SPOILERS


finished rewatching since it first aired. I guess I missed a lot of season 6 back in the day because some of it was new to me.

I always thought it was Gene's wife who got someone to whack tony for revenge. Thats why the guy in the restaurant had a members only jacket.

But now after rewatching it and paying closer attention, i think my original theory is too simple.

Here is what I think happened :

We only know of one of the five new york familes : The Lupertazzi Family - Bosses : Carmine / Little Carmine / Johnny Sack / Dom / Phil Leatardo.

Tony kills Phil without any commision sanction from the other 4 families. He doesn't even outsource it like has been done throughout the series. He stupidly has his own guys do it.

You dont kill a NY boss, especially from NJ which was considered a small time glorified outfit in the eyes of NY.

I think the four other families ordered the hit on Tony. This solves two things - revenge on whacking Phil without approval (and in front of his family), and killing Tony kills the RICO case as NJ/NY have a lot of ties w/ construction projects. If Tony flips, then NY is in big trouble.

But the twist is ................... Patsy and Paulie are in on it!

Paulie always wanted to be close to NY and at one time was considering changing sides. He tells Johnny Sack about the Ginny Sack joke Ralph says and is always close to Johnny Sack. Tony figures this out at the end and almost kills Paulie on the boat but changes his mind. He gives Paulie the Aprile crew job which Paulie doesn't want because its cursed. Paulie is probably pissed he gets passed over as capo by Bobby who is a clown for most of athe series and a driver for Junior. When the NY crew have a sitdown to plan the Sorpano hit, Butchie clearly says don't go after Paulie. And one of the NY crew is making fun of Bobby being a capo as he's considered a cheafur driver to Junior. And later when they have a sitdown with little carmine, Paule shakes Butchie's hand behind Tonys' back.

Patsy - he knows Tony killed his twin brother Spoons. He holds his tounge. At the end, his son is going to marry Tony's daughter. In that meeting where Patsy's family is meeting Tony's familes, he and his wife knows Tony is dead. That's why his wife fucks up the simple long face horse joke. It's the most easiest joke to tell but she is super nervous. Tony brings up their other son Jason and how Carlo's Jason was arrested and Carlo flipped on Tony to save his son. Implying Patsy may do the same thing. Patsy makes sure his wife changes the subject. The mere thought of Tony suspecting Patsy flipping to save his own son is enough to get him killed. Patsy now is more closer than ever to Tony with his son marrying Meadow. He has to act fast to save his own skin.

So Patsy probably works with Butchie to tell them where Tony will be that night. Probably got the info from his son as he knows the Sorpanos dinner plans from Meadow. He knows NY is going to off Tony anyway so he makes a deal by offering them that information.

Aftermath : Paulie and/or Patsy are now head of the NJ crew which is decimated and now owned by NY. NY owns all of NJ and they have a puppet w/ Paulie who was a complete fuck up and only thing he did well was take orders. Patsy was the only competent guy in Tony's crew and he has the makings of a boss or a 2nd like Silvio. Patsy can be counted on by the NY crew. NY is in a win - win situation with either of the two under them.

What do you guys think?

Hugo Chavez

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I decided to rewatch the series as well. Just finished season 2. Enjoying it so far. I had to laugh at myself the other day as I’ve found that my swearing has increased probably three fold the last few weeks.

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Flew too close to the sun on wings of pastrami

This has been my issue with the ending since it aired: The obvious implication that Tony was murdered has no narrative underpinning whatsoever.

There was no shown simmering dissent among Tony's crew during the ongoing war with New York, as to a man the family was ready to do battle (unlike a few seasons prior, when high ranking capos were openly questioning Tony's decision-making regarding protecting the whereabouts of Tony B from New York, and all-out conflict had yet to start). Any wishful thinking about the motives of Paulie and Patsy is just that. Paulie Walnuts was shown only to be an unwitting traitor to the family, an issue he quickly rectified, and Patsy is shown in the final episodes being over the moon to get closer to Tony via his son and Meado.

The war with New York was shown to come to a conclusive end, with Phil's highest ranking confidant (and underboss of the NY family) negotiating peace with Tony while Phil was on the run. Could this peace-making merely have been a ploy to bring Tony out of hiding to make a hit easier for NY, breaking a code of honor that the members love to pretend to adhere to, or could Members Only Guy be a member of a faction still loyal to Phil who didn't feel bound by the truce? Sure, but that kind of narrative thread was never developed in the final season, with the closest instance of the show even mentioning reneging on a newly-formed peace being when Christopher went to go bury Tony B up in Kinderhook, and Tony S said "It may be over, but watch your back."

There's little question that Tony was killed, and that MOG was the shooter, but the entire narrative premise of the murder is not supported by anything shown to the viewer by the show's "Ren". It seems that the show enjoys a bit of shielding from criticism for open-ended or outright hole-riddled plotlines by sometimes claiming vagueness for the sake of adhering to reality (Did the Russian die in the woods? Was Christopher visited by the ghost of Mikey Palmice in purgatory? Who can say, really?) and other times claiming the world the show inhabits contains the supernatural, which explains things like Paulie seeing the Virgin Mary, Paulie's psychic being able to name a murder victim of his (no way a cold-read is that specific), Tony divining that Pussy was a rat in a fever dream, etc.

I just think that, after making the show a mega-hit for 6 seasons, Chase's forays into funky and psychedelic storytelling in what was originally a straight mob drama, as well as with all the extended production delays in later seasons due to contract disputes and the like, fans deserved to be at least told what happens to Tony, not left to their own devices to pick and pull at previous plot themes to justify an ending that was implied. And yeah, I know the thinking was that maybe a movie could be done after the series wrapped up, but if Chase is such a good writer that we get to admire his hours-long attempts at writing about dream states, he certainly could have figured out how to bring about a satisfying, and explicit, narrative conclusion to the series while leaving enough meat on the bone for a movie afterwards.

Agree. But the writers.producers might say, "It's post-modern!"

I recently watched a 30-minute video defending the clusterfuck that was Metal Gear Solid 2 as a masterpiece in post-modernism. I now hate anyone who utters the phrase, or uses the concept as a shield for their shoddy, underwhelming work.

I generally like post-modernist work, but enough is enough. I know it is supposed to disrupt your expectations, and that's generally a good thing, but by now it's formulaic.

Sometimes I also get the feeling that some po-mo work is just not real good. Or unsatisfying. The ending to The Sopranos--and many other parts of it, like the strategic use of picaresque to cover up a lack of character development--was a cop-out masquerading as "great art," as some moron on CNN said at the time.

Still a great show.

For me not swearing but busting balls has increased after watching. Really never busted balls before.

And I’m doing the OOOHHH! all the time now. My son and lady friend told me it’s annoying as fuck and to stop but I really do enjoy doing it.

I mean was the fucking hair on Pauline walnuts immaculate or what? I m thinking of getting some wings too.

The war didn’t end - it was a temporary truce.

Remember you don’t kill wife kids or whack someone in front of their wife / kids.

Tony whacked Phil in front of his wife and grandkids so Tony had to be dealt with the same. And they did that by killing him in front of his wife and kids. Eye for an eye.

no that's wrong.

Carlo flipped, Silvio had to kill Burt because he was talking to the crew about siding with NY. Remember Burt is also the guy going around town shaking down local businesses with Patsy. Silvio is in a coma. You can't count on Paulie for anything. All the big earners are dead like Vito. Its just Tony, Paulie, and Patsy left. That's not a strong crew Tony's left with.

What do you think of the knockoff show, Freddy Tenor?

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Carlo flipped to save his kid from being put away for running drugs. He had just been installed as capo and leading the family's construction businesses, he was happy as could be. Burt was dead and so couldn't have been making a move against Tony in the finale, so I'm not exactly sure what you think you're arguing here.

im saying there is dissent and was dissent in tony's crew. only Sil was the only guy loyal to Tony.

If Chase meant to tie Tony's implied murder to a disgruntled low level soldier who's only other screen time depicted him not being able to put the screws to a Starbucks manager, it's the worst ending in the history of television. Burt was killed literally for trying to get others to betray Tony, his gambit failed almost immediately.

Silvio only mentions in passing that guys are getting squeezed by NY, but Burt is the only one who is even hinted at being treasonous, and he was dealt with swiftly.

no. patsy or paulie did not order Tony's hit. It was ordered by NY's other 4 families. They did it. Paulie/Patsy aided them in the slightest way possible. Those 2 guys cannot make decisions. Even in Tony's crew they can't make big decisions especially when taking out a boss, their boss. But they were reached out by NY that when the shit goes down, are you going to be with NY or not. Not meant you're dead. With means you're going to still be a nobody but a nobody to NY, not NJ/Tony/Sil.

So Tony was murdered by the four other NY families that are never depicted on screen in the series. I don't think that does a whole lot to discredit my contention that the finale isn't supported narratively. You can count on one hand the number of times any of the NY families other than the Lupertazzis are mentioned throughout the entire series, and to my knowledge there is never a character on screen from any of the other families.

It's fine to argue that one of the other families would greenlight a hit on Tony as retribution for going after the head of one of the NY groups. But that explanation is not supported by any previous narrative throughline in the final episode, nor in the final season, not even in the entire series. The other NY families never interact with the Sopranos Universe in any meaningful, even non-meaningful, way. Putting the responsibility for Tony's murder in the finale on them is not explicit, nor implicit, and it doesn't touch on any previous plotline, thus it is not any kind of satisfying or coherent ending.

And I know what finale defenders like to say when they have to admit that the impetus for Tony's murder isn't supported by the narrative: "So what? That's real, that's what happens, even Tony says earlier that you likely never see it coming!"

1. That's not an ending worthy of the near-decade long fan support that made David Chase a multi-millionaire.

2. The show stopped being able to use "because realism" as a worthwhile excuse when the Virgin Mary appeared next to a stripper pole as a vision to a caporegime. Or when rancid ghee made the main protagonist able to figure out via dream that his best friend was a turncoat (or the relevant alternate theory: that neither the Indian food nor the PEI mussels made him sick, it was his subconscious coming to grips with the fact that his friend was a rat). Or when a counter-terror FBI agent happened to be nailing an agent assigned to follow Phil Leotardo. Or when the main protagonist committed a murder in broad daylight in plain view of one of the most heavily trafficked roads in the world after hiding a gun in a fish.

David Chase was on Talking Sopranos tonight -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TanrL_UuNck

Tony lived a quiet life and peacefully died in his sleep at the age of 92. He wasn't killed.

silvio lied to tony about stealing from the esplanade construction site.

"the timelines were off"

Sil fucking with the esplanade job site via Patsy (ha!) was him testing Tony after he (Tony) elevated Christopher to run Paulie's crew while Paulie was in the jail on that gun charge. Silvio appeared to think that Tony was playing favorites with Chrissy and excusing his bad behavior, even as the new leader of Paulie's crew (bringing up Chris' "Napoleon thing", being visibly frustrated with an elated Christopher after the dinner announcing his promotion, Sil tossing in "that's the way certain people want it" in announcing the promotion). In response, Silvio apparently felt that he could make a little easy cash and show Tony that his anointing of Christopher as the "Hair Apparent" could create resentment among people in the family. It was like a test, and Tony's meeting with Sil in the basement at the end of the episode was him passing.

Also, oddly enough, Silvio wasn't even supposed to be the one doing all that. The job-site pilfering plot line was meant to be for Paulie, but Tony Sirico was recovering from back surgery during much of the filming for that season, and was unable to perform, so a bunch of stuff that was supposed to be for him got shuffled around to other members of the family. Silvio is without a doubt the most stand-up guy for Tony in the entire Sopranos world, nobody has Tony's back better than Sil.

However you want to interpret it..the ending absolutely sucked.

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Parisi(s) called the shot, Meadow took it

I think you inadvertently answered your own question. Nobody had Phil's back better than Butchie.

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Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

Didn't Butchie authorize the hit on Phil? He knew it was all over when he got lost in Chinatown.

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Phil was on the run during an active conflict, he knew he was a target, he just didn't hide himself very well. Tony's off-screen murder happened after a truce had been negotiated between the waring families. So either Tony was murdered by the Lupertazzis and they broke the truce they had negotiated sometime after the sit-down shown on screen (I contend that given what is shown to have transpired between that sit-down and the final scene, at least a few days have gone by)—which isn't narratively supported because we're never shown truces being broken so close to their conception—or Tony was murdered by some other entity with motives not explicitly stated or shown to the viewer, which also results in the murder being unsupported by narrative.

And again, I realize that the "reality" for Tony was that a move against him could come quite swiftly and without notice, whether from below or the outside, but my contention is that if that is the narrative justification for Tony's murder (that it doesn't matter who specifically killed him or specifically why they did so, because that's just how life is for him), that justification is at best lazy and not an ending befitting a series with a near-decade long run that was made super profitable by the millions of fans tuning in each week.

Gustavo Fring.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

I think you could have saved time by copy and pasting that reddit theory instead of passing it off as your own.

I like the theory that the 5 families agreed to finish off the Soprano family (glorified crew) because it was essentially down to just Tony. Split up the real estate. Just business.

Great show, great ending.

Not exactly. He washed his hands like Pilate. Or he seemed to. Perhaps he stuck it in Tony's ass at a later date, i.e. the last show.

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Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don