“The Sopranos” Ending: David Chase Whacked Us

Is Tony Soprano dead? Seven years after “The Sopranos” went cold, we persist in asking this question with an ardor that, by this point, borders on the necrophilic. We ask it of the ten-second chasm of blackness that ended the series, hoping that the non-signifying might signify if only we look hard enough. We ask it of each other, in person, and in the comments below YouTube excerpts of the finale. And we don’t ask it of the heavens, exactly, but we do ask it every so often of David Chase, the Creator and the Destroyer of Tony’s world.

The latest person to do so is the film critic Martha Nochimson, who published her account of the exchange at Vox as part of an essay about Chase and his work. Nochimson was recently out for coffee with Chase, she says, when she broached the topic of “whether Tony was dead.” She writes that “Chase startled me by turning toward me and saying with sudden, explosive anger, ‘Why are we talking about this?’ ” This gave way to a shake of the head and a three-word verdict from Chase: “No he isn’t.” Those of us who remain unsatisfied in the face of this seemingly definitive answer might take a moment to wonder, though, if the real failing lies less with Chase, a gnomic obfuscator and first-rate sadist, than with the question itself. The ending of “The Sopranos,” after all, does stage a violent death, patently and unambiguously: ours.

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