If you’re like what seems like half the world, you watched the last episode of the Sopranos, one of the most beloved cable shows ever on television, end it’s seven season run just a few weekends ago.  What’d you think?  I know that as my boyfriend sat and watched the last nail biting five minute diner scene we kept waiting for the guy in the members only jacket to pop Tony, but I kept thinking to myself that David Chase the creator may not have wanted his main character Tony to be killed onscreen like that, so I did have a feeling that some sort of trick might be played on the viewer where an onscreen offing was not viewable, but I didn’t know that it would just cut to a blank screen.

Initially my boyfriend and I thought, Oh well, Tony made it out ok, the whole point of the scene was to show that it was an ordinary day.  But is that really the case?  Many people started flapping their gums after the infamous scene though, it seemed a couple days after the show, that they were suspicious that the ending meant that Tony actually did get popped, he just went to black because that’s how he told Bobby it would feel. 

I have to hand it to people, they sure do think about stuff, because honestly I hadn’t thought about it that way until I heard the theories coming out that Tony did actually get offed and that was Chases clever way of having the viewer make up their own killing in their mind, but honestly I hadn’t the slightest clue when the scene was actually rolling that this might be the show’s intention. 

I thought “oh well, that’s cool I guess, they left the show open for a movie or even more episodes some day”, but didn’t really think that it meant Tony went to mobster heaven in those last fateful moments.  It has been hinted that this is the intention, although Chase himself remains mum on the subject.  What do you think?  Is Tony Soprano dead or alive?  Does it matter?