Is Tony Soprano dead?
For over a decade, fans of the HBO drama The Sopranos have debated what happened after the show ended on a precarious note. Now, David Chase, its creator, might have just let everyone in on the secret.
The debate started in 2007 when Tony Soprano raised his head from Holsten’s Restaurant onion rings in Bloomfield, New Jersey, and the screen cut to black.
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Some contend the mob boss was “whacked,” while others argue James Gandolfini’s character lived on. But Chase, 76, may have put the debate to rest.
The iconic scene scored by Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin'” was not how the show’s creator initially planned for Tony’s “death,” he said.
“[The] scene I had in my mind was not that scene. Nor did I think of cutting to black,” he told the Hollywood Reporter. “I had a scene in which Tony comes back from a meeting in New York in his car.”
“At the beginning of every show, he came from New York into New Jersey, and the last scene could be him coming from New Jersey back into New York for a meeting at which he was going to be killed,” he said.
The fate Chase intended for his lead character is not new and falls in line with previous comments, like when he called Holsten’s moment a “death scene” during a roundtable discussion, according to a report.
“Yes, I think I had that death scene around two years before the end,” he said.
He got the idea while driving, Chase said.
“I was driving on Ocean Park Boulevard near the airport, and I saw a little restaurant. It was kind of like a shack that served breakfast. And for some reason, I thought, ‘Tony should get it in a place like that.’ Why? I don’t know,” he said. “That was, like, two years before.”
However, that’s all the sentiment was: a thought, according to Chase in the book Woke Up This Morning authored by the show’s cast members.
“No. I really shouldn’t talk about it at all because when I say anything, people interpret it in some way, and then it starts up again,” he said. “For a long time, I was really upset because that’s all they talked about, they didn’t talk about the rest of the episode.”
Chase admitted he made the Emmy Award-winning character’s ending uncertain because he was annoyed by all the fans who wanted Tony’s death, according to the Hollywood Reporter.
“What was annoying was how many people wanted to see Tony killed,” he said. “They wanted to see him go face-down in linguine, you know? That bothered me.”
“And I just thought, ‘God, you watched this guy for seven years, and I know he’s a criminal,” he continued. “But don’t tell me you don’t love him in some way, don’t tell me you’re not on his side in some way. And now you want to see him killed? You want justice done? You’re a criminal after watching this s*** for seven years. That bothered me, yeah.”
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In the end, no matter where fans stand on Tony’s fate, they can follow the advice that AJ reminded the mob boss of moments before the end and “focus on the good times.”
