People are STILL talking about it. Kudos to David Chase.
There’s a theory that Tony was indeed whacked at the end… It’s something I’ve thought too. And the theory seems to be gaining credence — and HBO is going along.
The biggest hint, according to a consensus taking shape on the Web, is a scene from an earlier episode in which Tony and his brother-in-law, Bobby Bacala, muse about what it feels like to die.
“At the end, you probably don’t hear anything, everything just goes black,” Bobby says while they sit fishing in a small boat on a lake.
That scene is recalled briefly in a flashback played at the end of the penultimate “Sopranos” episode, as Tony is lying in the darkened room of a safehouse clutching a machine gun to his chest in the midst of a mob war.
“I think that is one of the most legitimate things to look at,” [HBO spokesman Quentin] Schaffer said when asked about theories that the Bobby Bacala flashback was meant to foreshadow Tony’s death.
Moreover, he said the man in the “Members Only” jacket could be interpreted as a symbolic reference to membership in the mob. “Members Only” also was the title of the episode in which Tony’s demented Uncle Junior shoots him in the gut.
The “Members Only” guy was played by the owner of a real-life pizza parlor, Paolo Colandrea. Schaffer denied reports that Colandrea had appeared earlier in the series as the nephew of Tony’s New York gang rival, or that there ever was such a character. He also dismissed reports that Chase had filmed more than one ending to the finale.
ArcherVox 
86 was all a dream……all the evidence comes mostly from episode 85in the begining of 86 tony woke up in a different room..Tony’s dream is made up of what he read in the previous episode ….when he read the recipe from the magazine departed he sees the word orbit , which is a circle , also on the page after the recipe is a picture of a circle , this is what I think made him dream of Carm wearing circle earings , and Tony ordering onion rings. Tony also looks at A.J.’s computer screen when he takes him out of the room….He was frustered what A.J. was reading…The chinese rocket I think gave him the dream of A.J.’s car going on fire , and the idea of A.J. wanting to join the military , and finnaly the idea of Butch somehow winding up in china town…In 85 when Dr. melfe was reading a study , it brings up efection for babies and animals ..explaining the cat and Phill’s grand kids and from what I understand Phill has no kids , so he can not have grand kids..but this confirms Tony’s mind set….when tony is looking at the songs in the diner one of the songs was… any way you want it , refering to tony’s dream…that is why everything worked out for him. I think he got shot in his sleep , and the bells we heard were gunshots , or people entering his room..he did not wake up in time , and the song itself explains everything………..just an idea and pardon my spelling
That was his life, anxiety, self doubt. With that ending it showed that given all that had already happened, nothing had actually changed. He was still living the same nightmare. Seeming to love his immediate family, yet not really feeling anything else, other than what he always, felt, stress, what, who, when, and so it goes on, whether the end was then, or some later yet to come. We are very much like Tony, for him it’s all about him really, for us too, it’s really just all about Tony. M. Camille Ortiz
tony was whacked. thats why everything went to black. sure, some people might say this is not legit because the show was not shown from his point of view, BUT consider this:each time during the final scene when someone came through the door, tony looked up and the camera showed who he was seeing. he looks up at one point and we see a guy in a trucker hat. then he looks up and we see carmela. then he looks up and we see AJ. then, at the end, he looks up and we see….blackness. thats what tony saw. he didn’t see a gunman because he was shot from the side by the dude coming out of the bathroom. and that’s it. there’s your answer.
You are all close. The outside viewer was hit, the Sopranos all lived on. That is why our view went black and silent, just like Tony and Bobby said it would.
this is just in relation to the “members only” jacket wearin dude who walked into the bathroom. I have heard a lot of talk about this being the scene from the godfather. Well if you remember in the God Father he was patted down, and that was the reason for hiding the gun in the bathroom. No need for that here, so if he was really there to hit Tony, he really wouldn’t need to go to the bathroom, he would be carrying the gun on him, and would have shot Tony earlier while he was alone.
I don’t know what show you all were watching but at no time does Bobby say “everything just goes black”, either in the original or in the flashback. He does say you “probably won’t even hear it.” If he had said ‘everything then goes black’ I would buy into the theory that Tony got wacked. There is no reason for Tony to get wacked now.