The Sopranos' Season 3, Episode 11 "Pine Barrens," delivered one of the most entertaining and well-structured hours of television in the show's legendary run. However, it also left audiences without a resolution as to what happened to the Russian that ran away from Paulie and Christopher.

The plot in question begins when Tony asks Paulie to pick up a collection from Valery, a close friend of Tony's associate Slava. When Paulie and Christopher arrive, Valery and Paulie get into a petty argument which escalates into a full-blown fight. Paulie and Christopher team-up on Valery, seemingly killing him.

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To cover up the murder, the pair wrap Valery's body and decide to dump it in the desolate Pine Barrens region of New Jersey. They inform Tony, who visits Slava, only to find out that Valery is a trained and experienced commando. When Paulie and Christopher arrive in the Pine Barrens, they discover Valery survived. They try to force him to dig his own grave, but Valery outsmarts them and runs. Christopher attempt to shoot the fleeing Russian, and seemingly hits him. However, the blood trail mysteriously disappears, as does the man. Paulie and Christopher get lost looking for a body and have to be rescued from freezing to death by Tony. Though they escape, they decide the chance Valery actually survived is low enough not to worry about the matter.

Many expected the fallout from this attack to have some effect down the line, but with the series wrapped up its evident that it never really came up again. This decision is made even more perplexing since, at the end of "Pine Barrens," Tony warns Paulie that he will have to deal with the situation if it ever resurfaces, which seems like foreshadowing.

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Over the years, the ultimate fate of the Russian has become a hot topic among fans and has even been brought up in numerous interviews with the cast and crew. Actor Michael Imperioli explained in a New York Times article that the show "was never what people expected," and writer Terence Winter said in Sopranos: The Book that the team wanted to keep things ambiguous because "not everything gets answered in life." In that same book, showrunner David Chase railed against Hollywood conditioning audiences to expect closure from every storyline, and revealed that although he had an answer, he wouldn't reveal it purely because audiences had gotten "so pissy about it."

Later, speaking to the Actors Guild, Chase updated his answer, stating Valery was found by Boy Scouts, who contacted Slava, who got his friend brain surgery and sent him back to Russia. However, given his previous frustration with the topic and the improbable nature of the explanation, it's very probable that this was a tongue-in-cheek answer. Tony Sirico, who played Paulie, mentioned in the same New York Times article that the team had been preparing to shoot a scene where Paulie and Chris were approached by Valery once again, but it was scrapped before the day of filming.

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In addition to the official answers from the creative team, there have also been a number of fan theories. The most intriguing speculates that the last scene of the series cut to black because Tony was assassinated, and one of the many potential people who could have carried out the hit could have been the Russian mafia. It's debatable if this was possible since Tony mentions meeting with Slava in later episodes, implying he is unaware of Tony's role in the death of Valery, but Slava could also have been biding his time.

Despite fans of the show having pursued the answer to Valery's fate, it seems creators will never issue an official explanation. The story told by Tony Sirico about the canceled scene may be the closest audiences will ever get, leaving the whole affair as one of the show's great mysteries.

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