Sopranos Ending - Thoughts and Living the Journey

After my initial "What was that???" at the ending, I now see it as a brillantly done ending. My theory for the past two days has been that when everything went black and silent, it was us the audience that got "whacked", out of the life of the Soprano family. For six seasons, we had a peek into the life of this family, and then our peek was ended. Life goes on for us (without them), and life goes on for them. Just like in real life, things aren't always tied up nicely, so it is here…lots of loose ends, we have no idea whether he gets indicted, etc. That is why I don't think there will be a movie. Our peek into the life of the Soprano family was "killed". At the ice cream parlor, we saw Tony's two lives together: his family life, and his other life of always looking over his shoulder, paranoid, wondering when the "other shoe will drop". That life continues for him. An ending where everything was answered, i.e. Tony shot or going into Witness Protection would have be contrived and overplayed. Brilliant ending to a great show.

And yes, I'm going to draw spiritual implications here. Many people are upset with the ending because it did not "answer everything" for them. There were loose ends, and we do not know what exactly happened (did the guy in the Members Only jacket come out of the bathroom and kill Tony, was that just a plot diversion and nothing happened except we the viewer got "killed" out of the life of the Sopranos, etc????). Well, I think that is the beauty of it. We were part of the story of this family for 6 seasons, and now we are left to finish the story based on how we interpret the ending, guided by the story that went before. This is very much like our role in the Grand Story of the Kingdom. As NT Wright explained, we have the narrative of Scripture that details Acts I-IV in the great story, and we are left to live out Act V, based on Acts I-IV. There are ways to live out the Story that are not in accordance with what went before, much like there are endings to the Sopranos that we could contrive that wouldn't do justice to the story that went before. But, people were extremely upset with the ending. What about???? What happened with??? To me, that shows an example of why some people are drawn to legalism. Everything is spelled out for me, I don't have to live in the tension of real life, and try to navigate it based on being part of the Story. The Scriptures become static principles instead of life giving, loving words to a people called to live out the Gospel in the day and time we find ourselves. Kudos David Chase for ending this so brillantly, leaving us to think and interpret, instead of spoon feeding us a contrived and overplayed ending.