I'm going to make one last post on this and analyze Chase's quotes. Most important is the interview with Richard Belzer which I did not post above. You must look at the sum total of Chase's quotes, not just one quote. Please read the entire thing if you are going to comment on this.

When discussing Tony and the final scene Chase says, "All I wanted to do was present the idea of how short life is and how precious it is. The only way I felt I could do that was to rip it away." (You can only draw two possible conclusions from this statement. Life was ripped from somebody. Chase either ripped away life from Tony or he ripped away life from the audience and Tony lived on.)

If the final scene was shot in Tony's POV (as most people suspect) then undoubtedly life was ripped from Tony. When discussing his use of POV in the final episode, Chase says "I did a lot of setups with POV shots in that episode. People have not picked up on that" and "The only thing I would say definitively about it is, whatever happened, Tony put himself there. It was the world as he saw it." (Chase's comments nearly confirm that a sequence from Tony's POV occurred in the final scene. And if he were shot in the head, Tony would be dead and no longer see the world. Thus the black screen. The idea of the audience being wacked doesn't hold water because Chase created a sequence from Tony's POV in which he repeatedly hears the door bell jingle and looks up towards the door. The screen goes black just as Tony would see the door and Meadow entering. Also, there is no reason to think the audience is "beside" or "with" Tony during the series and a hit man would want the audience dead. Also, it is unlikely that Chase would plan years in advance to "wack" the audience and cut them off from viewing the Sopranos.)

In a book on the Sopranos, Chase says he had the idea for the ending years in advance and "As I recall, it was just that Tony and his family would be in a diner having dinner and a guy would come in. Pretty much what you saw.” (Chase mentions this "guy" because he is significant. He is referring to Members Only guy. We know this because he is the only single man that walks in. Other murders throughout the Sopranos were committed by men wearing the same Members Only jacket. Chase does not say why he is significant, he only hints that he is significant. This quote also helps dispel another theory of the final scene. Given that Chase planned the ending years in advance, it is doubtful that his only message is that Tony will spend his life paranoid and looking over his shoulder. This ending does not require advanced planning and is fairly shallow given the depth of the series.)

Chase's most revealing interview is with Richard Belzer:

While talking with Belzer, Chase says "There had been indications of what the end is like. Remember when Jerry Torciano was killed? Silvio was not aware that the gun had been fired until after Jerry was on his way down to the floor. That’s the way things happen: It’s already going on by the time you even notice it." (Chase specifically cites murders as an indication of what happens in the final scene. Clearly, somebody died in the end and they never saw it coming. Logically, this would be Tony. Because were are in Tony's POV in the final scene we never hear a gun shot because bullets travel faster than sound. Tony (and us because were are in his POV) is dead before seeing the gun or hearing the shot.

Richard Belzer: "I was working with Steve Schirripa [Bacala] recently. We were judging “Last Comic Standing” for NBC and we were talking about a lot of things and he was saying he heard all of these theories for the show that had nothing to do with your intention and wasn’t anything the actors thought. Like little hints along the way, like a word, like when Tony and Steve (Bobby Bacala) are on the boat at the lake and they say “‘you never know its gonna happen” or “you never know its gonna hit you”".

David Chase: "That was part of the ending." (Chase repeats the fact that when you are shot in the head, you may never see it coming and you definitely never hear it - and he reiterates that this is part of the final scene)

Richard Belzer: "Oh, it was? see, what do I know? Were there other things in previous episodes that were hints towards it (what occurred in the final scene)?"

David Chase: "There was that and there was a shooting in which Silvio was a witness. Well he wasn’t a witness, he was eating dinner with a couple of hookers and with some other guy who got hit and there was some visual stuff that went on there which sort of amplified Tony’s remark to Bacala about you know “you don’t know its happened” or “you won’t know it happened when it hits you”. That’s about it." (Chase again cites murder as a hint to what happened in the final scene. He reiterates the idea that you won't even hear it coming - you just die. The only person that would be killed in the diner and not hear it or see it is Tony as we are in his POV.)

Also, in reference to Tony, Chase says, "They wanted to see his brains splattered on the wall (at the end). I thought that was disgusting, frankly." (This explains why Chase chose the POV sequence and put us in Tony's head when he is shot. He did not want to simply have Tony executed in a gory and bloody scene.)

Lastly, when discussing the final scene Chase says "He [Tony] was an extremely isolated, unhappy man. And then finally, once in a while he would make a connection with his family and be happy there. But in this case, whatever happened, we never got to see the result of that. It was torn away from him and from us.” (Tony was happy at that moment at the diner with his family. If the audience was wacked, then that moment was not "torn from him". Tony would have lived on. The only way this quote makes sense is if Tony was killed and that happy connection with his family was torn away from him and us. Chase's language is more revealing here than he probably intended it to be. There is far more evidence to support the theory that Tony was murdered at the diner than any other theory.)