Tony Soprano, the crime boss and protagonist of the television drama The Sopranos, may have finally had his destiny disclosed by the show’s creator.

In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, The Sopranos creator David Chase acknowledged, after 14 years of conjecture, that Tony did indeed die at the climax of the series’ finale in 2007. Despite the fact that the seven-time Emmy Award-winning writer had always intended to kill off Tony, things did not go as planned.

“Because the scene I had in my mind was not that scene. Nor did I think of cutting to black. I had a scene in which Tony comes back from a meeting in New York in his car. At the beginning of every show, he came from New York into New Jersey, and the last scene could be him coming from New Jersey back into New York for a meeting at which he was going to be killed,” Chase recalled.

He went on to say, “Yeah. But I think I had this notion—I was driving on Ocean Park Boulevard near the airport and I saw a little restaurant. It was kind of like a shack that served breakfast. And for some reason I thought, ‘Tony should get it in a place like that.’ Why? I don’t know.”

Tony Soprano and his family are seen eating at Holsten’s restaurant in the episode, which aired on June 10, 2007. Soprano looks up as Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin'” plays in the background, and the scene fades to black. That was the end.

But it was only the start of a mystery.

“I had no idea it would cause that much—I mean, I forget what was going on in Iraq or someplace; London had been bombed!” Chase remarked. “Nobody was talking about that; they were talking about The Sopranos. It was kind of incredible to me. But I had no idea it would be that much of an uproar. And was it annoying? What was annoying was how many people wanted to see Tony killed. That bothered me.”

It’s hardly surprising that he confirmed Tony’s death. Alan Taylor, the director of The Sopranos prequel film The Many Saints of Newark, which starred James’ son Michael as a young Tony, spoke about the finale last month.

“There’s just too many signifiers (in the final season),” Taylor explained. “The biggest one for me is, I think in the entire history of The Sopranos , there’s only one line of dialogue that has ever been played back a second time as voiceover, and that’s when Bobby Baccalieri says that you don’t hear the bullet (when you’re killed). So the fact that was said in an earlier episode, then repeated in voiceover later.”