[SOPRANOS PREDICTIONS BELOW.]

Sunday's next-to-last episode of The Sopranos was quite a trip. Nice article that expresses my sentiments almost exactly, here.

Who knows which path creator David Chase will take in the finale. But I've come up with a list of possibilities, taking into account some loose ends that have to be wrapped up, some way, some how.

Possible endings:

• Phil comes out of hiding for a final showdown between NJ and NY. Phil is killed. Tony lives, but is taken into custody.


• Same scenario, but Tony dies. AJ snaps out of his horrendous, insipid funk and vows revenge. They've hinted at this theme before, like when he was going to kill Junior, and when he seemed to get off on watching his hooligan pals pour acid on that kid's toe.


• Phil never comes out of hiding. Tony decides he doesn't want to do this anymore, and goes to the Feds. Joins the witness protection program. Final scene: him in his new suburban setting, waving to his next-door neighbor.


• Before anything can happen with Phil, Tony is arrested in connection with Adrianna's death. They've been hinting for more than a full season now that Carmela's eventually going to figure out who killed her. If they don't go back to this storyline, I'll find it odd.


• Comet's idea: Uncle Junior storms in and saves the Soprano-clan, Rambo-style. It'd be more of a toddling than a storming, but still. They've got to wrap up the Junior storyline as well. Don't they? But how?


• Tony said something Sunday that, upon further reflection, made me go "Hmmm." He told Carmela, "They never touch families." And yet, in the same episode, they did touch family. They made a big deal of pointing out several times that the guy they thought was Phil's girlfriend got in the way...and oh, who cares. They also hinted at it with the whole Meadow-Gets-Threatened thing last week. This makes me think more and more that something could happen to Carmela, AJ or Meadow. What would happen then, I'm not sure. The more I think about it, the more this seems darn likely.

And the third storyline (in addition to Adrianna and Junior) that they have to wrap up is the terrorism thread. It's been driving me nuts. They've talked about it in almost every episode. In Sunday's show, Tony sees a terror-related article on A.J.'s computer screen toward the end of the episode, and stares at it for a while.

Will there be a terrorist attack on the NY/NJ area? Will Tony get inside info and give it to the Feds, in exchange for some sort of leniency? Will the Bing be hit by a 747 piloted by those two foreigners? Can't figure it out. But they're not going to just let it go as some bizarre loose end. It's been far too prominent.

Now your thoughts. If there are any Sopranos-watchers among you aside from the Comet.
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