Looper ending explained · Cinespective

What happens

Joe realizes Old Joe will kill Cid or his mother, and that this loss is what turns the boy into the Rainmaker. So he shoots himself. Old Joe vanishes, and Cid keeps his mother and his chance at a different life.

The last image

Cid sits in the cane field with his mother, calm, as the threat that would have made him the Rainmaker is gone.

What it says

The film argues you can't win an argument with your own future; you can only break the pattern. Joe's death is the first time he gives something up for someone else, and the cycle of violence ends because he stops feeding it.