There was nothing like growing up Italian during the age of The Sopranos. It was a family affair watching as Tony lorded over New Jersey each and every week and the final moments of the series are seared into my brain. I’ll never forget hearing my parents screaming “WHAT?!”
In the final moments of the 2007 series finale, Tony Soprano heads into a restaurant. He’s waiting for his family to arrive and once Carmela (Edie Falco) and AJ (Robert Iler) are there at the table with him, they’re just waiting for Meadow (Jamie-Lynn Sigler) who is trying to parallel park a car. “Don’t Stop Believin'” by Journey is playing over the speakers of the restaurant and we don’t know who is going to walk in the door next because the scene cuts to black.
Did Tony Soprano die? Did Meadow come in? Now you can have those answers for yourself by purchasing the booth from The Sopranos! Holsten’s, the New Jersey ice cream shop where the finale was shot, is doing renovations—meaning they are selling the rare collector’s item on eBay!
“We are currently renovating our booths at Holsten’s. This is your once in a lifetime chance to own the ORIGINAL booth that the Soprano Family sat in for the final scene of the famous show!,” the eBay listing reads. “The booth includes both seats, table, and divider wall with the plaque ‘Reserved for the Sopranos Family’.” (The ad also notes that the table jukebox featured on the show is not included.)
You can complete the scene for yourself
The ending of the show has been talked through to death. More specifically, through Tony’s death. Even the creator of the series, David Chase, has talked about it! During an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Chase gave a pretty solid answer on the end of the series and what it means for the Soprano family.
“Because the scene I had in my mind was not that scene. Nor did I think of cutting to black. I had a scene in which Tony comes back from a meeting in New York in his car. At the beginning of every show, he came from New York into New Jersey, and the last scene could be him coming from New Jersey back into New York for a meeting at which he was going to be killed,” Chase said. “Yeah. But I think I had this notion—I was driving on Ocean Park Boulevard near the airport and I saw a little restaurant. It was kind of like a shack that served breakfast. And for some reason I thought, ‘Tony should get it in a place like that.’ Why? I don’t know. That was, like, two years before.”
More than that, the obsession people had with Tony’s death did weigh on Chase. “I had no idea it would cause that much—I mean, I forget what was going on in Iraq or someplace; London had been bombed!” Chase said. “Nobody was talking about that; they were talking about The Sopranos. It was kind of incredible to me. But I had no idea it would be that much of an uproar. And was it annoying? What was annoying was how many people wanted to see Tony killed. That bothered me.”
Since everyone is so obsessed with seeing Tony die, though, you can act it out all on your own for the small price of $68,100 and (very rapidly) counting.
(featured image: HBO)
