'Play Dirty' Ending Explained: Is Zen Dead Or Alive?

Play Dirty’s ending is a cliffhanger, as we don’t see the outcome of Parker and Zen’s final confrontation. Zen was part of a heist at Meadowview Downs with Parker. She helped Parker and his crew complete the task, but after that she gunned all of them down. Zen almost killed Parker, but he survived, and he vowed to avenge his team members, especially Philly, by killing Zen. But when he cornered her, he learned that Zen was planning to intervene in a heist being conducted by De La Paz, the president of a South American country. De La Paz had acquired a long-lost treasure called the Lady of Arintero. He aimed to display it at the UN, have it stolen by a group called The Outfit, sell it to a billionaire named Phineas, and then disappear, thereby bankrupting the very country that had made him a leader. If Zen could get her hands on it, she could ideally solve every financial and health-related problem in her country. Now, since Zen had already spent the money that she had stolen from Parker and his team, partaking in this heist upon a heist was the only way to make back the money he had lost. Hence, Parker brought in Grofield, Ed, Brenda, and Stan so that they could help him and Zen successfully steal the Lady of Arintero, get unimaginably rich, and save a country from abject poverty. That was easier said than done, though, because The Outfit’s head, Lozini, was quite the menace, and he wouldn’t let Parker get away so easily with such a big haul. That obviously created a hiccup in Parker’s revenge quest. But did he succeed in completing his mission by the time the credits rolled? Let’s find out.

Spoiler Alert

So, the first time that Parker and his crew tried to steal the Lady of Arintero from The Outfit after they had stolen it from the UN General Assembly building and were transporting it to a garbage dump controlled by the group via a refuse train, it turned out to be a bust of epic proportions. For their second swipe at the treasure, they had to break into the vault in Green Brooks Private Vaults, which was where The Outfit had stored the Lady until Phineas paid De La Paz what he was owed. Therefore, Parker and his crew kidnapped Phineas and kept him at the warehouse for Pepe’s Props, which was owned by Zen’s boss, Colonel Ortiz, and housed the replica of the Lady. Stan was told to keep an eye on Phineas, but since he was nursing an injury from the first heist and had ingested a bunch of meds and alcohol, he dozed off, and Phineas escaped. He informed Lozini that Parker and his crew were going for the Lady. Based on that intel, Lozini and his men reached Green Brooks and supposedly intercepted Parker’s heist. They got the lady and delivered her to Phineas; now, all that Phineas had to do was pay off De La Paz, who would then give Lozini what he was issued. The issue arose when Phineas found out that the version of the Lady that Lozini had delivered was a creation of Pepe’s Props. The real one was still at the vault in Green Brooks and was being stolen by Parker. You see, the cages in the vaults in Green Brooks were timer-locked. So, until the clock struck 8.00 AM, the cage, behind which the lady was being kept, wouldn’t open. Opening the door of the vault with explosives was one thing, but using explosives on the cage would destroy the antique. Hence, Parker and Grofield painted over the vault numbers in order to make vault number 3 look like vault number 1 and vault number 1 look like vault number 3. 

While the Lady stayed intact in the real vault number 1, Parker and his crew desecrated the fake vault number 1, and caused The Outfit to go after them and secure the prop Lady. Parker hoped that in the time it’d take for Lozini, De La Paz, and Phineas to realize that they had been duped, he’d be able to steal the real Lady and escape. Just in case Lozini figured out the switcheroo before he got out of Green Brooks, he laced the Lady with explosives in order to turn the inevitable standoff into an “if I can’t have the Lady, nobody can have the Lady” situation. And that’s what ended up happening as Lozini returned to Green Brooks only to find Parker packing the Lady. A couple of Lozini’s henchmen headed over to the control room to capture Stan. De La Paz’s men reached Green Brooks too to kill Lozini’s men because he was under the impression that The Outfit had duped him. Amidst that chaos, Grofield and Zen freed Stan and began making their way to the vaults. That’s when Parker set off the explosives, killed Lozini and whatever remained of the Outfit, and escaped the vaults with Stan, Grofield, and Zen. Did that mean that this second attempt at the Lady was a bust as well? Well, not entirely, because before lacing the antique with explosives, Parker had extracted a bunch of precious gems from it. He kept some of them for himself and Grace, Philly’s wife, and gave away the rest to Ed, Brenda, Grofield, and Stan. He leaked the link between Phineas, Lozini, and De La Paz to the press. That led to a raid on Lozini’s warehouse, and relics worth millions were retrieved from there. Phineas was probably arrested. De La Paz was ousted as the leader of Zen’s home country, and Ortiz became the acting president.

At the end of Play Dirty, Parker reconvened with Zen at a hotel with the aim of killing her. Yeah, it seemed like Parker had forgiven Zen over the course of the second heist they had pulled off together. However, he stayed true to the promise he had made to Grace and shot her. Does that mean that Zen is actually dead? Well, after delivering the gems to Grace as compensation for Philly’s death, Parker did tell her that Zen was gone. However, the golden rule of entertainment is that, until and unless you see a dead body, you shouldn’t assume that a character’s death scene means that they are actually dead. During Parker and Zen’s final conversation, she confessed her love to him. Although it seemed like Parker was really close to Philly and his family, love usually trumps such feelings of loyalty. I think Parker gave Zen a second chance by handing over her cut of the gems he had extracted from the Lady, living honestly in her freshly liberated home country, and atoning for her sins by helping the needy. If Play Dirty 2 gets greenlit and Rosa Salazar’s schedule lines up with Shane Black’s shooting plans, I guess Zen will make a return. If Play Dirty 2 gets greenlit and Rosa Salazar can’t make time for Shane Black’s film, then her character will remain dead (for the time being). If Play Dirty 2 doesn’t get greenlit, then Zen will neither be dead nor alive; she’ll be Schrodinger’s Zen.

During the closing moments of the film, we see Parker and Grofield walking through Times Square discussing their future. While they don’t give any definite tease about what might come next, given how one of the most eye-catching art-related things in the frame, which states “The End,” has a partial image of Johannes Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring, the sequel might have something to do with that. Or maybe I am looking too deeply into this, and the sequel will be centered around a piece of history that normies like me don’t know about. Yeah, based on my cursory research, the Lady of Arintero was a real-life figure whose real name was Juana. The entirety of her backstory is very complicated, but the bottom line is that, in a day and age when only men went to war for their country, Juana pretended to be a knight and took to the battlefield. The opening credits of Play Dirty draw a parallel between Juana and Zen because, much like Juana, Zen has put her life on the line to liberate her country people from the clutches of De La Paz. By the way, that’s another reason why I don’t think Zen is dead, because how can you hype her up so much and just kill her in a hotel room so unceremoniously? That said, Shane Black has a dark sense of humor, and if he sticks to his decision of keeping Zen dead, I’ll totally understand it. Anyway, those are just my thoughts on the ending of Play Dirty. If you have any opinions on the same, feel free to share them in the comments section below.