Honestly, it’s a bit jarring to see Coriolanus Snow—the man we’ve spent years hating as the cold-blooded, rose-scented tyrant of Panem—as a starving teenager trying to keep his family’s dignity from rotting away. When Suzanne Collins first announced she was writing A Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, the internet collectively rolled its eyes. Who actually wanted a redemption arc for a mass murderer? But that’s the thing. It isn’t a redemption arc. It’s a slow-motion car crash of a soul.
If you’ve watched the Francis Lawrence movie or devoured the book, you know it hits differently than Katniss’s journey. There’s no "Girl on Fire" to root for here. Instead, we get the 10th Hunger Games, a low-budget, gritty, and frankly pathetic version of the spectacle we’re used to. It’s messy. The tributes are dying of malnutrition before they even get to the arena. The Capitol citizens don't even want to watch.
What Most People Get Wrong About Lucy Gray Baird
The biggest misconception floating around TikTok and Reddit is that Lucy Gray Baird is just a "proto-Katniss." That’s lazy. Lucy Gray is a performer; Katniss is a hunter. Lucy Gray survives by making people love her, while Katniss survives by being too stubborn to die. If Katniss is a literal fire, Lucy Gray is a reflection in a pond—you only see what she wants you to see.
Her relationship with Snow is toxic from the jump. People call it a romance. It’s not. It’s a transaction. He needs her to win so he can get a scholarship and save his house. She needs him to stay alive. There’s a scene in the book—and Rachel Zegler nails this energy in the film—where the power dynamic shifts just enough to make you realize Snow doesn't love her; he wants to own her. That distinction is the entire backbone of the Hunger Games franchise.
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The 10th Hunger Games Were a Total Disaster
The arena wasn't some high-tech tropical dome or a clock-shaped forest. It was a crumbling sports stadium. The Heavensbee Hall explosion changed everything, but before that, the Games were basically failing.
- The tributes were kept in a zoo. Literally.
- The mentors were just Capitol kids who didn't know what they were doing.
- There were no sponsors at first.
- The audience was bored.
Snow is the one who suggests making the Games "spectacle." He’s the architect of the horror. Watching him come up with the idea for the "tribute parade" or the betting system is like watching the invention of a torture device. It’s fascinating and repulsive. Dr. Volumnia Gaul, played by Viola Davis in the movie, is the one who pushes him. She is the true villain of the story, a mad scientist who views humanity as a species that needs to be caged. She asks Snow, "What are the Hunger Games for?" It takes him the whole book to realize her answer: they aren't just to punish the districts. They are to remind the Capitol that without a boot on someone’s neck, they are all just animals.
Why the Ending Still Sparks Arguments
Let's talk about that cabin in the woods. The ending of A Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is polarizing because it doesn't give you a clean resolution. Did Snow actually try to kill Lucy Gray? Did she set a trap for him? Is she even real by the end, or is she just a ghost in his deteriorating mind?
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The ambiguity is the point.
When Snow starts firing his rifle into the trees, he isn't just hunting a girl; he's killing his own capacity for empathy. He chooses the "order" of the Capitol over the "chaos" of love. It’s a brutal psychological break. Some fans think Lucy Gray escaped to District 13. Others think she died in the woods. Personally, I think it’s more poetic if she just vanished. She becomes a song. A memory that haunts him until the day Katniss Everdeen finally finishes what the Covey started.
The Lore Connections You Might Have Missed
If you look closely at the history of Panem, the fingerprints of this prequel are everywhere. The "Hanging Tree" song? Lucy Gray wrote it about a real execution she witnessed. The mockingjays? Snow hates them because they represent something he can't control—a mutation, a mistake, a legacy of the rebellion.
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Even the way Snow treats Katniss decades later is colored by his time with Lucy Gray. When he tells Katniss, "Don't lie to me, we promised never to lie to each other," he’s echoing a dynamic he had with a girl in District 12 sixty-four years prior. He’s obsessed with her because she’s a ghost he couldn't catch.
How to Deepen Your Understanding of Panem
If you want to actually get the most out of the Hunger Games A Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes lore, stop looking at it as an action story and start looking at it as a political philosophy text.
- Read the "State of Nature" theories: Suzanne Collins based Snow and Gaul’s philosophy on Thomas Hobbes. He believed that without a strong government, life is "nasty, brutish, and short." Understanding this makes Snow’s descent feel more logical and terrifying.
- Compare the lyrics: Sit down and actually read the lyrics to Lucy Gray’s songs versus the versions Katniss sings. The shifts in meaning over sixty years show how history is eroded by time.
- Watch the movie's color palette: Notice how the colors in the Capitol shift from vibrant, hopeful hues to the cold, sterile grey we see in the original trilogy. It’s a visual representation of the world losing its "performance" and becoming a machine.
- Analyze Tigris: Remember the stylist from Mockingjay who helps Katniss? That’s Snow’s cousin. Their fallout is one of the most tragic unwritten stories in the series. Seeing her love him in the prequel makes his eventual transformation into a lizard-like dictator even more gut-wrenching.
The real takeaway here is that power doesn't just corrupt—it isolates. By the end of the story, Coriolanus Snow is the most powerful person in his circle, and he is absolutely alone. That is the price he paid to win his own Hunger Games.