Many shots in the final scene (as well as throughout the course of the series) were shown from Tony Sopranos point of view. When AJ, Carmella and the Man in the Members Only jacket enter the scene, theyre all filmed from the same location. The camera would be placed exactly where Tony would be looking. And each entrance shot was shown after Tony picked his head up to see who was coming in. Therefore, the audience is seeing everybodys entrance through Tonys eyes. Now, lets go back to Meadow entering Holsteins. The final shot of the series has Tony looking up to see who is coming in, as evidenced by the bell ringing when the door opened. Now, when it aired live, many viewers swore up and down that they saw Meadow enter the diner. But they didnt. They just expected to, because thats what Tony was expecting. The cut to black, which replaced the shot of Meadow entering the diner as Carmella and AJ did, was also shown from Tonys point of view. Its just that he was already dead, so thats why there was blackness. There was also a longer delay than usual between the cut to black and the credits rolling in silence, long enough that many viewers thought that their cable had gone out on them. Those extra seconds of blackness represented the nothingness of death, which we as the audience were experiencing from Tonys point of view. So when people had the theory of, the ending was David Chase whacking the audience, theyre actually right in a sense. Only the audience was experiencing the whack from Tonys point of view. And theres a very good reason why we as the audience, through Tonys point of view, didnt hear any kind of gunshot before the darkness.
