The Sopranos: Ending Explained

Did Tony die at the end of The Sopranos?

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Transcript provided by Youtube:

00:03
When The Sopranos series finale aired in 2007,
00:07
the abrupt cut to black left many viewers
00:09
wondering if their cable had gone out…
00:11
until after ten seconds of a silent black screen,
00:14
the credits began to roll.
00:16
Some people think the ending of
00:17
“Made in America” is one big cop out,
00:20
while others believe it’s absolutely brilliant.
00:22
What matters is we’re still talking about it
00:24
more than a decade later,
00:26
arguing over whether Tony Soprano was whacked
00:28
or simply finished his onion rings
00:30
and went home with his family.
00:32
So let’s make some sense of that final scene
00:34
and decipher what the ultimate takeaway was
00:36
in The Sopranos.
00:37
Show creator David Chase has insisted
00:53
there’s no definitive answer to whether Tony lives
00:55
or dies in the series finale.
00:57
But Chase has also said that
00:59
“If you look at the final episode really carefully,
01:03
it’s all there.”
01:04
So what evidence does “Made in America”
01:06
give us as to Tony’s fate?
01:08
First there’s the man in the Members Only jacket.
01:11
Many people think is Tony’s killer.
01:13
From his seat at the counter,
01:14
the man seems to look over at Tony twice.
01:17
This immediately makes us hyper aware of
01:19
his presence and raises our suspicions
01:21
about his motives.
01:22
Later in the scene the man goes to the bathroom —
01:25
that puts him in position to get
01:26
a clear shot at Tony.
01:28
And it’s reminiscent of the scene in The Godfather
01:30
when Michael Corleone goes into
01:32
the restaurant bathroom
01:33
to retrieve the gun hidden behind the toilet.
01:35
This happens to be Tony’s favorite movie scene ever.
01:38
[Every time we watch Godfather when Michael Corleone]
01:41
[shoots those guys at the restaurant,]
01:43
[those assholes who tried to kill his dad,]
01:46
[you sit there with your (beep) bowl of ice cream]
01:48
[and you say it’s your favorite scene of all time!]
01:50
So it would be a dramatic irony
01:52
if Tony met his end this way.
01:53
The man’s outfit could be a reference
01:55
to Eugene Pontecorvo,
01:57
who also wears a Members Only jacket
01:59
in the first episode of season six —
02:01
which is titled “Members Only”.
02:02
[Look at this guy — Members Only?]
02:05
[How long you been wearing that?]
02:07
In this episode Eugene shoots someone
02:09
in a fast food restaurant on Christopher’s orders.
02:11
So the implication is that something similar
02:13
could happen to Tony here.
02:15
The other thing is that Tony ruins Eugene’s life
02:17
by refusing to let him retire to Florida
02:19
like he wants to.
02:20
[Your Florida thing.
02:24
Tony asked me to speak to you.]
02:26
[That’s a no-go.]
02:28
So Eugene eventually kills himself.
02:31
In other words, the man in the Member’s Only jacket
02:35
automatically reminds us of how badly
02:37
Tony treated Eugene,
02:39
and more generally how many terrible things
02:41
Tony’s done to all kinds of people,
02:43
which could come back to bite him.
02:45
Finally, the “Members Only” episode
02:47
ends with Tony being shot by his uncle Junior.
02:50
So it would be fitting for the series finale
02:52
to also end with Tony being shot.
02:54
In the finale scene, there’s a close up
02:56
on Tony’s face as he stands
02:58
at the entrance of the diner,
03:00
then the camera cuts to him in a booth,
03:01
in a way that makes it seem like
03:03
he’s imagining himself there before he sits down —
03:05
or like we’ve fast-forwarded in time
03:08
without seeing Tony move,
03:09
it feels a little disorienting and surreal.
03:12
Chase was actually trying to recreate
03:14
the ambiguous feeling
03:15
of 2001: A Space Odyssey in this finale,
03:18
and he’s said that this shot is a reference
03:20
to the ending of 2001 when Bowman sees an older,
03:23
aging version of himself sitting down to eat.
03:26
In 2001 the shot might make us
03:28
reflect on the future of humanity —
03:30
here, it makes us think about the future of Tony —
03:33
could there be a more evolved,
03:35
new version of Tony Soprano in some future time?
03:38
The moment also sets up the use
03:40
of point of view shots in the scene.
03:42
We get a POV shot each time
03:44
the bell at the diner entrance rings —
03:46
we see Tony’s face look up at the door,
03:48
and then we see his perspective
03:49
as someone enters the diner.
03:51
This happens four times.
03:53
The fifth time, we only hear the bell
03:55
as Meadow enters and see Tony looking up,
03:57
then it cuts to black —
03:59
so based on the previous point of view shots,
04:01
the implication is that we’re seeing
04:03
what Tony is seeing:
04:04
and that’s black nothingness,
04:06
which suggests that he’s dead.
04:08
And something about the pacing here
04:09
makes us picture Meadow arriving
04:11
just in time to see her father get shot,
04:14
Tony dying right before he gets to see her
04:16
walk through the door.
04:18
The fullscreen of black is also
04:20
the opposite of the visual we get
04:21
when Tony wakes up from his coma
04:23
earlier in season six.
04:25
There the screen goes completely white,
04:27
symbolizing light and life.
04:29
The sudden silence that cuts off
04:31
Journey’s song is another clue.
04:34
[Don’t Stop Believin’]
04:37
It’s in line with something Bobby Bacala says
04:39
earlier in the season about what he imagines
04:42
it’s like to be assassinated.
04:43
[You probably don’t even hear it
04:44
when it happens, right?]
04:45
Tony flashes back to this moment
04:47
in the episode before “Made in America,”
04:49
[You probably don’t even hear it
04:50
when it happens, right?]
04:51
so that puts even more emphasis on it.
04:53
The silence also reminds us of Silvio’s experience
04:56
when Gerry is shot across the table from him.
05:02
In this moment the sound lowers
05:03
and Silvio doesn’t even seem to
05:05
hear the gunshot or understand what’s happened
05:07
until he sees Gerry’s blood sprayed all over him.
05:10
So this idea of “not hearing it when it happens”
05:14
seem really significant when we look at
05:15
the final moment of the series.
05:17
“Made in America” is also full of death symbolism.
05:21
The episode opens with a shot of Tony
05:23
from above as he lies sleeping,
05:25
so it looks like he’s in a casket.
05:27
He’s woken up by organ music
05:30
that sounds like it would be played at a funeral.
05:34
A few minutes in we see him peeling an orange,
05:37
which could be a reference
05:38
to The Godfather using oranges as a bad omen.
05:43
Later in the episode,
05:45
there’s a spooky orange cat
05:46
who is staring at a photo of Christopher,
05:48
who Tony killed a few episodes before.
05:51
And in the diner scene,
05:52
there’s an image of a tiger on the wall behind Tony
05:55
that reminds us of that cat.
05:57
So all of this haunting imagery represents
05:59
tha Tony can never escape the many murders
06:01
he’s committed,
06:02
and the death that will come for him sooner or later.
06:05
Then there’s the context of what’s happening in the plot.
06:08
We have to consider how likely it would be
06:10
that Tony would be assassinated at this point in time.
06:13
The second to last episode of the series is a bloodbath
06:16
as Tony’s crew basically goes to war with
06:19
the Lupertazzi family
06:20
Ultimately the conflict is resolved
06:22
when the Lupertazzis turn on their boss Phil,
06:24
meets with Tony and his crew,
06:26
and all but gives permission
06:27
for the Soprano crew to take Phil out.
06:30
[Do what you gotta do.]
06:34
[Phil!!!]
06:35
So it would seem that Tony’s out of the woods…
06:37
but it’s also possible that the Lupertazzi family
06:40
got Tony’s guard down
06:41
so they could eliminate him as well,
06:43
especially now that he’s been weakened
06:45
by losing some of his men.
06:47
If Tony does die without us seeing it happen,
06:50
this is in keeping with how The Sopranos
06:52
defies the form of the traditional mafia story onscreen–
06:56
in one of those classic mob movies,
06:58
the hit would be a suprise,
06:59
then we’d get the satisfaction
07:01
of seeing what’s happening from the outside,
07:04
understanding the plot against the character.
07:05
[You fingered Sonny for the Barzini people.]
07:07
[Ahhh that little farce you played with my sister.]
07:13
[You think that could fool a Corleone?]
07:15
But since the show is putting us in Tony’s head,
07:18
we experience it as he would…
07:22
If Tony were taken out he’d have to not know it’s coming,
07:25
he’d never understand the why or the who or the how,
07:28
his life would just be over without warning.
07:30
So based on Chase’s statement that
07:32
“it’s all there” in this episode,
07:34
the evidence does make it seem like
07:36
Tony was killed in the final scene.
07:38
But it’s not certain…
07:40
and Chase has repeatedly refused to confirm
07:42
that Tony dies at this moment.
07:44
This very intentional ambiguity is an artistic choice
07:48
to force the viewer to decide for themselves.
07:55
Even if Tony isn’t killed in “Made in America,”
07:58
it’s pretty clear that ultimately things
07:59
won’t end well for him —
08:01
and he knows it.
08:02
[There’s two endings for a guy like me.]
08:05
[High-profile guy.
08:06
Dead, or in the can.]
08:08
[My estimate historically,]
08:10
[80% of the time it ends up in the can]
08:13
[like Johnny Sack or on the embalming table
08:15
at Cozarelli’s.]
08:16
All through the series we see the tragedy
08:18
that strikes people connected to the mob,
08:20
characters go to prison, become informants,
08:23
despair over how the mafia has wrecked their dreams,
08:25
or get killed by people they thought were friends.
08:28
We know that even if Tony isn’t whacked,
08:30
he’s likely going to be indicted.
08:32
[80 to 90% chance you’ll be indicted.]
08:35
[That (beep) gun charge,]
08:37
[I get sick when I think of it.]
08:40
[Plus interstate fraud and if Carlo starts talking,]
08:43
[homicide–]
08:44
The FBI team trying to build a case against him
08:47
are really racing against time,
08:49
trying to put him behind bars
08:50
before he gets himself killed.
08:53
So either way Tony won’t escape
08:55
the inevitable end of mob life.
08:57
Regardless of what happens after the cut to black,
09:00
Tony will live his remaining moments
09:02
on earth in the shadow of dread.
09:04
He seems relatively relaxed in the diner scene —
09:07
but we as viewers are holding our breath,
09:10
even though there’s no concrete reason to feel afraid.
09:12
It’s sort of amazing how Chase gets us
09:14
so invested in Meadow’s attempts at parallel parking.
09:18
This is such a memorable aspect of the scene…
09:20
it’s a perfect example of the mundane tension
09:23
we feel throughout The Sopranos.
09:25
On one level drawing out Meadow’s parking
09:27
it’s Chase’s way of playing with us because
09:29
he knew millions of people would watch the finale,
09:32
waiting for something big and terrible to happen.
09:35
And as we watch, we find ourselves worried
09:37
that each member of the family is in danger
09:39
until they arrive at the diner.
09:41
So part of our anxiety is that
09:43
we want to see them all together one last time,
09:46
and we never get to.
09:47
Meanwhile, the tension we feel is also a testament
09:50
to how successful the show has been
09:52
in putting us in Tony’s shoes.
09:54
[You eat and you play,]
09:55
[and you pretend like there’s not a giant piano]
09:56
[hanging by a rope just over the top of your head]
09:59
[every minute of every day.]
10:01
That worry we feel on his behalf
10:03
is what he lives with every day.
10:04
[When you’re Tony Soprano,]
10:06
[even going out for ice cream with your family]
10:09
[is fraught with looking over your shoulder.]
10:12
[This is his own personal hell that he lives with,]
10:14
[who knows, it could’ve been that, maybe not.]
10:17
There’s another theory that cutting to black
10:19
doesn’t represent Tony’s death, but the viewer’s.
10:22
The moment cuts us off from the protagonist
10:24
we’ve spent so much time with and just leaves us hanging.
10:27
[I think what David was saying on the one hand]
10:28
[is ‘there’s no more TV.
10:30
TV’s over.
10:31
Goodbye.]
10:32
Chase has said that many viewers
10:33
went from getting catharsis from Tony’s bad behavior,
10:36
to having a perverse desire to see him brutally murdered.
10:40
In his words,
10:41
“They wanted to see his brains splattered on the wall.
10:43
I thought that was disgusting, frankly.”
10:46
So part of the rationale for the ending
10:47
was to deny us that feeling of being
10:50
somehow better than Tony,
10:51
even though we’ve been identifying with him all this time,
10:54
not letting us derive some twisted satisfaction
10:57
from seeing his end.
10:59
The final scene includes the viewer
11:01
in an experience of death,
11:02
to remind us that this final,
11:04
mysterious moment is the same for everyone.
11:07
Tony’s uncle Junior is the outlier,
11:09
the exception to the rule that mob life
11:11
has to end in jail or early death —
11:14
Junior actually lives long enough
11:15
to waste away in an old folks home —
11:17
but we see this exchange in the series finale.
11:20
[You and my dad.
11:25
You two ran north Jersey.]
11:31
[We did?]
11:33
Even if you somehow make it out of the mafia alive,
11:36
no one escapes aging and death.
11:39
As Chase has said,
11:40
“Whether this is the end here,
11:42
or not, it’s going to come at some point
11:44
for the rest of us.”
11:48
So what’s the meaning of the episode title
11:51
“Made in America”?
11:53
Well, many classic mob stories
11:55
are really commentaries on the American dream.
11:57
[America has made my fortune.]
11:59
[And I raised my daughter in the American fashion.]
12:03
And The Sopranos adds its own layer
12:05
of commentary to that American Dream question.
12:08
Tony fits the image of a good All-American dad
12:11
who mans the grill at backyard get-togethers —
12:14
he’s provided his family with all possible
12:16
material comforts —
12:17
[Spend $5,000 on a set of drums, SAT tutor, coffeemaker…]
12:24
but he’s done that through being a cold-blooded murderer.
12:26
So the version of the American dream he’s achieved
12:28
is familiar and “normal” on the surface,
12:32
but dark and corrupted at the center.
12:34
AJ gets at this truth early in the series finale,
12:37
when he’s upset over what he sees
12:39
as the false promise of America.
12:40
[This is still where people come to make it.]
12:43
[It’s a beautiful idea.
12:45
And then what do they get?]
12:47
[Bling?
12:48
And come-ons for shit they don’t need
12:49
and can’t afford?]
12:50
Chase has explained that he went with the episode title
12:53
“not only because Tony’s a made guy,
12:55
and all these guys are made guys,
12:57
but also because it was about
12:58
the extreme amount of comfort Americans have,
13:01
especially people with money.”
13:02
He was thinking of how the war with Iraq
13:04
was in fact “made in America,”
13:06
and how in the episode Tony and Carmela
13:08
are able to stop AJ from signing up
13:10
for the military like he wants to,
13:12
simply because they have money.
13:14
[We don’t feel joining the army is in your best interest.]
13:17
So in some ways, the episode is an indictment
13:19
of America’s materialism
13:21
and the darkness we’re willing to turn a blind eye to
13:24
in order to preserve our comfortable way of life.
13:27
The diner scene mirrors the ending
13:29
of the season one finale,
13:31
when Tony and his family also had dinner together
13:33
at Artie’s restaurant.
13:34
This was a genuinely warm,
13:36
happy evening that inspired Tony to raise a toast.
13:39
[Someday soon you’re gonna have families of your own.]
13:43
[And if you’re lucky,]
13:46
[you’ll remember the little moments.]
13:49
[Like this.
13:53
That were good.]
13:57
But when AJ references this moment
13:59
in “Made in America,”
14:01
Tony can’t remember it.
14:02
[Focus on the good times.]
14:03
[Don’t be sarcastic.]
14:04
[Isn’t that what you said one time –]
14:06
[‘try to remember the times that were good’?]
14:09
[I did?]
14:10
So the contrast between these two scenes
14:11
is really striking —
14:13
it shows how far Tony’s declined spiritually
14:16
over the course of the series.
14:18
And while the first scene presumably ended
14:20
with the Soprano family heading home together,
14:22
this one may well have ended with Tony shot to death
14:25
in front of his wife and kids.
14:26
Still, the song that Tony chooses
14:28
on the jukebox is very significant —
14:31
“Don’t Stop Believin”
14:32
transforms these mundane moments
14:34
between him and his family
14:36
into a subtly uplifting and affirmative portrait.
14:39
The hopeful song imparts the idea that in the end,
14:42
this everyday, non-descript,
14:44
even boring family time
14:45
might be what matters the most.
14:47
So even in its final moments
14:48
the show veers away from the traditional mafia story
14:51
which presents a romanticized,
14:53
glamorous view of family.
14:55
By setting the final scene in a classic diner,
14:58
playing an all-American song,
14:59
and making the Sopranos look like
15:00
a very regular American family,
15:02
the show does end up affirming the value of family.
15:05
Chase has said that for him,
15:07
the song really holds the ultimate message of the finale.
15:10
He says, “There are attachments we make in life,
15:13
even though it’s all going to come to an end,
15:15
that are worth so much,
15:16
and we’re so lucky to have been able to experience them.
15:19
Life is short.
15:20
Either it ends here for Tony or some other time.
15:22
But in spite of that, it’s really worth it.
15:24
So don’t stop believing.”
15:26
In a sense, what Chase is saying
15:27
is almost an extension of Tony’s
15:29
“remember the good times” philosophy,
15:31
even if Tony’s forgotten his own wisdom.
15:34
So while the ending of The Sopranos
15:35
seems far from optimistic,
15:37
the whole point is to make us value life more
15:40
by showing us how quickly it can be ripped away.
15:42
If you’re always in danger like Tony is,
15:45
all you can ever do is cherish
15:46
the good moments before they’re gone.
15:48
[In the midst of death, we are in life.]
15:50
[Or is it the other way around?]
15:53
It’s Debra.
15:54
And Susannah.
15:55
And you’re watching ScreenPrism.
15:56
Thank you guys so much for watching,
15:58
If you like this video,
15:59
please subscribe for more insights
16:01
about all of your favorite movies and shows.
16:04
down there!

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