Romy, Anna, and Talia graduate from university

Three months later, the graduation of Romy Cartelli, Anna Price, and Talia DuPont turns an academic milestone into a public recognition of the family Romy has built after losing her parents. The ceremony celebrates the three friends’ achievements, but its emotional center is Romy’s realization that she will not have to face the future alone. The cheering crowd, the friends who gather around one another, and the diploma in Romy’s hands make graduation both an ending to their student lives and an affirmation of the home they have found.

The Ceremony and Romy’s Recognition

The scene opens with Romy’s name called over the loudspeaker. Anna Price has just left the stage, and the applause for her is still fading when the crowd begins cheering again as Romy stands. Kash Montgomery, Lynch Foster, and half the Somerville pack add their whistles and shouts from behind her. The response gives the formal ceremony a distinctly personal audience: Romy is not walking toward the stage alone, even before her friends join her there.

Romy climbs the steps in her cap and gown, holding her cap with one hand and lifting her gown with the other. She shakes the dean’s hand and then Xan Andrew Higgins’s. She starts to address him as Xan, corrects herself to Professor Higgins, and blushes; he answers the awkwardness with a wink as he hands her a diploma carrying special honors for her final assignment. The honor acknowledges both her academic work and the ambition she has pursued beyond the ceremony: Professor Higgins praises her for exceeding her goals for building a following, then connects her bravery and strength of character to what she did for the Somerville pack.

His congratulations bind two kinds of accomplishment without treating them as interchangeable. Romy has earned recognition through her assignment and her work toward an audience, while her actions for the pack have required courage. Professor Higgins also says that her parents would have been proud. The words bring her lost family into the moment, but they do not leave her isolated in grief: she wipes away tears, accepts his congratulations, and turns to the crowd that is already on its feet for her.

The Three Friends’ Graduations

After pausing for photographs, Romy hurries back to her seat. Lynch has taken more pictures than she thinks necessary before rushing back to his own place. Anna Price waits with her diploma already in hand and hugs Romy tightly as they sit through the next graduates. Their embrace makes the ceremony a shared experience rather than a sequence of separate honors; they wait together for the name that brings their attention back to the stage.

When Talia DuPont is called, Romy and Anna Price rise to clap and cheer. Talia crosses the stage with the swagger Romy likens to a werewolf-gangster-beta, shakes hands with the finesse of a 1920s mob boss, and winks at Lynch. He shouts that she is his woman, prompting laughter and whistles. The scene’s humor preserves Talia’s irreverent confidence inside the ceremony’s formal structure. After receiving her diploma, she does not return to her seat. She pushes through the rows until she can sit beside Romy and Anna Price, choosing to watch the rest of the ceremony with them.

The three then wait for Justice Erikson’s name. Romy cheers for her newest best friend, while Levi whistles from the back. Justice pauses to blow him a kiss. Romy notes that no limp or injury remains, a concrete sign of recovery folded into the celebration. Anna Price calls the pair adorable; Talia teases that they are gag-inducing, though her smile matches Romy’s. The attention briefly widens beyond the graduating trio, showing their friends’ relationships and recoveries as part of the same community they have gathered to celebrate.

A New Family and Home

The dean’s address gives the ceremony’s personal meaning a public formulation: a lasting future rests on the people in one’s life, and good people make happiness and a home possible wherever one goes. Romy recognizes the statement as the truest thing she has learned at school. She had come to honor the family she lost and the parents who tried to give her a future; instead, that purpose led her to a new family, a new home, and a love better than anything she had read in a book. The graduation scene does not erase her parents from her life. It places remembrance beside belonging, allowing her to carry both into what comes next.

When the ceremony ends, everyone rises and throws their caps into the air. The friends hug until Romy is close to tears, and Talia reminds her to preserve the eyeliner she worked hard on. The joking instruction makes their intimacy visible through familiar teasing, even as the tears acknowledge the force of the occasion. The crowd bottlenecks in the aisles, delaying their reunion with the others. Justice climbs over a row of chairs to reach them, and the group pushes through the press of people together.

Romy reaches Lina Montgomery first. Lina pulls her into a warm hug, smiling proudly; Romy wonders if any mother could look prouder and thinks of her own mother as she hugs Lina back. That moment brings the ceremony’s central transformation into focus without substituting one mother for another: Romy remembers the family she lost while receiving affection from the family she has found. Her tears are no longer only for absence. They accompany the knowledge that she has people to return to.

Significance of the Ending

The graduation is a milestone for Romy Cartelli, Anna Price, and Talia DuPont, but its emotional resolution extends to their friends and pack. Each diploma marks an individual achievement; the cheers, shared seats, photographs, embraces, and crowded walk out make those achievements communal. Romy’s special honors recognize her final assignment and her service to the Somerville pack, while the ceremony’s closing reflection names the personal consequence of that history: she has found a family and a home.

The scene also gives recovery a place in the future. Justice Erikson walks across the stage without a trace of his former limp, and Lina’s proud welcome places Romy within a continuing family life. By ending with caps in the air and the group pressed together in the crowded aisles, the graduation presents completion not as separation but as a transition undertaken in company. Romy’s student life is ending; the relationships that have made her feel at home are not.