Seven years after the final episode aired, we're still talking about that Sopranos ending. This week a new interview with creator David Chase claimed the mystery of Tony's fate had finally been solved, only for some backtracking from Chase hours later. So are we ever going to get an answer as to what happened in the diner?
This week David Chase was asked by Vox whether James Gandolfini’s character met his end in the smash hit show’s final episode, and his apparent answer sent fans into a frenzy when he surprised the journalist by assuring: “No he isn’t”.
Hours later though a representative for David slammed the article for being “inaccurate” insisting that Vox "misconstrued" the comments. "There is a much larger context for that statement and as such, it is not true," the statement commented.
And the fact that the statement went on to insist that to "continue to search for this answer is fruitless", pretty much sums up any hope fans may have of discovering the truth. In fact Chase has famously never given a straight answer in the seven years since the show ended.
During an appearance at the Museum of the Moving Image earlier this year, he responded to one fan's question with a typically long-winded explanation, that actually didn't explain a whole lot: "the idea was he would get killed in a diner, or not get killed, or somebody would try to kill him, or there’d be an attack... here’s what Paulie Walnuts says in the beginning of that episode. He says, ‘In the midst of life, we are in death. Or is it: in the midst of death, we are in life? Either way, you’re up the ass.’ That’s what’s going on."
Going further back, in 2012, Chase told the Associated Press: "To me the question is not whether Tony lived or died, and that's all that people wanted to know: 'Well, did he live or did he die? You didn't finish the show. You didn't answer the question.' That's preposterous. There was something else I was saying that was more important than whether Tony Soprano lived or died. About the fragility of all of it. The whole show had been about time in a way, and the time allotted on this Earth."
"All I wanted to do was present the idea of how short life is and how precious it is. The only way I felt I could do that was to rip it away. And I think people did get it. It made them upset emotionally, but intellectually they didn't follow it. And that could very well be bad execution."
In 2007, just a couple of months after the finale, The Sopranos: The Complete Book was released, which featured an interview with Chase, where he launched an angry attack on fans' reaction to the final scene: "There was so much more to say than could have been conveyed by an image of Tony facedown in a bowl of onion rings with a bullet in his head. Or, on the other side, taking over the New York mob. The way I see it is that Tony Soprano had been people's alter ego. They had gleefully watched him rob, kill, pillage, lie, and cheat. They had cheered him on. And then, all of a sudden, they wanted to see him punished for all that. They wanted ''justice.'' They wanted to see his brains splattered on the wall. I thought that was disgusting, frankly."
"But these people have always wanted blood. Maybe they would have been happy if Tony had killed twelve other people. Or twenty-five people. Or, who knows, if he had blown up Penn Station. The pathetic thing — to me — was how much they wanted his blood, after cheering him on for eight years."
Chase hasn't given us anything in the past seven years, and let's face it he's unlikely to ever give us a straight answer. The Sopranos finale and Tony's fate has and always will be open to interpretation, perhaps it's simply best to take some advice from that final scene and "focus on the good times".
Relive the end scene:
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