I disagree with this appraisal of Chase's words on the ending. He's been very clear that he intended the ending to be ambiguous. A slip up of words a decade and a half after the show seems like weak evidence. He's described death scenes that he thought about using for Tony and didn't, too, so imo, the slip up does not seem definitive. The beauty of the ending is how many ways you can interpret it. Even if Chase came out and said, "I feel Tony died at the end," it wouldn't matter because he's designed an ending where you can't know from watching it what truly happened. Maybe you're whacked, maybe Tony is whacked, maybe we're being made self aware of the anxiety we feel at knowing the show is almost done and we're forced to come to terms with that (the fade to black being a moment of literal self-reflection in the screen). Implying there is a canon "right answer" is just a fixation on truth when art is supposed to make you think more because of the absence than because of the exact truths.