Is Tony Soprano Dead? David Chase Finally Answers That Burning Question About The Sopranos Finale

After years of speculation, David Chase finally gave an answer about the fate of his critically acclaimed character on the HBO hit series

It's been nearly seven years of questions since The Sopranos finale, but we may finally know what happened at the end of the series when everything went to black.

Everybody remembers how The Sopranos ended. Tony (James Gandolfini), Carmela (Edie Falco), A.J. (Robert Iler) and Meadow (Jamie-Lynn Sigler) were all gathering at a local diner after everything was seemingly fine between the New York and New Jersey mob families. As tensions built, Meadow entered the diner and the bell rang. Tony looked up and BOOM. Everything went to black. The end.

Did somebody successfully carry out a hit on Tony? Was this the end of Tony Soprano?

Creator David Chase reportedly finally gave an answer as to the status of Tony Soprano in an interview posted on Vox.

UPDATE: Chase's rep released the following statement, disputing Vox's story:

"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. There is a much larger context for that statement and as such, it is not true.
 
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."

"I had been talking with Chase for a few years when I finally asked him whether Tony was dead or alive," Martha P. Nochimson said in her Vox piece. "We were in a tiny coffee shop, when, in the middle of a low-key chat about a writing problem I was having, I popped the question. Chase startled me by turning toward me and saying with sudden, explosive anger, 'Why are we talking about this?' I answered, 'I'm just curious.' And then, for whatever reason, he told me. And I will tell you. "

When she reportedly asked if Tony Soprano is dead, Chase shook his head "no" and said, "No he isn't."

Chase has remained mum on the ambiguous ending of the series, often dodging the question and leaving it up for interpretation. In an interview for 2007's The Sopranos: The Complete Book took on the fans who wanted more concrete ending.

"There was so much more to say than could have been conveyed by an image of Tony facedown in a bowl of onion rings with a bullet in his head. Or, on the other side, taking over the New York mob. The way I see it is that Tony Soprano had been people's alter ego," he said. "They had gleefully watched him rob, kill, pillage, lie, and cheat. They had cheered him on. And then, all of a sudden, they wanted to see him punished for all that. They wanted 'justice.' They wanted to see his brains splattered on the wall. I thought that was disgusting, frankly. But these people have always wanted blood. Maybe they would have been happy if Tony had killed twelve other people. Or twenty-five people. Or, who knows, if he had blown up Penn Station. The pathetic thing—to me—was how much they wanted his blood, after cheering him on for eight years."

As for the fade to the cut to black nature of the ending, Chase told Vox it was inspired by Edgar Allan Poe's poem, "Dream Within a Dream."