Tony and his family have to stay in hiding until Phil Leotardo is dealt with. His family don't like the lifestyle they have been forced to...
Made in America (S06E21) aired June 10, 2007. Written and directed by David Chase, it is the series finale of The Sopranos and the twenty-first episode of the expanded sixth season. No episode of the show has been discussed more, or more differently, by the people who watched it.
Plot
Phil Leotardo has to die. The New York family is at war with the Jersey crew and Tony has been hiding his family in a safehouse while Walden Belfiore and others try to locate Phil. When they do find him, at a gas station in Valley Stream while his wife and grandchildren are in the car, Phil is shot in the head and the SUV rolls over his own body as his wife panics and releases the brake. It is staged as darkly comic, grotesque, and final all at once.
With Phil gone, the New York leadership meets with Tony and declares the matter settled. The war ends. Tony calls his sister Janice and his uncle Junior separately. Junior, deep in dementia at a state facility, does not remember much. A.J. is recovering from a depressive episode and has a new girlfriend. Meadow is engaged to Patrick Parisi and has decided to become a lawyer rather than a doctor.
The final scene takes place at Holsten's diner in New Jersey. Tony arrives first and sits at a booth. He picks "Don't Stop Believin'" by Journey on the table jukebox. Carmela comes in, then A.J. A man in a Members Only jacket enters, looks at Tony, goes to the bathroom. Meadow, who has been struggling to parallel-park outside, finally comes through the door. Tony looks up. The screen cuts to black mid-bite, mid-song, mid-scene. The credits run in silence.
Credits
Written and directed by David Chase. James Gandolfini, Edie Falco, Jamie-Lynn Sigler, Robert Iler, Lorraine Bracco, and most of the series regulars appear. Walden Belfiore (Frank John Hughes) carries out the Phil Leotardo hit. Dominic Chianese appears as Uncle Junior in the facility scene. The Members Only jacket, worn in the diner by a character played by Paolo Colandrea, is a callback to the second half of season six.
Music
"Don't Stop Believin'" by Journey, released in 1981, is the song Tony selects at the Holsten's jukebox. It plays through the final scene and cuts off with the picture. The choice of song was Chase's, and it is not ironic in a simple way: the lyrics track alongside what is happening onscreen in ways that become clearer on rewatch. A.J. had earlier dismissed the song as "facile crap" in an earlier episode, which adds a layer.
Analysis
The cut to black is not a technical malfunction. Chase confirmed this in subsequent interviews. What it means is something the show deliberately left to viewers. The editing of the diner scene structures Tony's point of view: each time the bell over the door rings, the camera shows Tony's face looking up, then cuts to whoever entered. When the cut comes at the moment Meadow comes through the door, the camera does not return to Tony. The audience occupies his perspective and the perspective stops.
One reading is that Tony is killed in that moment, consistent with the man in the Members Only jacket, consistent with the warning that Tony received from Bobby Baccalieri in an earlier episode that death comes when you do not see it coming. Another reading is that life continues and that the anxiety of waiting for violence is itself the point. Chase has said both readings are correct, which is probably not a deflection but an accurate description of what he was after.
The scene with Junior at the facility is important in a different way. Tony asks if Junior remembers the time they had, the family, what they built. Junior says he does not know anything about that. The moment collapses fifty years of mob mythology into an old man who cannot remember. That scene, not the diner, is arguably the show's real conclusion.
The series ran from 1999 to 2007. For context on how the finale follows from the rest of the final season, see the season six guide. The prior episode, The Blue Comet, sets up the losses that make the finale's domestic calm strange. For streaming and viewing options, see where to watch.