Warning: Spoilers for the Sopranos follow — you might not want to read this if you are not caught up on the series.
Sopranos speculation (Scripting News):
Dave Winer has a post out on what he thinks happens in the Sopranos’ season finale tomorrow night. Dave says he is going to be glued to his set at 9pm tomorrow night to watch the Season Finale. I do have you beat of course Dave, as I’ll be glued to my set at 6pm. God bless my DirecTV TiVo and it’s access to an East Coast HBO feed — in HDTV no less!
Dave thinks Tony will be killed and deservedly so. I’m not so sure. Tony is a survivor. And while there may be a sense of justice in his death (Winer especially feels that Tony deserves to be whacked for the way he whacked Adrianna), somehow I think he survives.
For my own 1000 to 1 wild card season finale, how about this. Phil’s people find Tony’s family and kill them. All of them. Meadow goes first. Then AJ does something stupid while not listening to his mother. Freaks out about having to be indoors or something and as he leaves the house with Carmella chasing him they both get whacked. Maybe Janice gives them both up because she somehow feels Tony is responsible for Bobby’s death.
Tony then exacts revenge on Phil murdering him and a bunch of his guys. Now with Phil dead and his family dead, Tony packs a bag, flies out to Las Vegas, and hooks back up with Sonya for a new happily ever after life in the dessert — complete with one last scene of the two of them tripping on peyote to the Nevada dessert.
One more interesting twist would be Tony digging up Junior’s money in his backyard just before flying out. As though he knew where it was buried back there all along, leaving Uncle Junior to his life ending last days on the state’s dole.
With an ending like this we might finally get the message that Tony is evil. Pure evil. As much as he’s become a likeable character for all of us, at his core Tony Soprano is still ultimately pure evil. The way he had Adrianna whacked, but even moreso the way he himself murdered Christopher, his own nephew.
I think for the first time Melfi, Tony’s psychiatrist, recognized last episode that Tony was pure evil. I think her firing him was an admission of this. I think that all along as Chase, the shows creator, has built this kind of loveable mobster rascal for us to get know, humanizing him at so many junctions, that in the end he wants us to come to the same realization that Melfi did. If Tony were to be able to walk away from his dead family and selfishly into the arms of his murdered nephew’s goomah, this might just about get us to finally realize this.
People would be pissed about Meadow and AJ being killed off as they are already largely victims. Carmella was at least complicit. But that’s the thing about evil. Victims oftentimes are the ones that bear the brunt of it.
Anyways, like I said, 1000 to 1, but it’s fun to speculate.
I’ve really enjoyed the Sopranos series over the past few years. Like Six Feet Under and Oz it really is a testament to HBOs committment to quality programming. I’ve been sad as each of these series has ended and I’m sure I’ll be sad tomorrow night when the Sopranos finally ends.
The good news of course is that as much as I love each of HBO’s big hits, I seem to keep finding another one to take the place of the one ending. When Oz ended we still had Six Feet Under. When Six Feet Under ended we still had the Sopranos. And now with the Sopranos ending we still have Entourage and even better than Entourage Big Love.
As much as I love the Sopranos I’d be remiss without recognizing also the post Sunday commentary on the series done by Tim Goodman over at the San Francisco Chronicle. Tim’s Bastard Machine has been the top place to follow the series online — and if you haven’t read his coverage yet you’d be remiss not to go check out his post from last week before watching tomorrow night’s big show.
What do you think? Any other theories on how tomorrow night’s show goes down?
I think killing off the entire family would be a little ridiculous. You never know though. I found last weeks episode awesome though. I’m excited for sunday night. Like you, I will be watching it at 6.
T-minus 2 hours… here’s what my brother, a big fan of the show, thinks will happen:
Think back to the episode where AJ was put in the hospital after attempting suicide. When Carmella shows up, AJ asks where Tony is. Carmella tells AJ that Tony had to go help Meadow, who was in a car accident.
Fast forward to the present – Meadow needs a car, and borrows Tony’s Escalade. She ends up in the wrong place at the wrong time, and winds up taking the bullets meant for Tony. Thinking the war is over, New York comes out of hiding, at which point AJ runs into Phil Leotardo by chance on the street, and murders him in a rage.
It’s a bit far-fetched, but hey, it could happen. The only problem I see with this story is that it relies on a quick-lived event. The Sopranos has a habit of leaving behind open-ended situations, never to be revisited (think: the motorcycle came Tony and Christopher ran into while stealing the wine while they were on the road way back when).
Tony is dead. He was shot in the end by the guy in the Members Only jacket going to the mens room. Remember the episode beginning of the season called “Members Only” when Bobby and Tony were in the boat on the lake and talking about what it must to be like to be whacked? Bobby said “You never hear the gun and everything just goes black” Just like the final episode went black at the end. Tony was killed at that moment. And David Chase couldn’t have Meadow sitting beside Tony at the restaurant, cuz thats where she would have sat. cuz she would have been in the way thats why he had her spending all that time trying to park the car. I think the ending was brilliant on David Chases part…anyone else out there thinking along those lines???
You never hear the gun cuz a bullet travels faster than the speed of sound
Then goes to black