Letters to the Editor
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Not quite
Of course, the most indeterminate show on television should end with the most indeterminate of possible endings; of course, this is David Chase's wry commentary on how so many of us can worry about The Sopranos but not about what's happening in the outside world; of course, a blank screen is open to as many interpretations as we can imagine.
But let's just pretend for a minute that this was not just Chase's metatextual joke; let's just pretend for a minute that the choice of sudden blackness (and not a fade to black) and the choice of ending before the family is entirely reunited (unlike previous seasons where the ending scans over the entire family together) are not random. Let's just pretend that this has some narrative meaning (even if we know that because we are only left with a blank screen, we'll never actually know; even if we realize that we're the butt of Chase's joke, interpreting and wondering about fictional characters who never really existed anyway). Within the narrative context of The Sopranos, the most consistent meaning of this black screen is that Tony has been assasinated. You mention two pieces of evidence: the Godfather reference (in a season with explicit allusions, eg Rocky and Raging Bull) and the recurring theme of getting hit without knowing it. There is more circumstantial evidence: why the sudden change of plans for dinner, and, more importantly, who heard about these change of plans? Has Paulie made the right decision and realized that since his boss only has him to depend on, his boss has lost all power (and come on, Tony can be a dick, but did he have to be that mean about Paulie's family?) Does Meadow's hastiness comes from the belief - one we all have - that the family is safe when everybody's together . . . and then she doesn't arrive in time? Perhaps. There are any number of these clues that all, within the narrative, add up to the possibility that Tony's luck has run out, that every season he has whittled down his crew and his family until all that's left is a stony wife barely keeping it together, a daughter who's about to head out to marriage and, yes, AJ.
This show hasn't been about Tony's "subjectivity" in the conventional, camera POV shot, but it has been about Tony's world (hence the dreams, the coma delirium, the way that loose ends that Tony forgets about tend to disappear into the snowy woods). So, it is about Tony Soprano, and if Tony Soprano were killed, that is how the Sopranos would end - sudden, mid-sentence.