But as I twittered tonight (http://www.twitter.com/stephagresta), the high drama has begun. And that means the high-sentimentality is not far behind.

Tony screams at the end tonight, “I get it.” What did his peyote vision tell him?

Ok – I’ll go on record here. He realizes while playing roulette, “he’s dead.” It’s dead. The cycle stops with Tony. He’ll do what he has to do to ensure that AJ does not proceed down the violent path he seems to be on now. He gets it that it’s over. He used to think that Christopher was the hier to his throne. But then he realized that was his biggest “error.”

Looking around his bed at his “colleagues” – I think Tony is ready to bring it all to an end. Maybe Phil ends up with everything. Dunno. But let me watch this episode a few more times, and I’ll try to articluate an actual prediction!

Keep it comin!
Thx…Stephanie!

My guess is that things will end more ambiguously than people suspect. David Chase originally committed to five seasons (I hope I have my numbers right). At the end of Season 5, which was about Tony on Johnny Sack coming to blows, the two reconcile — only to have the Feds storm in and arrest Sack. Tony takes to his heels in a tragicomic escape, learning later that he wasn’t the subject of the raid.

So Tony walks home. The scene closes as he passes the pool and walks in the back door to Carmella. I think this was the originally planned end of the series. What has happened since was interesting, but not essential to the major plot arcs resolved at the end of Season 5.

My guess is that this final coda doesn’t provide us with the “closure” of Tony’s death or arrest. I could be wrong.

Ah — a major character has just been killed on the show. That leaves three more episodes with only one major question to sort out: who escapes this awful karmic wheel? Will the kids get away clean, or is the cycle repeated?

c.