Where were you when the screen went black? The Sopranos celebrated its 25th anniversary in January 2024, and the show’s finale is still one of the most divisive in television history.
After six seasons, 13.43 million viewers tuned into the HBO show’s final episode, titled “Made in America,” in June 2007.
The episode kicked off with the iconic intro, set to “Woke Up This Morning” by Alabama 3, and then the action started. Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini) attempted to end a mob war with Lupertazzi crime family boss Phil Leotardo (Frank Vincent) by getting his location from the FBI. When Agent Harris (Matthew Servitto) disclosed that he didn’t know where Leotardo was, Tony went to see his family in their safe house before they attended the funeral of Bobby Baccalieri (Steve Schirripa).
After a failed attempt on Tony’s life, a member of Leotardo’s crew tried to negotiate a truce. Tony, however, still ordered a hit on Leotardo’s life to knock him out as head of the Lupertazzi family.
With loose ends seemingly tied up, Tony moved his family back into their New Jersey home. Tony was informed that he would likely be indicted for his criminal activity, so he offered his leadership position to Paulie “Walnuts” Gualtieri (Tony Sirico). Tony then visited his dementia-ridden Uncle Junior (Dominic Chianese) before meeting his family at a diner. Tony sat down with Carmela (Edie Falco) and son A.J. (Robert Iler) as they waited for daughter Meadow (Jamie-Lynn Sigler), who was parking her car. Tony could be seen watching the door as every patron entered. The final time he looked at the door, the screen faded to black.
The abrupt ending left viewers wondering about Tony’s fate. A quarter-century after the show’s premiere, fans still want a definitive answer.
The show’s creator, David Chase, shared his feelings about the controversial final scene during a 2021 interview. Chase admitted that he never intended for the screen to fade to black — but he did want Tony to die.
“The scene I had in my mind was not that scene. Nor did I think of cutting to black. I had a scene in which Tony comes back from a meeting in New York in his car,” Chase told The Hollywood Reporter. “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.”
From Chase’s perspective, Tony did not make it out of the finale alive. In fact, the creator found it “incredible” that more people were talking about The Sopranos finale than current events at the time when it aired.
“I had no idea it would be that much of an uproar. And was it annoying? What was annoying was how many people wanted to see Tony killed. That bothered me,” he added. “They wanted to know that Tony was killed. They wanted to see him go face-down in linguini, you know? … That bothered me, yeah.”
Days later, however, Chase claimed that his original THR interview actually didn’t definitively answer the question of whether Tony lived or died. “Spoke to David Chase about @THR claiming that in a recent interview, he ‘settled’ the end of the Sopranos,” writer Matt Zoller Seitz tweeted in November 2021. “He did not. He asked me to release this quote: ‘Everybody who believes I said Tony is dead in a Hollywood Reporter article: works for me. Now you’ll stop f–king asking me.’”
So basically, in another 25 years, viewers might still be debating this topic.
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