Did Tony die? 'Sopranos' creator David Chase may have given away famous blackout ending

The creator of "The Sopranos" may have accidentally answered one of the most perplexing questions in TV history: Did Tony Soprano die in the series finale?

Viewers have debated the New Jersey mob boss' fate since the groundbreaking HBO drama's 2007 series finale, "Made in America," which featured Tony (James Gandolfini), wife Carmella (Edie Falco) and son A.J. (Robert Iler) waiting for daughter Meadow (Jamie-Lynn Sigler) at a table in Holsten's diner, tension thick with hints of an impending hit on Tony.

And then, shockingly, in an ending still debated today – drawing praise from some, but scorn from others – the picture shockingly cuts to black. Many viewers thought their cable service had gone out at the worst moment; when the credits rolled they knew better. Ever since, fans have been debating the fate of Tony and his family.

David Chase addressed the infamous question in an interview published in the 2019 book "The Sopranos Sessions," by Alan Sepinwall and Matt Zoller Seitz, at least initially appearing to accidentally give away what happened after the mystifying blackout.

The exchange went as follows:

"When you said there was an endpoint, you don’t mean Tony at Holsten’s, you just meant, 'I think I have two more years’ worth of stories left in me,' " Sepinwall asked.

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"Yes, I think I had that death scene around two years before the end," replied Chase. "I remember talking with Mitch Burgess about it, but it wasn't – it was slightly different. Tony was going to get called to a meeting with Johnny Sack in Manhattan, and he was going to go back through the Lincoln Tunnel for this meeting, and it was going to go black there and you never saw him again as he was heading back, the theory being that something bad happens to him at the meeting. But we didn’t do that."

Zoller Seitz then chimed in to point out that Chase had just referred to the infamous final scene as a "death scene" – seeming to confirm that Tony does die.

After "a long pause," according to the book, Chase replied, "(expletive) you guys," and all three of them burst into laughter.

But the conversation continues, as USA TODAY found when going back to the book.

Chase would go on to walk back the comment, saying he had changed his mind and "didn't want to do a straight death scene."

"I didn't want you to feel like, 'Oh, he's meeting with Johnny Sack and he's going to get killed,' " he added.

Later, Sepinwall asked to clarify the creator's intention with the blackout.

"So the point of the scene is not 'they whacked him in the diner?' " the author asked. "It's that he could have been whacked?"

"Yes, that he could have been whacked in the diner," Chase said. "We all could be whacked in a diner. That was the point of the scene. He could have been whacked."

Later in the interview, Zoller Seitz asked Chase how he responds to fans who are sure Tony died in the diner – and if they are "incorrect."

"I don't know if that's my job," Chase said. "They've interpreted the scene that way. That should be a good thing, that there's different interpretations."

When Zoller Seitz pressed if these fans are wrong, Chase declined to answer.

"It was not my intention to create a 10-year long puzzlement about this," Chase said later in the interview. "No matter what I say about it, I always dig myself in deeper."

Sepinwall took to Twitter on Thursday after the interview in question began to resurface, saying that people were "wildly misinterpreting" Chase.

"That story is aggregating a year-and-a-half-old story that was already aggregating the interview from The Sopranos Sessions, and wildly misinterpreting what David Chase actually told us," he wrote. "Which is more or less what he predicted would happen after we had that conversation."

USA TODAY has reached out to Chase's reps for further comment.

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 'Sopranos' creator talks controversial final scene: Did Tony die?