The big entertainment news Wednesday came from Ezra Klein’s Vox.com with its ridiculous scoop that “Sopranos” creator David Chase had finally revealed the biggest non-mystery in the television universe, “Did Tony die at the end of ‘The Sopranos?” Vox claimed that during his interview with Martha P. Nochimson, Chase admitted that Tony is alive. To no one’s surprise, through his publicist Thursday, Chase blasted Vox for getting it wrong:
“A journalist for Vox misconstrued what David Chase said in their interview. To simply quote David as saying, ‘Tony Soprano is not dead,’ is inaccurate,” Dart’s statement reads. “There is a much larger context for that statement and as such, it is not true.”
Dart went on to note, “As David Chase has said numerous times on the record, ‘Whether Tony Soprano is alive or dead is not the point.’ To continue to search for this answer is fruitless. The final scene of ‘The Sopranos’ raises a spiritual question that has no right or wrong answer.”
Even though I’m a “Sopranos” fanatic, when the Vox story broke yesterday, I didn’t bother to cover it. There was no point. I knew the story was wrong (here’s my tweet on the matter). Chase would never come out and explain what happened. Most of all, I knew the Vox story was wrong because Tony Soprano is dead, and that’s just a fact.
The fate of Tony Soprano might be difficult to interpret, but it’s not an open question. Chase has told interviewers: “Anybody who wants to watch it, it’s all there.”
And it is all there. There’s no question Tony is dead. Here’s an irrefutable breakdown of the final scene.
—
—
It all comes down to Tony Soprano’s point-of-view, what he is looking at. The cut-to black is Tony’s point-of-view because he is dead — shot by the man in the Members Only jacket.
This moment is foreshadowed throughout the last couple seasons (death comes without hearing the gunshots) and a conversation about death between Tony and Bobby Bacala in the final season.
Tony is dead and Vox blew it bigtime.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.