How can I return a 404 status on a view blade?

I have an application that, unfortunately, loads a view and renders a visual error on the client side (angular.js). This was a design architecture flaw, because pages that should return a 404, in fact, return a 200.

What this means is that if someone goes to http://thesite/subdirectory/foo and foo doesn't exist, the page displays a message ("Oops! This product doesn't exist!"). This message is generated client-side with angular.js.

Here's what's going on as best as I can tell:

Route

...
//item or equipment pages
Route::get('/{dealer}/used-inventory/{entity_slug}/{entity_id}', [
'as' => 'dealerSubsites.usedInventoryShow', 'uses' => 'FrontEndInventoriesController@show',
]);
...

Controller (FrontEndInventoriesController)

public function show(DealerSubsite $dealer, $entity_slug, $entity_id) {
    return view('pages.subsites.inventories.show', compact('dealer', 'entity_id'));
}

View (pages.subsites.inventories.show)

<div ng-if="!(itemNotFound && itemLoaded)">
 //Stuff to render client-side via angular.js if condition evaluates to false
</div>
<div ng-if="itemNotFound && itemLoaded">
// Stuff to render client-side via angular.js if condition evaluates to true -- this should be a 404
</div>

I got around this by passing the route through middleware that tests for the condition and then throws a 404 if needed. This kind of works. However, the custom error page doesn't make sense in the context of this part of the application.

What I need to do is serve up the content in pages.subsites.inventories.show while also pushing a 404 status. Is that even possible? Or will I need to create a custom error page?

public function show(DealerSubsite $dealer, $entity_slug, $entity_id) { $statusCode = 200; // do something to decide if it is found or not if (!$found) { $statusCode = 404; } return response()->view('pages.subsites.inventories.show', compact('dealer', 'entity_id'), $statusCode); }

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