Tony Soprano's Fate Has Finally Been Confirmed By 'The Sopranos' Showrunner

SPOILER ALERT: This article contains spoilers for The Sopranos. Read at your own —

It may have taken roughly 15 years, a certifiably mediocre sequel, and the undivided attention of, well, pretty much every zoomer on the planet (a fixation that singlehandedly catalyzed the most cursed “Gangster's Paradise” fan cam to ever exist), but it seems we finally have a pretty damn definitive answer about what actually happened to Tony Soprano -- our favorite New Jersey mobster with a penchant for feeding the ducks by his pool –  at the end of The Sopranos. 

Yep, a decade and a half since the series finale “Made In America” first hit the small screen in 2007, Sopranos creator David Chase has finally been badgered into submission by the HBO drama's rabid fanbase decided to share what exactly went down after the screen cut to black as Tony Soprano and his family enjoyed a meal in a local diner, Journey's “Don't Stop Believin'” playing in the background –it seems as we (pretty much) all suspected, the mob boss is pretty damn dead. 

“I had no idea it would cause that much … of an uproar,” Chase recalled of the series' ambiguous ending in a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter. “What was annoying was how many people wanted to see Tony killed," he continued. "They wanted to see him go face-down in linguini, you know? That bothered me.”

Aside from offering a pretty gruesome depicting of the pasta-fueled demise of Tony Soprano in an alternate universe, Chase also shared that the iconic, sudden cut-to-black wasn't his original vision for capping off the series. Instead, he says he initially envisioned the series' protagonist coming full circle – well, at least logistically – in a callback to the series' theme song. 

“Because the scene I had in my mind was not that scene," he explained. “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.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.”

Yet like most good things in life, a drive throughout the Garden State apparently changed his mind, inspiring the highly-controversial final scene. “But I think I had this notion — I was driving on Ocean Park Boulevard near the airport and I saw a little restaurant. It was kind of like a shack that served breakfast,” he said. “And for some reason I thought, ‘Tony should get it in a place like that,’” he continued. "Why? I don’t know. That was, like, two years before."

So, folks, after years of speculation, we can finally confirm that Tony Soprano has officially Gabba-ed his last Gool. Can we please stop harassing The Sopranos' showrunners now? … And jump on the -- SPOILER ALERT -- Breaking Bad's Walter White is still alive truthers? Anyone? Maybe?

Top Image: HBO

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