“The Sopranos” Ending Explained: What Really Happened When the Screen Cut to Black — and Did Tony Actually Die?

Fans are still trying to figure out what happened at the end of The Sopranos’ series finale.

The crime drama followed mob boss Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini) as he attempted to be a family man and keep his criminal life tucked away. Over its six-season run on HBO from 1999 to 2007, viewers fell in love with the high-stakes plot lines and heart-wrenching family dynamics.

During the finale episode, titled "Made in America," Tony is having dinner at Holsten’s Diner with his wife Carmela (Edie Falco) and son A.J. (Robert Iler) while waiting for his daughter Meadow (Jamie-Lynn Sigler). As the end of the episode nears, shady characters start to walk into the diner and Tony appears to eye someone in particular right as the screen cuts to black, ending the iconic series.

Many theories persist as to what happened, whether Tony was killed or whether the cliffhanger insinuates that the mob boss would always live with the possibility of being murdered because of his dangerous profession. Some viewers even thought their cable had cut out.

“I had no idea [the ending] would [cause] that much of an uproar,” The Sopranos creator David Chase told The Hollywood Reporter in 2021. “What was annoying was how many people wanted to see Tony killed. That bothered me ... They wanted to know that Tony was killed.”

Related: The Sopranos Cast: Where Are They Now?

Chase has remained fairly ambiguous over the years as to what actually happened to his complicated lead character, telling PEOPLE in January 2024, that he really "hate[s] spoon-feeding the audience."

Here’s everything to know about The Sopranos finale and what really happened when the series cut to black.

How did The Sopranos End?

The final episode of The Sopranos shows Tony visiting family and friends, which was inspired by a scene in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. In the scene, an astronaut sees potential iterations of himself in the future.

“This simple technique, it’s always mesmerized me,” Chase said in the 2024 documentary Wise Guy: David Chase and the Sopranos. “In [The Sopranos] episode, [with] everyone he goes to see, he walks into his own POV. It made me think of time, and, I guess, approaching death or approaching something. There’s something mystical about it."

After fellow mobster Bobby Baccalieri — who’s married to Tony’s sister Janice — is killed, the mob boss visits his sibling as she tries to pick up the pieces. Tony later visits his Uncle Junior, whom he once feared, but now feels a sense of humility seeing him in a nursing home with no memory.

Tony also helps organize a successful hit during the episode that is carried out on his rival mob boss Phil Leotardo. He then walks into Holsten’s Diner to meet Carmela before their son A.J. shows up and the three wait for Meadow.

Various shady characters begin walking through the diner door — including a suspicious man in a “Members Only” jacket — as Don’t Stop Believin’ by Journey plays on the jukebox.

“What you’re watching is a lot of s--- going on. [Meadow’s] trying to park her car. There’s a lot of people, a lot of characters, the guy in the Members Only jacket. Other possible threats are walking in,” Chase said in Wise Guy: David Chase and the Sopranos.

As Tony seems to focus in on one of the potential threats, the screen dramatically cuts to black and the credits start to roll on the final episode of The Sopranos.

Did Tony Soprano die at the end of The Sopranos?

Over 15 years after the finale episode, fans are still questioning Tony's fate at the end of The Sopranos.

However, Chase has alluded to the idea that Tony died without explicitly confirming it. The show's creator seemingly admitted Tony’s death in 2019 when he was asked by The Sopranos Sessions co-author Alan Sepinwall about the series’ final scene.

“Yes, I think I had that death scene around two years before the end ... But we didn’t do that,” he said.

After accidentally referring to the scene at Holsten’s diner as “that death scene,” Chase further alluded to how he envisioned the final scene of the series as Tony’s death in a 2021 interview with THR.

“The scene I had in my mind was not that scene. Nor did I think of cutting to black,” Chase told THR in 2021. “I had a scene in which Tony comes back from a meeting in New York in his car. 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.”

Perhaps the biggest indication that Tony died was in the 2024 documentary Wise Guy: David Chase and The Sopranos, when Chase referenced a scene in the second episode of the third season. In the episode, A.J. and Meadow are having a seemingly innocuous conversation in which A.J. says he thought black represented death, which Chase references when saying why he chose to cut to black.

“Why cut to black?” Chase said. “There was that scene between Meadow and A.J. This is a long time back. He was doing his homework. ‘Woods on a Snowy Evening’ I think is the name of the poem ... Robert Frost poem. ‘I thought black meant death’ But, see, now people will say, ‘See, he admitted, Tony died.’ ”

Chase began his next sentence with “The truth is” before the documentary cut to black just like the series finale. Audiences may never have a definitive answer, but Chase has made many indications that Tony never made it out of that diner.

Were clues about the finale foreshadowed in The Sopranos?

Aside from A.J. and Meadow’s conversation about death representing black, there were other clues in The Sopranos, including in the finale episode, that could have foreshadowed Tony’s fate. One of these clues is that Adriana La Cerva, whom Chase said was one of his beloved characters, died off-screen.

“I couldn’t bear to see Adriana get shot. I couldn’t have watched that. So, we broke the style of the show. Any other victim on that show, you saw him get hit,” Chase said in Wise Guy: David Chase and Sopranos.

This is not unlike what Chase said about Tony. The show creator previously said that although he knew Tony had done horrible things, he’d grown fond of the character and was surprised fans would want to see him die on-screen.

“What was so annoying was how many people wanted to see Tony killed,” Chase told THR. “They wanted to see him go face-down in linguini, you know? That bothered me.”

Another clue Chase provided was the song choice. Fans of The Sopranos will never forget that Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’ ” played in the diner as the Soprano family reunited, potentially for the last time.

“What I was thinking about was the universe goes on and on. You may not go on and on, but the universe is going to go on and on. The movie is going to keep going,” Chase said in Wise Guy: David Chase and the Sopranos.

Another theory contends that the man in the “Members Only” jacket goes to the bathroom to get a gun and shoot Tony as he watches Meadow walk into the restaurant. During a shot-by-shot breakdown with the Director’s Guild of America, Chase revealed that he did use The Godfather scene in which Michael Corleone gets a gun in the bathroom to commit an assassination as a reference when writing the finale episode.

What has the The Sopranos cast said about the finale?

The Sopranos finale shocked not only viewers but cast members too. Michael Imperioli — who played Tony’s hot-headed “nephew” Christopher Moltisanti — said he couldn't believe the finale's final moments.

“There’s tension building in that diner scene. We’re expecting something,” Imperioli said in Wise Guy: David Chase and the Sopranos. “And then it goes to black. It was so sudden and strange. Really took everybody by surprise.”

Drea de Matteo — who played fan-favorite Adriana — was amongst the audience members who thought their cable had cut out during the episode’s closing moments.

“I started calling everybody and I’m like, ‘Yo, did my TV just go out?’ ” de Matteo said in the documentary. “And I’m thinking to myself, 'This is David ... This is exactly how he wanted to end the show. He doesn’t want anyone to know what’s going on right now.' ”

In 2017, Falco told the Television Academy Foundation that she thought her script was missing pages, before recognizing the significance of the finale’s ending.

“Then I knew in a larger part of myself that it had meaning and significance that eluded me,” she said. “I never doubted that it did have significance and meant something or was meaningful in some way because I trusted David. I know he put a lot of thought into how to end it.”

In 2019, Sigler echoed Falco’s sentiments on Andy Cohen’s Watch What Happens Live. “I think it ended perfectly,” she said. “I think that whether he died or not, people would’ve been upset or not satisfied. So I think it left it for everyone to have their own perfect ending for Tony Soprano.”

Iler said that the episode's ambiguous nature is exactly why people are still talking about the show.

“If the last scene was just Tony getting shot in the head, that would have been it,” he told Radio Times.com in 2017. “People would have talked about it for a month or two, and then it would have been over. But to have an open ended discussion still 10 years later, obviously what he did was genius.”

Lorraine Bracco — who played Tony’s therapist, Dr. Jennifer Melfi — revealed that Gandolfini himself was as shocked as those watching at home.

“I was with Jim and Jim said, ‘That’s it? That’s it?’ He couldn’t believe it,” she said in Wise Guy: David Chase and the Sopranos. “I think he was in shock like everybody else.”

Read the original article on People