The ending of The Runaways depicts a bittersweet reunion between Cherie Currie and Joan Jett, set three years after Cherie’s collapse into substance abuse. The scene takes place in a bakery where Cherie now works—a deliberate visual contrast to her rock star past—when she hears Joan’s cover of “I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll” playing on the radio. This moment captures the film’s central theme: two former bandmates following radically different trajectories after the band’s dissolution, with Cherie choosing recovery and stability while Joan forges ahead as a rock icon. The ending isn’t a triumphant reunion or a tragic downward spiral.
Instead, it presents a quiet, complicated farewell. Cherie calls the radio station where Joan is conducting interviews, and the two reconnect briefly through music rather than in person. This distance—both literal and metaphorical—defines the scene’s emotional weight. The film suggests that despite the band’s implosion and the personal devastation that followed, the bond between these two girls endures, even if their lives have diverged irrevocably.
Table of Contents
- What Exactly Happens in The Runaways’ Final Scene?
- The Three-Year Time Jump and Cherie’s Redemption Arc
- Joan’s Continued Success Versus Cherie’s Rebuilding
- The Symbolism of “I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll” as a Bridge
- Why the Ending Chooses Ambiguity Over Clear Resolution
- How Cherie Currie’s Real Autobiography Shaped the Film’s Ending
- The Enduring Friendship as the True Subject of the Ending
What Exactly Happens in The Runaways’ Final Scene?
The ending sequence shows Cherie working at a local bakery, an ordinary job that serves as a concrete representation of her recovery. There’s no glamour, no audience, no spotlight—just someone rebuilding a functional life piece by piece. When “I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll” plays on the bakery’s radio, it triggers recognition and emotion, a moment where her past literally broadcasts into her present.
Rather than rushing to visit Joan or meeting her in person, Cherie picks up the phone and calls the radio station. This choice reveals something important: the reconnection happens through an intermediary—music, a phone line, a professional setting where Joan conducts interviews. It’s not the private, intimate reunion audiences might expect, but something more filtered and mediated. The conversation itself isn’t shown in detail; the film trusts viewers to understand that what matters most has already been communicated through the act of calling itself.
The Three-Year Time Jump and Cherie’s Redemption Arc
The three-year jump is crucial to understanding the ending‘s emotional impact. Cherie doesn’t simply decide to get better; she goes through the painful, unglamorous process of residential rehabilitation. This wasn’t a quick fix or a weekend intervention—it was sustained, structured treatment for substance abuse that required her to confront her addiction in detail. The film doesn’t show this recovery process, which is itself a commentary on how invisible recovery work is compared to the visible spectacle of rock stardom.
Working at a bakery represents a specific kind of stability: manual work, regular hours, a community of customers, predictable income. This is the opposite of the tour bus life, the groupies, the access passes, and the constant adrenaline. Many recovery narratives suggest that such “ordinary” work is somehow a step down, but the film implies it’s actually a step forward—a foundation that won’t collapse under the weight of addiction or fame. The limitation of this portrayal, however, is that it doesn’t explore whether Cherie still struggles with temptation or whether recovery remains ongoing; the ending presents it as already complete.
Joan’s Continued Success Versus Cherie’s Rebuilding
The film constructs a deliberate contrast between Joan Jett’s trajectory and Cherie Currie’s after the band ends. Joan, played by Kristen Stewart, channels her talent and ambition into a solo career. She remains in the music industry, conducting radio interviews, recording music that will become legendary. By the time of the ending, Joan is on her way to becoming a rock legend—a position that, historically, she did achieve in real life. Cherie’s path represents a different kind of victory.
She chose survival over stardom, stability over the drugs that were killing her. The film doesn’t suggest that working at a bakery is “better” than being a rock star, but rather that it was the right choice for Cherie specifically at that moment in her life. Comparing their outcomes reveals a hard truth: the music industry was sustainable for Joan in ways it wasn’t for Cherie. This isn’t about talent or dedication—it’s about individual vulnerability and the specific pressures that broke Cherie down. Some people can handle the chaos of rock and roll; others can’t, and that’s not a moral failing on their part.
The Symbolism of “I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll” as a Bridge
Joan Jett’s cover of “I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll” becomes the emotional bridge of the ending. This song represents Joan’s continued connection to the music that defined their friendship. When Cherie hears it on the radio, she’s not hearing a stranger’s music—she’s hearing Joan, specifically Joan’s voice and vision. The song choice carries the weight of their history without requiring them to speak directly about it.
The radio format creates an interesting distance. Cherie doesn’t call Joan directly at home; she calls a radio station where Joan is working. This professional context means they can reconnect around the music itself rather than navigating the complicated personal history between them. In some ways, this is a limitation of the ending—it doesn’t show what they actually say to each other, or whether they make plans to meet again. It keeps their reunion abstract, which works thematically but leaves concrete questions unanswered.
Why the Ending Chooses Ambiguity Over Clear Resolution
The Runaways’ ending deliberately avoids tying everything up. There’s no big scene where they hug and promise to stay in touch forever. There’s no flashback sequence showing how they got to this moment. There’s no indication of what happens after Cherie hangs up the phone. This ambiguity can feel unsatisfying if you’re expecting a conventional narrative resolution, but it’s actually more honest about how real relationships work after major transitions. The danger of this approach is that viewers might feel cheated by the lack of closure.
The film has spent two hours building toward this moment, and then it doesn’t show the reunion directly. Some viewers have interpreted the ending as sad or incomplete. But the intention appears to be that the relationship endures precisely because it doesn’t require constant validation or physical presence. The call itself is enough. They heard each other. That’s the resolution.
How Cherie Currie’s Real Autobiography Shaped the Film’s Ending
The film is based on Cherie Currie’s memoir, which means the ending has a foundation in her actual lived experience. Cherie’s real recovery from substance abuse, her work rebuilding a normal life, and her eventual reconnection with Joan Jett all happened in real life. The filmmaker chose to depict these events in this particular way—quietly, briefly, without dramatic embellishment.
This grounding in reality gives the ending authenticity that a purely fictional treatment wouldn’t have. The bakery job, the recovery facility, the moment of hearing the song—these appear to be drawn from Cherie’s actual biography. However, the film’s representation is still an interpretation and simplification of events that likely contained far more complexity and pain than the screen time allows.
The Enduring Friendship as the True Subject of the Ending
What makes the ending remarkable is its focus on friendship rather than romance or fame. The Runaways is ostensibly about a rock band, but its emotional core is always the relationship between Cherie and Joan. The ending validates this focus by making the reconnection about these two women specifically, not about the band reforming or either of them finding new success.
The fact that they remain friends despite going through a catastrophic life experience together—addiction, band dissolution, public failure, personal trauma—becomes the film’s final statement. The song playing, the phone call made, the voice recognized across the years: these are the moments that matter. The Runaways as a historical band ended badly, but the relationship between the two girls who formed it survives, transformed but intact.
