SPOILER ALERT: DETAILS OF THE SOPRANOS FINALE FOLLOW
With the controversy and puzzlement surrounding the final episode of HBO’s The Sopranos, many people have come up with various theories on the matter. Here’s a short showcase of some:
Comment #55 on a Gothamist post says:
Tony dies. Its all about looking at the earlier episodes in the series. The guy at the bar is Nick Leotardo, Phils brother or cousin. He was in one of the earlier episodes. The black guys who walk in are the guys who tried to kill tony but shot him in the ear in an earlier episode. Then if you notice tony walks into the diner and looks at the booth then the view changes to his perspective. As everyone walks in theres chimes. Carmella walks in and theres chimes, A.J. walks in and chimes, medow walks in and no chimes and it goes black. But rememer when tony and bobby are talking about what it feels like when someone gets “wacked” They say its like you dont even feel it everything probably just goes black. And thats what happened everything went black. So tony dies.
Alia Malek, one of my dad’s former students, said this:
in medieval times, staging of plays ended with different curtains. a white curtain meant death ie protagonist had died. i imagine hamlet would end with a white curtain for examle. a star-y curtain means better things, ie romance etc.
when the black curtain was dropped or “cut to black” (which is where expression comes from) audience is being signalled to “use your imagination” — and if you noticed, sopranos did not fade to black, but cut to black.
it’s so brilliant i’m getting goosebumps thinking about it… i love that ending, though i really hope the whole family is not about to get killed at the diner.
But, my personal favorite is Stephen Colbert’s ideal ending:
That Sopranos finale was such a rip-off. Here’s how it should have ended. Big mob shootout, Tony gets it in the Adam’s apple, he’s losing consciousness, then the screen does that dissolve-y, wipe-y thing, and boom, he’s in bed, waking up from a nightmare. “Wow honey, I just dreamed I spent the last eight years as a mobster in northern New Jersey.” And here’s the kicker — his wife, Carrie Bradshaw. The whole series was a Sex and the City spin-off.
I think that the second theory is most accurate, with that whole Nick Leotardo thing being just an urban legend. Personally, I follow the ideas presented in an article I still have not yet been able to find again, which said that with the camera acting like Tony’s eyes, normal people in a normal restaurant seem like hitmen, showing that Tony will spend the rest of his life looking over his shoulder.
Don’t like any of these theories? Well, go watch the finale and come up with your own. Or, just see the crucial restaurant scene below:
I find the curtain theory interesting, but what else would they have done to signal that he had or hadn’t died? Cut to pink? Or green?
I think the cut to black was just that: A cut to black.