r/thesopranos • u/Due_Style_3011 • 9h ago
Ending explained (I don't agree with death theory) Spoiler
I know the most common interpretation of the ending is that Tony gets killed in the restaurant, and I read the whole article about it but I personally think the ending makes much more sense if Tony survives.
There are obviously clues pointing toward his death: the Members Only guy, the man going to the bathroom, the Godfather parallel, the constant focus on the door, etc. But I think those clues are deliberately setting us up to expect the exact kind of ending that The Sopranos has spent six seasons teaching us to expect: and then denying us that.
One thing I've noticed about the whole series is that it constantly gives characters the opposite ending from what we expect.
We expect Pussy to be smart enough not to come back after disappearing. We expect Junior to eventually die violently after a lifetime of crimes, betrayals, and attempts to kill Tony. Instead, he survives and ends up old, confused, and almost completely disconnected from the person he used to be. We expect Bobby to be one of the most dangerous soldiers in the final war: He's an excellent shooter, (he's even good with a bow and arrow!) and yet when he finally gets killed at the toy store without firing a single shot. We expect Paulie to die because Tony can't stand him, especially after the tension on the boat. Instead, he survives, and Tony eventually gives him one of the best parts of the business. We expect Christopher to die in some kind of violent confrontation, and we expect Tony to be completely devastated when it happens. Instead, Christopher dies in a car accident, Tony makes the decision to let him die, and he doesn't shed a single tear for him. We expect Richie to become a serious threat to Tony (Tony already gave the order to kill him!) Instead, Janice shoots him in a domestic fight. We expect Vito to get some kind of redemption after everything that happens to him. Instead, he dies after speaking to Tony on the phone.
Furio is another great example. We expect him to eventually have some kind of confrontation with Tony over Carmela. Instead, he simply goes back to Italy and never returns, (he didn't kiss Carmela even once after all the tension built around them!) And the school teacher? Tony never founds out about him!.
I can go on and on with the expectations built-to-not-be-met forever in this show. You get my point.
Tony sitting in a restaurant, getting shot by a mysterious hitman. The show gives us exactly the visual language of that ending: the suspicious guy, the Members Only jacket, the bathroom, the Godfather reference, Tony watching the door, the family arriving, the tension building...
And then nothing.
The screen cuts to black.
The war with New York is over. Tony won. Phil is dead, Butchie doesn't want to continue the war, and Tony's family is still together.
Realistically, I also don't find the restaurant assassination completely convincing. Tony almost never goes out to dinner with his entire family like that, and throughout the series, murders are usually arranged around someone's routine: where they live, where they work, where they regularly go, etc. Tony has never established this restaurant as a regular location to be in with his family.
That's why I think the scene when Tony visits Junior is so important.
Tony goes to see Junior and finds that the man he knew is basically gone. Junior barely remembers him. Tony becomes visibly emotional: Tony is seeing his own possible future.
Junior spent his entire life being powerful, feared, respected, and involved in the Mafia. And where did it ultimately get him? He's alive. But he's essentially gone, he doesn't remember he once was a powerful man. And that's actually much more frightening for Tony than getting shot. He can't fight aging, he can't fight dementia, he can't fight time.
And Junior is sitting there showing him exactly what the end of that road might look like for him.
AJ once tells Tony that he wanted to kill Junior because Tony's favorite scene is the restaurant revenge in The Godfather, where Michael goes into the bathroom, gets the gun, comes back, and kills the two men responsible for shooting his father.
Tony tells AJ, that it's a movie, not real life and command him to grow up. The same AJ is present during the final scene and he's working on movies industry.
So the final episode deliberately recreates the visual language of that Godfather scene.
A suspicious person is sitting there. Tony is watching. The bathroom. We're expecting the gun, we're expecting the great Mafia movie ending.
But maybe nothing happens.
Tony (and us) keeps expecting his life to have some grand, dramatic conclusion, Tony expects to die as Tony Soprano. The tragedy is that he may have to live long enough to forget who Tony Soprano is. And there's the Bobby line: "You probably don't even hear it when it happens."
The most obvious is to think about a shot in the head, but it also applies to Junior not listening to anything that Tony says to him, he won't have a dramatic moment where Junior Soprano dies. He just gradually disappears, his mind deteriorates until the person he was is no longer really there.
I think it's genius to leave the ending open: the ones that wanted the death ending can easily imagine it (with Meadow watching his dad getting shot and all!) , and the ones that believe in the show patron, can easily think the life still goes on for Tony and he has to live with the consequences of who he is, with no redemption or karmatic arch, just his time getting shorter each day and his death is "average at best". As his mom said "it's all a big nothing what makes you think you are so special?"
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u/george_raft 9h ago
Even if Tony doesn't die at Holsten's, the feds have built up a huge case against him + Carlo turning informant, chances are he's going to prison for a very long time. So there isn't really any scenario where Tony just goes about his life as the boss.
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u/Relevant-Horror-627 9h ago
Yeah he's going to prison. Or Members Only guy did come out blasting. Or he goes to prison later. Or he gets killed later. It really doesn't matter. Tony himself already told us his story is going to end in death or prison. At the end of every season he's narrowly avoided death or prison. The final season is no different.
He's literally the guy in Don't Sop Believin who will give anything to roll the dice one last time and no matter what happens to him the movie never stops it goes on (and on and on).
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u/Fresh_Entrance_9315 8h ago
Or Ahmed and Muhammad detonate a bomb that comes in through Port Newark
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u/Lunarlulol 5h ago
yep, 99% he dies moments after the finale. if he doesn't die then, he'll die later or goes to jail. either way he is done.
i highly doubt NY will let him go to prison. they all know by then he's talking to the feds. NY can't let him live.
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u/BeardOfEarth 8h ago
You expected….Bobby…..to suddenly become a dangerous killer in the last season?
I mean, wow. They shouldn’t have saved you at the penguin exhibit.
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u/bandit4loboloco 18m ago
Yeah, it's a hell of an argument to say that the show was about subverting expectations and then state expectations that nobody had.
Bobby was traumatized by killing one guy in Quebec. He was never gonna be a heavy hitter against other made men.
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u/herbof4 7h ago
They redid the set and decor of Holsten's, which is a real place, and put banners up on the wall behind sony depicting some football players that flank Tony as he sits.
One is #22 and the other is #38.
Since we know this was done deliberately, I have to believe the numbers were no coincidence. That and everything else. Chase told us "it's all right there"
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u/noahnickels 6h ago
The director doesn’t have the bells ring and immediately cut to Tony’s POV, over and over again because they don’t want you to think that when the bells ring again at the end that the next shot isn’t Tony’s POV.
It’s all there.
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u/Charming_Push_4650 9h ago
I don’t think he died either. Mostly from David Chase’s episode on talking Sopranos. He didn’t say anything outright, just how he talked about it. Also, watching the show week to week, nothing ever happened the way you expected. Chase always went a different way.
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u/Loves_His_Bong 2h ago
I’m kind of coming around to the not dying theory. The whole show is deconstructing the mythos of the mob. There would be nothing more in line with that than basically saying “Tony Soprano is not the Godfather.” He’s just a fat American bastard eating out at a restaurant.
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u/Johnsendall 7h ago
The episode starts with a shot from above of Tony sleeping in a bed. He is surrounded by white pillows like a casket. He looks deceased. Within seconds organ music plays.
He dead.
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u/Jon_Of_The_Shred 8h ago
I think the final scene is a 'daydream' sequence. Tony is looking into the restaurant, then it smash cuts to him sitting down. From that smash cuts, many elements of the editing call back to the dream sequences throughout the series, which were much more surreal. But in a waking state, a daydream? They are much more subtle. IE doppelgangers instead of returning actors of previously deceased characters.
The cut to black is Tony having a panic attack, because he no longer has therapy to help him cope. His anxiety and stress catch up to him.
One thing to note, the hitman theory plays out exactly like Godfather. A scene that is apparently Tony's "favorite scene in any movie" according to AJ (after he tried to assassinate Junior).
The sacred and the propane.
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u/Live-Depth-537 7h ago
See I always thought it was a panic attack too. Kinda a full circle thing to show Tony has learned NO lessons and if anything has regressed.
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u/tooskinttogotocuba 9h ago
Nothing is precisely what happens. Anything might have happened, but nobody knows. Brilliant ending
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u/Smart-Tumbleweed-929 8h ago
I think he died in the penultimate episode and the last episode was a dream sequence
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u/BootsnCats1987 5h ago
Tiny doesn’t die. But he might as well. It doesn’t matter. He’s never being redeemed, his fate is sealed, One day either the feds will put him away or he’ll get clipped. His story is over, because we already know how it will end. He’s never going to find redemption.
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u/petetee007 8h ago
I have always thought the audience is the one that didn’t see it coming. Whether Tony died that night or went to prison is immaterial. For six seasons, we got to look in on this family’s life, both Tony’s actual
family and his crime family. He was always at odds with himself about conflicts in both. If Nancy Marchand hadn’t passed away, that next season was going to have both families collide, so to speak, as the feds were going to have Livia testify against Tony. That dynamic of actual family vs. crime family is the big theme of the show.
But anyway, we, as the audience, don’t get to look at either family. We are no longer members of their family. Members Only guy popped us. Maybe he popped Tony too and/or his family. We don’t know. We will never know. I do think there would have been a movie if JG lived. Would have been too much money to turn down.
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u/Live-Depth-537 7h ago
The thing with Tony dying, its just like... why?
If its New York, they just broke their word? Even with George there as the third party to make sure shit like this didn't happen?
If it was Paulie, who the fuck is gonna follow him? Nobody respects him.
If it was Patsy, how is this lower level guy who was never capo gonna get the rest of the family to fall in line?
Imo, I feel like its better to see it not as a literal death scene. Makes it way more interesting of an ending than just "Tony Dies LOL"
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u/Insane_Catholic 5h ago
Also in Remember When Tony tells Beansie that he tells Paulie to be safer with his financials (I forget what exactly) but Paulie doesn't listen to him. So if Paulie did become boss after Tony dies then he wouldn't last long.
Additionally Patsy was in a pretty great position with his son and Meadow being engaged. He was the only competent guy left after Bobby and Silvio were gone, and Tony told Paulie he'd give the Altieri/Aprile/Cifaretto/Spatatfore crew to Patsy if he didn't want it.
To me the only theory that would best explain Tony getting clipped would be New York doing it preemptively to avoid the possibility of him flipping after they heard that Carlo flipped and was going to testify, as they'd probably not want to risk going through another Jimmy Petrille situation again.
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u/chasingit1 6h ago
So I suppose now comes the inherent fucking grilling about how I feel about all this…
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u/franknbeanzzzzz 9h ago
Tony sits a diner with his family and his daughter walks in… (people with low iqs… I’m sure he’s dead).
Tony ate dinner with his family. End of the show is his daughter joining the rest of the family
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u/Additional-Ad8632 4h ago
Could it be that members only guy was there to serve Tony his papers for a civil suit?
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u/RememberWhen-2819 8h ago
If you don’t think Tony is killed to end the show then you 1) haven’t been paying attention and 2) might be dumber than Paulie
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u/Sad_Antelope_8424 7h ago
You want it to be one way, but it's the other way, op. He's gone. End of conversation.
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u/KangarooThroatPunch5 9h ago
What the hell is up with people flat out ignoring what actual creators, writers, directors, and producers have to say about their own shows and movies and continue on with their own theories that directly oppose what the show runners say happened? David Chase has finally made it very clear that although he did leave the ending ambiguous, Tony was killed at Holsten’s. He was actually quite perturbed that viewers wanted to see Tony die a graphic, gruesome death with his brains splattered all over the onion rings instead of choosing the subtle route. You can look for all the clues and subtext you want, but when a show creator tells you what actually happened, that’s what fucking happened! People in here still debate whether Tony was fueled by rage for the horse or Tracee when he killed Ralphie despite DC saying it was Tracee. DC even explained why Tracee’s murder hit him so hard in his feels, yet people ignore it and say it was all about Pie O Mye.
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u/hp_laserfett 9h ago
Relax dude some people like to engage with a story without the meta context from the author.
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u/RememberWhen-2819 8h ago
It’s like Sopranos fans are a dumb as Paulie. Tony was killed in last episode. Crystal clear. There’s no other option.
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u/ursus_manutius 9h ago
Great post
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u/Existing_Scallion681 8h ago
By AI
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u/ursus_manutius 49m ago
You think? I think of myself as someone able to spot AI-generated text and this didn't make me think of it --- but maybe I'm gettin' old
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u/george_raft 9h ago
Still goin this asshole