Nearly a week after the HBO series “The Sopranos” itself went to black forever, the debate about what its final scene — in which the screen goes black for 10 seconds as Tony Soprano and members of his family eat in a diner — might really mean has raged on, especially on blogs. Online, fans have either been railing about the “cop-out” of the ending or trying to fill in the blanks of the final episode themselves (or, often, both).

David Chase, the creator of the series, has done little to clear things up, offering only one potentially relevant comment in an interview he granted to the Newark newspaper The Star-Ledger this week. While declining to say whether the abrupt cut to black meant that Tony Soprano had been killed, Mr. Chase said the meaning of the ending was “all there” in the episode.