‘Sopranos’ Creator David Chase Accidentally Spoils Tony’s Final Fate

The Sopranos‘ creator has seemingly finally confirm what really happened in the the long-debated final scene of his HBO drama. In a leaked interview for “The Sopranos Sessions,” a book about his series, David Chase hinted at Tony Soprano’s fate, The Independent reports.

“Made in America,” the final episode of The Sopranos which aired 13 years ago this week, shows Tony at a diner with this family. The restaurant scene looks like a normal outing, but it takes place in the middle of a fight between the New Jersey and New York Mafia, and there’s a hitman waiting who’s been sent out for Tony.

The final seconds of the scene cut to a blank screen with Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin'” playing. While the finale puzzled some fans, Chase accidentally gave a clue about what the cryptic ending meant for Tony.

Alan Sepinwall, “The Sopranos Sessions” co-author, asked Chase, “When you said there was an end point, you don’t mean Tony at Holsten’s [diner], you just meant, ‘I think I have two more years’ worth of stories left in me.'”

Chase slipped up with his reply, which sounds like a confirmation of Tony’s death. “Yes, I think I had that death scene around two years before the end,” he said.

“Tony was going to get called to a meeting with Johnny Sack in Manhattan, and he was going to go back through the Lincoln Tunnel for this meeting, and it was going to go black there and you never saw him again as he was heading back, the theory being that something bad happens to him at the meeting,” he continued. “But we didn’t do that.”

Co-author Matt Zoller Seitz caught the slip and called Chase out on it. “You realize, of course, that you just referred to that as a death scene,” he told The Sopranos creator.

Realizing his mistake, Chase took a long pause. “Fuck you guys,” he replied.

When The Sopranos ended in 2007, fans were divided over what the finale meant for Tony, with many firmly believing he had been whacked. Chase was sure to emphasize the ambiguity of the show’s last episode after his “death scene” slip-up. “He could have been whacked in the diner. We all could be whacked in a diner. That was the point of the scene,” he later added.

Chase has been working on a Sopranos prequel film, The Many Saints of Newark, which features a young Tony. The project has been in development since 2018, and is set to premiere March 2021.

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