Ballad of a Small Player Ending Explained: Is Dao Ming Dead?

In Netflix’s ‘Ballad of a Small Player,’ Colin Farrell plays the role of a gambling addict who is on a downward spiral. The film begins at a particularly low point for the character, and things keep getting worse with each turn. He has debts to pay off while dealing with the monster of his addiction, which keeps dragging him down. In the midst of this, he meets a woman whom he becomes obsessed with. It seems that she is the only one who can save him, and by the end, it proves true in more ways than one. SPOILERS AHEAD.

Ballad of a Small Player Plot Synopsis

Lord Doyle is neck deep in debt. He isn’t really a Lord, but that’s the persona he has picked for himself. He knows that he needs to win big if he is to continue living in the posh hotel and sustaining his posh lifestyle, but luck hasn’t favored him for a while now. As he suits up, ready to gamble away yet another day, he is forced to sneak his way around the hotel. Still, he is caught, and the manager makes it clear that he needs to pay off his three hundred thousand worth of bill in the next four days, or they will call the police. As if this wasn’t enough, Doyle has a private investigator chasing after him. It turns out that before coming to Macau, he worked for a firm where he had a rich old lady as his client.

His responsibility was to maintain her portfolio, but he cheated her out of about one million pounds. Now Cynthia wants him to pay, be reported and deported, and prepare to spend the rest of his life in prison. The only way to make so much money in such a short span of time is by playing and winning a game of baccarat. While other games require some skill, baccarat is played purely on luck. Doyle decides to try his hand at it, but is repeatedly beaten by a rich old lady with limitless pockets. When it becomes clear that he has nothing more to gamble with, he is approached by a loan shark named Dao Ming. At the time, Doyle doesn’t take her money, but later, when he spots her outside his hotel, after another gambler throws himself off the building, he asks her to help him.

They spend talking to each other, connecting over their shared flaws. The next morning, Doyle wakes up alone, with a number written on his hand. When he searches for Dao Ming, she is nowhere to be found. He decides that the only way to save himself is by skipping Macau and going to Hong Kong. When he gets there, he indulges in a food binge that he cannot afford. Just when he thinks he is about to have a heart attack, Dao Ming shows up. She takes him to her boathouse, where she nurses him back to health. They bond with each other over the next couple of days, but then Dao Ming disappears again. Doyle finds her secret stash of money and decides to go back to the world of gambling. And this time, things turn out incredibly differently for him.

Is Dao Ming Dead? Did Doyle See Her Ghost?

At the beginning of the film, Doyle is on a downward spiral, with a huge hotel bill that he cannot pay off, and the threat of being deported if he doesn’t pay nearly a million pounds that he stole from an old man the day before he arrived in Macau. His situation seems entirely hopeless until he crosses paths with Dao Ming. She is a loan shark who offers to lend him money for another round of baccarat with the rich Granny. However, she later takes back her offer, realizing that it won’t do either of them any good. Their paths cross again when one of Dao Ming’s borrowers kills himself. While the experience jars her, Doyle tells her to think nothing of it. He still wants her to give him money. As the story unfolds and he becomes increasingly desperate, Dao Ming appears as his saving grace, becoming the person who eventually lifts him out of his destitution. When he is at his lowest point in Hong Kong, she takes him in and cares for him. And it is her money that he steals and bets as his winning streak begins.

Thus, Dao Ming becomes Doyle’s savior. Without her, he would most likely be dead. But in a shocking twist at the end, he discovers that she had died the night that the strange man jumped from the building. It was the night of the Festival of the Hungry Ghosts, and Doyle and Dao Ming spent the night by the river. He woke up alone the next morning, believing that she had gone back home sometime in the night. But the truth is that when he fell asleep, she got up and walked into the river. She died that night, which means that the Dao Ming that Doyle was chasing after was never really there. The woman he saw in Hong Kong was never real. She was a hallucination, conjured by his fractured mind, who saw Dao Ming as the only one who could save him. Yes, he spent a couple of days at her boathouse, but he was there by himself. She only ever existed in his mind. Or at least, that’s one way to say it.

A thing to note here is that Doyle’s fortune takes a turn after his visit to the boat house. That’s where he finds Dao Ming’s stashed money, which she’d left to him anyway, given that she gave him the code to the door lock. But that’s not the only thing she did for him. When Doyle goes on an unprecedented winning streak, the casino’s owner tells him that he is being banned from gambling at their casino and any other casino in Macau again because the security cameras showed that he has a ghost by his side. This isn’t a nefarious haunting, but the indicator that the supernatural forces are in his favor, which is why he has suddenly become so lucky. While Doyle doesn’t believe it, the influence of supernatural powers in deciding a person’s luck is strongly believed by the residents of Macau. Earlier, Dao Ming attributes the unbeatable winning streak of Granny in baccarat to a ghost who brings her good luck. In the end, Dao Ming becomes Doyle’s ghost, bringing him not just success but a chance to change his life for good.

Why Doesn’t Doyle Play Against Granny?

While Doyle plays all sorts of games, his white whale remains baccarat. After losing credibility in all sorts of casinos, he finally goes to Rainbow Casino, where he comes across Granny, who is revealed to be invincible. Her luck never allows her to lose, and the access to an insane amount of money means that even if she loses, it won’t matter much to her. Doyle loses against her several times, which eventually brings Dao Ming to him. In the end, when Doyle finally wins all the money he’d need to clear his bills and his reputation, he goes back to Rainbow Casino. On the night of the festival, he had made a promise to Dao Ming that when he won, he would take care of her debts as well. Now that he has finally done it, he is there to give away her share. This is when he comes across Granny, who invites him to a game.

It is an enticing offer because, in light of his winning streak, if she loses against him, she would have to give him more money than he has ever won or lost or even seen in his entire life. Had it been a different time, Doyle would have given in to the temptation. This time, however, he makes a point that the money is not his. It belongs to Dao Ming, and he cannot play with it. This is when Granny tells him that Dao Ming died the night of the festival, which throws him into a fit of shock and a heartbreaking realization. The truth is that he knew she’d been dead all along, but his broken psyche was not ready to accept it. Now that he is in a much clearer state, he sees things as they were, and it makes his wins seem utterly inconsequential, especially after he is told that Dao Ming was sent back home, where they didn’t even have enough money to have her cremated.

The discovery of her death breaks Doyle, but it doesn’t lead him back to the spiral he’d just clawed his way out of. Dao Ming’s loss hits him hard, making him realize that she was right all along. He has become the hungry ghost who cannot be satiated. While it is too late for her, there is still time for him to redeem himself. He has already taken steps in that direction by settling his debts, but that’s just one part of a much bigger problem. The root of his troubles is his gambling addiction, and as long as he has the money, he will find ways to gamble it away. Thus, deciding not to play against Granny shows that he has finally overcome his vice and is on a path to recovery, not allowing his addiction to dictate his decisions.

Why Does Doyle Burn the Money?

In a way, Dao Ming does her part by becoming the ghost on Doyle’s shoulder who doesn’t let him lose. This leads him to be banned from gambling in any casino in Macau. So, as long as he stays in the city, no one will let him into their casino. However, he still has the bags of money that should have been Dao Ming. He already stole from her before, and he cannot do so again. He realizes that he is at a turning point. Should he continue on his path of gambling, he will remain a hungry ghost even in his death. But now that he has no debts to pay off, no money to settle, he can choose to leave this life. So, he does the only thing that makes sense: he burns the money.

Doyle goes back to the temple where he and Dao Ming were before she killed herself. Because she died without redemption and is now cursed to roam around as a hungry ghost, Doyle throws the money that should’ve been hers into the temple fire as a gesture for her. It is food for Dao Ming’s ghost, and Doyle hopes it will satiate her in some ways. This gesture is also symbolic of him overcoming his own hunger and making the decision to start anew. After burning the money, he goes back to the river. In his reflection, we see Dao Ming’s face, which suggests that she continues to remain his ghost, his guardian angel, while he has become the instrument through which she can dream of the redemption she never got while she was alive.

Does Doyle Pay Off His Debts? Why Does He Give Money to Cynthia?

When we meet Lord Doyle at the beginning of the movie, he is in a tight bind. He needs to settle his hotel bill, which is over three hundred thousand in Macau currency. At the same time, he has Cynthia Blithe threatening to report him to the police if he doesn’t return around a million that he stole from his client, whose portfolio he was responsible for. Initially, Doyle is not too focused on returning the old lady’s money, but he does need to pay off his bill, or he will be evicted from his room. He also needs money to sustain his lifestyle and his gambling addiction, because without it, he will have nothing left. However, over the course of the film, his intentions undergo a drastic change. Now, when he wins, it is with the intention of paying off his debts, including those that have not yet been mentioned.

He wants to wash himself of his crimes and start clean because he doesn’t want to carry them in the afterlife and become a perpetually hungry ghost. So, when he gets his hands on Dao Ming’s secret stash, he uses it to win enough money to pay off his hotel bills and to continue living there. At first, it seems that he will fall into the vicious cycle of indulgence again, but the voice of Dao Ming keeps ringing in his mind, and he decides to play one last game of baccarat. If he wins, he will have a copious amount of money, enough to pay off the client that Cynthia owes him, as well as to pay off Dao Ming’s debts, who, he doesn’t yet realize, is dead. If he doesn’t win, he will lose the money, and since he can no longer play in Macau, it won’t really matter. It’s a win-win situation, so he leans into it. Surprisingly, the person who plays against him is Lippett, who was the one to sell him out to Cynthia.

At first, Lippett believes he will win, but luck continues to favor Doyle. He wins the money, and the first thing he does is give back what he owes to the client he stole from. Not only does he give back the full amount, but he also adds fifty thousand pounds to the stack as a gesture of gratitude to Cynthia for giving him a chance to win the money and not reporting him to the police. It is also a sign of goodwill from his end, as he tells her to use the money to build a better life for herself, to live a little. Cynthia seems to take his words to heart, because not only does she accept the money, she also asks him to dance with her, something he’d proposed when they met the first time.