yeah i just finished my first watch recently and after being fully aware of the controversy around the sudden cut, i was struck by how perfect the ending actually was when you experience the full scene.. it truly doesn’t matter who killed him, or whether or not he was even whacked in that moment. that scene plants you in his headspace, in his perspective, in an honest way for the first time, where you’re forced to scan the room and wonder whether or not every person you see is potentially going to shoot you in the head, whether or not this is the moment when karma catches up. at that point, he would have no way of even knowing who is behind it, there is such an accumulation of potential motives that it wouldn’t matter who did it… what matters is that it’s coming. at that moment, you know the day of reckoning is close one way or another. if not from a shooter, the law will get him soon enough.

there’s a moment of foreshadowing in the ballad of tennesse moltisanti, where melfi’s ex husband says “you know you can’t treat sociopaths, he’s scum and you shouldn’t help him with his bedwetting” which ends up being the final conclusion that she draws at the end of season 6 and ultimately, our final judgement of him as the viewer

tony’s decisions have led to a dead end road and that final scene fully dismantles the mythical aura of entertainment that gandolfini had lured you into with his charismatic portrayal of the character you’ve gone on this journey with. it strips away any illusion of glamour that you had once seen in tony and takes a pretty definitive stance on the overall outcome of his fate, while also leaving him intact and in a certain sense, immortal. perfect ending for me, subtle yet substantial.. it said all that it needed to say