his plate, and the screen cuts to black, bringing 8 years of top-tier TV to a whiplash-inducingly abrupt end.
Most fans seem to have firmly agreed that the implication here is that Tony gets shot at this moment, probably by the man who disappeared into the toilets.
If this is you, I’m here to tell you that you’re missing the point.
TV has conditioned audiences to expect a particular flavour of hard, definitive endings - Dawn comes back and kisses Tim, Rachel makes it off the plane, and no one has a better story than Bran The Broken.
(Literally anyone had a better story than Bran The Broken, Tyrion)
And so, fans of the Sopranos have spent the last 20 years attempting to piece together all the ‘clues’ in the final episode to figure out exactly what ‘happens’.
But what happens is already there, on the screen. The ending is the ending.
In fact, you’re doing the ending. It’s all very meta.
All that has physically happened in the final scene is Tony and his family going to a diner, and some other people also come in and out of that diner.
That’s it.
No one has actually done anything to suggest anything sinister beyond looking around a bit and going into the bathrooms.
And yet, the countless scenes of ‘whackings’ earlier in the series have trained the audience to see something as simple as the camera lingering on a man doing nothing as proof that he’s an assassin or an FBI agent or a member of a rival gang.
But those scenes have nearly always been from the perspective of the person with the gun hidden under their jacket - we know what’s about to happen, and the tension comes from the anticipation of the inevitable crossing of the line.
Here, we do not know that it’s coming.
We just know it could be.
And that is the ending of The Sopranos.
Tony Soprano, after sinking to his absolute lowest point, has backed himself into a corner where the rest of his days will be spent trying to guess if the guy at the bar is here to kill him, or just here to get a drink.
It doesn’t really matter if the moment shown in the final episode is Tony’s actual final moment, he might keep going for years at this point, but this is his life now.
This is it.
The frantic mental gymnastics that fans have been performing over tiny minute details is Tony’s fate, every day of his life until one day his fears come true and he ends up in cuffs or the ground.
It’s paranoia, seeing threats at every turn, practically powerless to do anything about it. What’s he going to do? Start shooting at anyone who sits at a bar?
Obviously not, be serious.
But the final scene tricks the viewer into falling into that same mental trap as Big T himself.
Nothing actually happens - but the near universal takeaway seems to be that he is doomed.
It’s, frankly, incredible visual storytelling that takes advantage of the fact that you’ve (probably) seen the previous 6 seasons of mobster antics to manipulate you into seeing something where there is nothing.
And the nothing is the something.
Get it?
So, now that’s settled, you can all stop bugging David Chase for a definitive answer to ‘what happened to Tony Soprano?’
He already showed you, 17 years ago.
This article is so cool! Would love if you could discuss worms in a future article 🙏