結局 = after all?

Of course it does, right? Everyone knows that the dictionary says "after all" under the 結局 entry. But like many things in life, what everyone knows is only partially correct & mostly wrong.

Someone said, "After all, I got a high TOEFL score," in class last week. The usage is incorrect.

The reason is that "after all" refers to an unexpected result. You will probably need "but" or some other disjunctive when you use "after all."

So "I thought I did poorly on last week's TOEFL test, but I got a good score after all," is correct.