WARNING! This item discusses plot details about the fate of Vito Spatafore (Joseph R. Gannascoli) that were not revealed in the May 21 episode of The Sopranos. If you haven’t seen the episode, continue reading. We won’t spoil a thing.
In the weeks before the episode resolved the tale of the capo affectionately known as "Gay Vito," fan sites were atwitter with speculation and rumor.
In April, the venerable Web site Ain’t It Cool News, which offers "spoilers" about movies and TV series, posted a Vito spoiler from an "untested source," revealing that the show had filmed "a violent rape scene" between Vito and Finn, Meadow Soprano’s fiancé and the first character to discover that Vito is gay.
Well, things didn’t turn out that way for Vito. Not even remotely.
Ain’t It Cool’s "coaxial" maven, Hercules the Strong, told us the site’s spoilers "almost never" turn out to be bogus, "which is why everybody took it as gospel—despite our warning that it derived from an untested source!"
Before Vito’s fate had been sealed, Gannascoli told the New York Observer that he filmed four alternate endings for his character, saying the show’s producers "wanted to keep it a secret, even from me."
The producers of Star Trek: The Next Generation were not above planting fake scripts in the dumpsters at Paramount to throw people off. So did HBO float a "foiler?"
HBO would not comment on the spoiler or Gannascoli’s alternate-ending claim. "We prefer to let viewers discover the show on their own," a spokesperson says. Although the last episode would suggest otherwise (again, no spoilers here), one Ain’t It Cool poster theorized that the scene could still unfold in next Sunday’s season finale—in a flashback.
We, however, do not subscribe to this theory.
