Tony and Carmela Soprano at Holsten’s Diner in a scene from the finale of The Sopranos.

HBO / WILL HART WILL HART

Some groaned displeasure. Others nodded approval.

Sunday’s Sopranos finale left no middle ground.

Yesterday, viewers across the country shared their thoughts on the show’s abrupt, almost power-failure, ending in commentary that took place around water coolers, on radio talk shows and on websites, including ones run by HBO and The Providence Journal.

In the final episode of the series, Tony Soprano and rival mobster Phil Leotardo are at war. Tony wins. Phil loses, as suggested by the bullet that goes through his head and the SUV that rolls over it.

Until then, Tony and his family — wife Carmela, daughter Meadow and son A.J. — are living in fear, and a safe house. When the danger passes, Tony, who knows the FBI is closing in on him, meets with his family for dinner in a modest restaurant, which is where the story ends, suddenly, with Meadow, delayed in her arrival at the restaurant by her three attempts at parallel parking, and Tony, Carmela and A.J. eating onion rings while a suspicious man enters the bathroom behind Tony, who looks up.

And that’s that. Pull the plug on one of TV’s most popular shows.

Some say David Chase, the show’s executive producer, “just ran out of film.”

Others say he’s brilliant, that he refrained from unrealistically wrapping things up, yet strongly suggested Tony Soprano’s deathly demise.

On that thought, he could have many killers, according to an interesting analysis posted anonymously on HBO’s website. Yes, Tony Soprano will be killed, the viewer said, if not in that restaurant at the end of Sunday’s show, then sometime later by someone he mistreated, and there have been many over the 86 shows in the series.

Look at that last scene closely. The viewer says many of the people in that restaurant with Tony, other than his family members, are disgruntled people from his past. So he’s supposedly surrounded by people who are out to get him, if not in that restaurant, then metaphorically and literally throughout the rest of his life, which presumably will be short.

According to this viewer, the man at the bar in the restaurant is Nikki Leotardo, the nephew of Phil Leotardo, who Tony had just ordered executed. The truck driver in the restaurant is the brother of a guy Christopher robbed several seasons ago. And the two African-American men who walk into the restaurant, the viewer says, tried to kill Tony a few seasons ago, but only grazed him with a bullet.

“There were three people in the restaurant who had reason to kill Tony,” the viewer wrote.

If you’re a long-time fan of the series, and you recorded Sunday’s show, play it back. Do it in slow motion. Go frame by frame if necessary.

This could be the Zapruder film of Tony Soprano’s killer. Maybe, if you look closely in the grassy knoll of restaurant booths, you’ll see Vito, Adriana or perhaps even Oswald.

Let the artistry conspiracy begin.