David Chase tells Alan Sepinwall:
"I have no interest in explaining, defending, reinterpreting, or adding to what is there," he says of the final scene.
"No one was trying to be audacious, honest to God," he adds. "We did what we thought we had to do. No one was trying to blow people's minds, or thinking, 'Wow, this'll (tick) them off.' People get the impression that you're trying to (mess) with them and it's not true. You're trying to entertain them."
So Sepinwall offers his own theories:
Theory No. 1 (and the one I prefer): Chase is using the final scene to place the viewer into Tony's mindset. This is how he sees the world: every open door, every person walking past him could be coming to kill him, or arrest him, or otherwise harm him or his family. This is his life, even though the paranoia's rarely justified. We end without knowing what Tony's looking at because he never knows what's coming next.
Theory No. 2: In the scene on the boat in "Soprano Home Movies," repeated again last week, Bobby Bacala suggests that when you get killed, you don't see it coming. Certainly, our man in the Members Only jacket could have gone to the men's room to prepare for killing Tony (shades of the first "Godfather"), and the picture and sound cut out because Tony's life just did. (Or because we, as viewers, got whacked from our life with the show.)
One of my readers also suggested the latter theory in a comment on an earlier post, proving once again that I've got some very smart readers. Personally, however, I'm inclined towards theory # 1. The war was over. We know of no one who was gunning for Tony at the time. Plus, hasn't a major theme of The Sopranos been decline? Tony's world is smaller, less glamorous, less rewarding, and much more dangerous than the days when his dad and uncle ran North Jersey (a point brought home forcefully by Tony's visit to Junior's asylum). Looking over your shoulder while having dinner in an ice cream parlor is a pretty big step down from the "good old days."
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