James Gandolfini's dies of heart attack

"Now we'll never know whether Tony Soprano got whacked or not."

This, believe it or not, was how somebody on a social networking site greeted last night's shocking news of James Gandolfini's death, at 51, of a heart attack while vacationing in Europe.

The first thing you want to say to this is: Really? Six years have passed since the last episode of "The Sopranos" left the fate of its psychically damaged crime boss and suburban patriarch to speculation -- and you still want closure after all this time? Is that really the first thing you thought about after someone died so young, so unexpectedly?

On the one hand, this sounds at best shallow and at worst callous. It is true, of course, that Tony Soprano, one of the great characters in American television and folklore, was indeed the role of a lifetime, for which Gandolfini was deservedly honored with multiple Emmys, unanimous acclaim and the type of reverberating legacy that is rarer than awards or praise. (It may be somewhat premature to call this immortality, but we'll see in another 30 years or so.)