It’s arguably the most famous ending to a popular TV series ever, but nobody seems to have clue as to what the final sequence of ‘The Sopranos’ actually meant. However, we might have just been given a big piece of the puzzle by the show’s director David Chase.

In a new interview with Directors Guild of America Quarterly, Chase gave an overview of the very last few minutes of the final season, which notoriously finishes with a cut to black after a series of seemingly disconnected shots of the show’s characters converging on a café, to the soundtrack of ‘Don’t Stop Believin’’.

Gandolfini and Chase'The Sopranos' James Gandolfini and David Chase

Chase doesn’t literally reveal the meaning of what goes on, but he does reveal the inspiration for the much-discussed ending. “I thought the ending would be somewhat jarring, sure,” he said. “But not to the extent it was, and not a subject of such discussion. I really had no idea about that.”

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He continued: “I never considered the black a shot. I just thought what we see is black. The ceiling I was going for at that point, the biggest feeling I was going for, honestly, was don’t stop believing. It was very simple and much more on the nose than people think. That’s what I wanted people to believe. That life ends and death comes, but don’t stop believing.”

“There are attachments we make in life, even though it’s all going to come to an end, that are worth so much, and we’re so lucky to have been able to experience them. Life is short. Either it ends here for Tony or some other time.”

But… was Tony Soprano supposed to have died? Talking specifically about him, Chase said: “I said to Gandolfini [who played Tony], the bell rings and you look up. That last shot of Tony ends on 'don't stop,' it's mid-song. I'm not going to go into [if that's Tony's POV]. I thought the possibility would go through a lot of people's minds or maybe everybody's mind that he was killed.”

So, there’s still no definitive, cast-iron answer. Last year, a Vox journalist reported that Chase said that Tony was not supposed to have died. However, a representative for the director later denied that.

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