Wild Breakfast Club Theory Gives A Darker Meaning To Its Iconic Ending

John Hughes’ The Breakfast Club has one of the most iconic endings in the history of teen comedies, but a theory gives a twist to it and a darker meaning. In 1985, John Hughes continued his reign in the world of teen comedies with The Breakfast Club, a coming-of-age comedy-drama movie that went on to become one of the most influential movies of the decade. The Breakfast Club took the audience to Shermer High School on a Saturday to follow five students in detention: Brian (Anthony Michael Hall), Claire (Molly Ringwald), Andrew (Emilio Estevez), Allison (Ally Sheedy), and John Bender (Judd Nelson).

The group is overseen by principal Richard Vernon (Paul Gleason), who warns them not to talk or move from their seats and to write a 1000-word essay on “who you think you are”. Despite their different personalities, backgrounds, and school cliques, the group ends up creating a strong bond at the end of the day, and The Breakfast Club famously ends with Bender walking through the school’s football field, bumping his first in the air. Although The Breakfast Club leaves little to speculation, there’s a dark theory that completely changes the group’s experience in detention and gives the ending a dark and complex twist.

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Breakfast Club Theory Says The Characters Are In Purgatory

The group wasn’t exactly in detention

It’s not uncommon for movies and TV shows to get a “they are all dead” type of theory at some point, but in the case of The Breakfast Club, the idea is weirdly fitting. The theory (via Uncle Mike’s Musings) suggests that The Breakfast Club is a rip-off of Dante Alighieri’s The Divine Comedy, but instead of changing settings to explore Dante’s Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven, they all happen at school. According to the author, detention starts as Hell, with Vernon serving as the Devil, as he’s the one bringing the characters in, giving them restrictions, and overseeing them, with the main purpose of making them have the worst time there.

As the characters start opening up to each other and really getting to know each other, detention/Hell becomes Purgatory, including the moments where they had fun together, yet the Devil was still present. In The Breakfast Club, the point of the characters opening up to each other and sharing their reasons for being in detention along with their fears is for them to create a unique bond, overcome their prejudices and differences, and be able to offer Vernon an answer in their essay (even if he doesn’t like it) – according to the theory, however, the point of it was to help each other find peace with their lives and now their deaths so they could move on to Heaven.

At the end of The Breakfast Club, the characters found the peace they needed, and when they left school, they entered Heaven. Bender’s triumphant fist bump at the end, then, takes a darker and deeper meaning as it would be symbolizing his triumph over Hell, Purgatory, and the Devil himself, as against all odds, he managed to cross over to Heaven with the help of his new friends.

Breakfast Club Theory Would Leave A Huge Plot Hole

This theory doesn’t solve the biggest question it raises

As believable as the theory is, it raises a huge question that it doesn’t answer: if the characters of The Breakfast Club died before the events of the movie and they are now in Hell and Purgatory, how did they die? The author of the theory doesn’t offer an explanation, but the character’s reasons for being in detention might have the answer. While their reasons are mostly harmless, they could be taken as incomplete memories, as they just got to the afterlife and might still be processing their deaths.

With this in mind, Claire might have died when she skipped school, Brian might have taken a real gun and killed himself, Andrew could have been killed by his father (who he was afraid of), Allison could have ended in a bad place that led to her death, and Bender might have been killed by his abusive father.

How This Theory Changes The Breakfast Club (& Makes It More Complex)

The Breakfast Club takes a darker yet deeper meaning

The main characters of The Breakfast Club being dead is a dark twist to this teen comedy, as they were all too young and didn’t deserve to die, but it also makes the movie more complex. Each character’s struggles become a lot deeper and more complex as they have to find peace with everything they did – being too vain and self-centered, not living up to expectations, succumbing to peer pressure, etc – in order to move on to paradise. Given their different backgrounds and causes of death, the process is different for every character, but they all have the ability to help the rest find their peace. Bender’s fist bump at the end of The Breakfast Club might even hint at Bender being trapped in Hell and Purgatory for too long, and thanks to his new friends, he finally made it out.