On the heels of a recent interview, The Sopranos creator David Chase is clarifying some comments he made regarding Tony's death. The Sopranos premiered on HBO in 1999 and is now widely regarded as one of the greatest serial dramas of all time and is frequently credited with ushering in the Golden Age of Television. The series follows James Gandolfini as a New Jersey-based Italian-American mobster and father as he struggles to balance his family life with his role in the mafia.
Since airing its finale in 2006, The Sopranos has remained relevant due to its unusually abrupt and ambiguous ending, as the debate still rages on regarding whether or not Tony was killed at the end of the series. The debate was recently reignited by the release of the prequel movie, The Many Saints of Newark, which stars the late James Gandolfini's son Michael as a teenage Tony Soprano, though his uncle Dickie Moltisanti (Alessandro Nivola) acts as the film's central character.
During a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter, David Chase made some comments regarding The Sopranos' final scene that many misinterpreted as him confirming Tony's death. Now, film journalist Matt Zoller Seitz caught up with Chase and offered him a chance to clarify those comments. Chase tells Seitz that he did not "settle" the end of The Sopranos nor did he confirm Tony's death. Chase also asked Seitz to release a quote, which can be seen in his post below and reads:
“Everybody who believes I said Tony is dead in a Hollywood Reporter article: works for me. Now you'll stop fucking asking me.”
Click here to see the original post.
It is understandably frustrating for Chase who purposefully constructed The Sopranos finale to be ambiguous but now has been bombarded with questions regarding Tony's fate for over a decade. In a 2018 interview, Chase mentioned a "death scene" that he had in mind for Tony Soprano. Chase was asked about that quote in the recent interview with THR, but he seems to have only added to the confusion.
Chase had an idea for an ending in which Tony was killed during a meeting, though he then thought it should be in "a shack that served breakfast," but that's obviously not the ending that he went with, as the show's notorious smash cut to black does not explicitly confirm nor rule out Tony's death, and Chase has now made it clear that his recent comments do not either. Rather, it is up to each individual viewer to decide if Tony was killed during The Sopranos' final moments, or if he went on to live the rest of life constantly looking over his shoulder.
Source: Matt Zoller Seitz/Twitter