'Badak' Movie Ending Explained & Summary: Does Mirah End Up Going on Tour?

The Malaysian film Badak on Netflix is a lovely, heartwarming, sweet story about a father and daughter navigating the world of sound and silence. It’s a coming-of-age film and a family drama about dreams and spreading your wings even when it seems impossible. It’ll certainly make you cry, but it also leaves a lovely, happy feeling at the end that you want to keep for yourself till later. The film tells the story of Mirah, a young girl who wants to be a hip-hop artist. Already, this sounds like quite the shocking career path, but to make matters more interesting, her father is deaf and runs a streetside burger stall. What follows is a back-and-forth between father and daughter, but it’s about much more than just what she wants to do. It’s about who is selfish, what this whole thing means for the family, and if it means Mirah will leave her “Badak” forever. The fear of losing your child in any way is certainly an emotionally damaging experience, and that’s what we see play out through Badak’s mind. Will he be able to let Mirah go? Will Mirah be able to achieve her dream, or will she have to be tied down by her father’s fears? Let’s find out.

Spoiler Alert

Does Mirah’s Grandfather Die Happy?

Just before Mirah’s big chance to impress Joe and go on tour with him, her grandfather suffers a heart attack and collapses in his own home. At this time, she’s off with Jay, and when Badak tries to contact her, her phone’s switched off. The look of disappointment on his face is clear when she finally does show up. Mirah’s grandfather has been a major reason for the widening gap between father and daughter, at least in Badak’s eyes. From a young age, we see the old man encouraging Mirah’s interest in music, with him playing the guitar alongside her strumming a ukulele. Most recently, he gifted her a sampler for her 25th birthday so she could get even better at mixing her music. This leaves Badak feeling neglected on two sides: his own father never connected with him like he’s connected with Mirah, likely due to his hearing disability being an obstacle; and now his own daughter, his greatest pillar of support, is being taken away from him now that she’s decided to follow her passion and make music, just like her grandfather before her.

At the hospital, like you’d expect, Mirah’s grandfather is a nuisance. He doesn’t listen to the nurses, refuses to take medication, and complains about everything. It gets to the point where he needs to be constantly babysat, but then that becomes a problem for Mirah when a new opportunity comes her way: a chance to audition to go on tour with superstar Joe. Except that would mean leaving the hospital at night, and her grandad has a habit of running away from unfamiliar environments when he’s not supervised. So Mirah goes to the club where she performs, and Joe is really impressed, but the old man breaks out and makes a run for it, just as you’d expect. Badak’s the one who finds him by the side of the road while driving home from their food stall. None of Mirah’s apologies mean anything to Badak when they both know that Mirah acted knowing all too well that this was a possibility.

Later, while Badak’s watching over his dad, the nurse tells him the old man’s been refusing to eat, and he’ll never get healthy if he keeps this up. Badak tries to negotiate, but his dad says the hospital food tastes disgusting, and he’ll only eat if he gets a burger, but it has to be a freshly made one, hot off the griddle. It almost seems for a moment that Badak will get the defunct food truck to the hospital and start serving him up, but instead, he wheels him away from the hospital and makes an escape on foot after discovering that his van’s been clamped because he parked in a handicapped spot (nevermind that he’s deaf). 

In his final moments, we see Mirah’s grandfather slurping down a burger with relish, and he follows it up by giving Badak advice born of his own bitter experiences. He’s worried Badak’s only going to end up pushing Mirah away if he tries to cage her. He shouldn’t make the same mistakes his father did. It seems the old man gets through to Badak, and they come to an understanding. When Badak has to step away to serve a customer, his dad seems to pick his moment to pass away quietly, or at least subtly enough that his hearing-impaired son doesn’t notice. Badak’s left shaken by this, but this is how the old man would have wanted to go; he hated people fussing over him, and he just wanted to live independently, on his own terms. He had one last good meal, he reconnected with his son, helping out his granddaughter at the same time, and he found his peace. Mirah’s grandfather died happy.

Is Mirah and Badak’s Relationship Repaired?

Music has always been something that forms a boundary between Mirah and Badak, though there’s clearly a lot of love between the two. It makes him feel sidelined that his daughter enjoys something that is so completely alien to him. At one point, Badak even says to Mirah, “If I were blind, would you have wanted to be an artist?” Early on in the film, we see Mirah talking to Badak about how much better it would be to have a food truck instead of a food stall, but he’s dismissive. But later, at her birthday party, when Mirah’s grandad gifts her a sampler that she absolutely adores, ignoring Badak’s gift, a big stuffed toy, he decides something has to change. Impulsively, he goes out and buys a rickety old food truck that then proceeds to immediately break down in front of Mirah, but that’s not the only reason she’s unimpressed.

For starters, she’s upset that he made a big financial decision without running things past her even once. A food truck is a commitment, and it’ll take them months to even get it operational in the first place. But on top of that, she’s just been invited to audition to tour with Joe, and her world no longer looks just as big as owning a food truck instead of a food stall. She wants to see the world and share her music with everyone, and she can’t do that if she has to man a food truck every night. Later, when she sneaks away from the hospital and her grandfather ends up escaping, their relationship dips to a new low, especially after a bunch of off-duty soldiers see them having an argument and intervene, pushing Badak to the ground and leaving him in pain, humiliating him.

In Badak’s ending, he ends up bumping into Jay, who works at the club Mirah performs at, while they’re both at the laundromat, and Badak sees that Jay’s a father to a daughter too. They end up communicating through Jay’s daughter’s Etch A Sketch, and Jay tells him that his daughter’s going to stop performing hip-hop, so he should come see her last performance. Badak’s initially hesitant, but he plays around with her equipment at home and puts his palms on the speakers, feeling the vibrations and also feeling somehow connected to his daughter through them. He smiles, right before the neighbor, Cik Som, walks up and sprays him with a hose for disturbing her sleep. He ends up going to the performance that night, and when Mirah sees him in the crowd, she’s overcome by her emotions and performs a song that’s dedicated to him, and it’s clearly a crowd favorite. Right after the song’s over, she jumps into the pit and rushes over to him, and they embrace in the middle of the crowd, and it seems like things are going to be okay again. Badak finally takes his own father’s advice, knowing he wouldn’t be able to forgive himself if he stopped Mirah. Now there’s no chance of her slipping away! 

Does Mirah End Up Going on Tour?

Mirah had suffered a lot to drive her away from hip-hop, but music flowed in her blood. After her grandfather’s death, one of Mirah’s strongest connections to the art form withered away, and it looked like she would back out of Joe’s tour, given she was retiring from performing hip-hop altogether. Badak had always tried to stop her, and she thought she had to help her father, not knowing when she would end up in a similar position as him. But after Badak shows up to support her, it’s clear her love for hip-hop has support from another source. Badak and Mirah are inseparable, but so are hip-hop and Mirah! Plus, Joe was in the audience too; he wasn’t going to miss out on what was billed as Mirah’s last performance ever, after all. With that beautiful backstory and her newfound passion for hip-hop, Joe must be only too happy to bring her along on his tour to open for him. Mirah’s going to see the world and share her music after all.

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