It's finally the end of The Sopranos ... or is it?

Flags were not at half mast, but America was nonetheless a nation bereft yesterday morning. The Sopranos, the television series about a dysfunctional New Jersey Mafia clan, which for eight years has elevated standards of small-screen drama to unexpected levels of excellence and suspense, is no more. Ciao Tony.

It is also a nation not a little befuddled and frustrated. Addicts in Britain who will have to wait a little longer for the chance to savour the twists and teases of the sixth and final series may want to stop reading now, before we tell you want happens at the very end. Or, more pertinently, what does not.

Fans in the United States are feeling a little short-changed by David Chase, the original creator of the programme, who returned to write and direct the final episode. The speculation fuelled by the previous five episodes had followed predictable lines. But Chase, not for the first time, bucked predictable.

After giving so many of our Sunday nights to the demented doings of Tony and his families (of blood and crime) we might have been entitled to an ending that was neat. Would he would succumb to the FBI and be whisked away, if not to prison then to a witness protection programme? Or, more likely perhaps, would he, his wife, Carmella, and his children be mowed down in a final spasm of gangland violence?

Chase, however, went for neither of the above. Three short words were surely uttered by millions of viewers when the screen went dark on Sunday as Tony, Carmella and the kids, Meadow and AJ, gathered in a restaurant for a family dinner. The first two of them were, "What the ..."

There was a grand execution, but then barely an episode went by in this last series without one key character taking their last breath. (Poor Bobby, Tony's brother-in-law. He had always seemed so hapless and almost sweet.) But the victim at the end was not Tony or anyone close to him. Rather it was Phil Leotardo, the head of the Brooklyn clan that had declared war on the Sopranos.

The manner of his death was vintage Sopranos, which always managed to elicit almost fuzzy feelings towards its protagonists, even as they engaged in the most repugnant acts of savagery. Leotardo draws up in a petrol station with his wife and twin grandchildren riding as passengers. He steps out and is felled by a storm of bullets. He falls and the out-of-control car runs over his head. Bump and crunch.

The finale did at least give us final glimpses of most of the main players. Only Dr Melfi, the therapist played by Lorraine Bracco, was deprived of one more appearance. (She dumps Tony as a patient in the penultimate episode.) But almost everyone gets a little time.

Otherwise Chase declined to answer our needs. He leaves us hanging, perhaps because that has always been the genius of this show, to defy expectations and keep us yearning for the next page. On the other hand, leaving Tony alive and still out on the streets leaves the door ajar if not for another series (not on the cards, we are told) then perhaps for a film.

Here, if you want to know, is the end. Tony, Carmella and AJ are at the restaurant table. Meadow has been delayed by some botched parallel parking. A shadowy figure has disappeared into the lavatory. Then something catches Tony's attention. Is it Meadow finally making her entrance? Or is the unidentified man emerging from the lavatory with a gun aimed at Tony's head? Or neither of the above? We will never know.