'Girls Like Girls' Movie Ending Explained & Summary: Will Sonya And Coley Come Out?

Girls Like Girls’ ending is so positive it makes you do a double-take. The film, on the whole, has an overarching sense of sadness to it, because of the time it’s set in and the way anybody who was “different” was treated back then. Teenhood is arguably the toughest part of growing up. For women, it’s extra hard, considering everything we have to live through to come out as “adults” who can be responsible for the whole world. But add to that an identity crisis that makes you question everything about yourself, and you’ve got Sonya. Let’s not forget, she’s the eldest daughter and is responsible for her entire family. How can she even for a second think about her own life and her own choices? They were never hers. On the other hand is Coley, who’s only recently lost her mother and finds herself living with an estranged father who doesn’t know a thing about her. All of this certainly makes these two characters deeply broken. But can they survive each other? Will their love fix them? Or will it make things worse? That’s what Girls Like Girls is about. Let’s figure out the rest of it.

Spoiler Alert

Why Does Sonya Keep Running Away From Coley?

We spend probably more than half the movie with Coley staring in wide-eyed lesbian shock anytime Sonya does anything that brings the two of them closer together. From sleepover cuddling to backseat knee-touching to all manner of female socialized homoromanticism, it’s too much for a girl in the closet who’s obsessed with her friend. Pretty much right from the start, Sonya’s the one who’s inviting Coley to hang out at places and do stuff with her, though it seems at that point that she’s mostly just trying to spend time with her new friend. There is the fact that she randomly shows up at her house at that initial stage, but that’s probably got something to do with how Trenton threw Coley into the lake and ruined her day, which must have made Sonya feel terrible.

That does seem to be what Trenton does for the most part in this story, make Sonya feel terrible. He’s both Sonya’s lover and the embodiment of everything she fears in society. A sort of walking reminder of homophobic heteronormative patriarchy that wants to control her; and the movie reinforces this by having him interrupt Sonya and Coley anytime it feels like they’re going to have a romantic breakthrough. The scene where he throws a ball at them when they’re staring deep into each other’s eyes in the pool is the biggest example, but that time at the party before Sonya leaves for her dance camp is just more of the same.

The sheer weight of this surveillance is why, even after Sonya and Coley open up to each other and kiss, Sonya can’t accept the true depth of her feelings for Coley. She ignores her messages on AIM, she goes back to hanging out with Trenton, and at one point, it seems like she spread the gossip about Coley’s mom dying just to hurt her. More about that later, but Sonya’s actions are largely motivated by her own internalized homophobia, and how it makes her feel about herself. She’s never had these feelings for a girl before, and though we don’t know if she’s bisexual or a lesbian, she knows the things Coley makes her feel are “wrong.” 

When Sonya comes back from the dance camp and comes across Coley, who’s now working at the Japanese restaurant her family’s come to, she’s had time to think things over, and she’s accepted that she likes this girl. But that’s not the end of the line, because she still describes Coley as “wrong,” which almost pushes her away for good. By now, Coley’s less ashamed of who she is than ever before, both because of how she’s resolved her issues with her dad and because of the positive gay representation she’s had from meeting her out and proud male coworker’s boyfriend. Her standards are higher now, and she won’t settle for Sonya’s endless hot-and-cold dance of acknowledging her attraction for Coley followed by distancing herself when she feels shame. In situations like this, at least one person has to be an established “gay” so that they can lean on each other in a way. When Coley first arrived, she was happy to be alone, because she already knew herself as an outcast. She had accepted that nobody would like her. However, Sonya was the one who pushed Coley to befriend her and take things further. She was essentially using Coley to figure herself out, which is, for obvious reasons, very unfair to Coley. This is not to say Sonya is evil or anything. She’s just figuring herself out, and it’s way too scary for her to handle. 

What Finally Triggers Coley’s Reunification WIth Her Dad? 

We get the sense right from the start that Coley and her dad, Curtis, aren’t close at all. She’s clearly always been a momma’s girl, and that’s not changed even after her mum’s death. Throughout the movie, we see Coley’s dad trying to reach out to her and getting rejected, though not without reason. We find out that he left the family when Coley was pretty young, so she’s not just having to get used to the fact that her mum’s not around anymore, but living with a man who’s basically a stranger in the process. Much later, after she spends the night with the corner store girl (anyone else think she looks kinda like Kristen Stewart? Maybe it’s just the grungy blonde thing, but she really reminded me of Kristen’s character in “Crimes Of The Future”), she comes home sobbing, but she doesn’t tell her dad a single detail about what she’s going through. Truth be told, here too, Coley is just a shell of herself, letting herself be used by the older, more mature girl. This scene is quite uncomfortable to watch, because it does feel like, for an instance, it’s not what Coley wants at all. We all know that, so the breakdown isn’t just because of her sadness surrounding Sonya abandoning her;in this moment it’s like she’s abandoned herself too. She’s always felt like everyone around her leaves her alone. 

This is when he reveals that he understands why she wants nothing to do with him, why she feels he abandoned her, but that it wasn’t entirely his fault. Yes, he was a musician who was always on the road, but he did want to live the family life with Coley and her mom; it just so happened that Coley’s mom didn’t want that with him. He was abandoned by her, too. In that moment, this maybe isn’t what she wants to hear from him, but it’s the truth. She’s got more in common with her dad than she wants to admit. When she finds out her favorite jacket, which reminds her of her mother, was actually Curtis’ to begin with, it almost robs it of some of the magic it held for her, even though it should have meant she had an artifact that held memories of both her parents.

When her dad tries to share some of the memories of his own past by showing her pictures from back in the day, she shuts him out again. It’s only after she has her breakdown and tells him how much she hates herself that he tells her he accepts her as his daughter completely and wants to be there for her always from here on out. She seems to believe him. Later, after she gets that job at the Japanese restaurant, he shows up to support her again. Plus, she finally starts to get used to the idea of treating her dad as family, letting him show her those old photos of his parents and her mom and everyone else they knew growing up. 

Will Sonya And Coley Come Out? 

In the end, even though Coley was disappointed by the things Sonya said in the Japanese restaurant’s parking lot, she ends up going to Brooke’s party, where she knows Sonya’s going to be. This is also when she finds out Sonya never meant to leak her secret, Trenton was just a jerk who eavesdropped and then made the news public. When she sees Sonya literally push Trenton off her and just seem generally miserable, Coley knows just how bad they need each other. Coley had almost managed to get over Sonya while she was away, but now that they’ve seen each other again, she’s allowing herself to give Sonya another chance. Or technically, she becomes one who abandons, too. When Coley goes out to sit by Sonya next to the pool, they both know that they’re there for each other. Both of them are willing to give the other time to heal and slowly become whatever they need for each other. Without the world looking in on them. This is the kind of careless abandonment Coley is looking for, rather than being the one who gets left behind. 

Further, there’s a little post-credits scene where Sonya runs after Coley and kisses her in the middle of the street. She tells her that she’s forgotten something; it’s her mother’s jacket. A symbol of Coley’s closeted self, in my opinion. It’s important to her, but it’s also not something she wants to tell everyone about. In fact, she only tells Sonya about it, but then learns it’s actually her dad’s, not her mum’s. You’d have thought she’d give up on it after finding that out, but Sonya bringing it to her in the end reinforces the fact that she has it together and nobody has left her side. Everyone she cares about loves her back, too. They’ve clearly both decided they’re not hiding the way they feel about each other anymore. Coley will probably tell Curtis about Sonya soon enough, but it might take a while for Sonya to open up to her mother, who clearly puts a lot of pressure on her to succeed and be the perfect daughter. However, this won’t stop them from growing up together and truly letting loose with each other. The time period the film is set in is 2006, which was quite a tough time to be queer. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter if Coley and Sonya come out to other people; all that does matter is that they accept each other as more than just friends. Seems like that’s already taken care of, so now it’s time for different kinds of heartbreak, but not the kind that comes from a shattered identity. 

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