Explained ending of ‘The Hunger Games: Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes’: this is President Snow’s betrayal

[ESTE ARTÍCULO CONTIENE SPOILERS DE LOS JUEGOS DEL HAMBRE: BALADA DE PÁJAROS CANTORES Y SERPIENTES]

We return to the sand. Almost 10 years after we last saw Jennifer Lawrence Getting into the shoes of Katniss and facing the rest of the tributes in an attempt to survive, we return to Panem to learn about the origin of President Snow and his twisted mind.

Based on the novel of the same name by Suzanne Collins, Ballad of songbirds and snakes It takes us to harvest day of the tenth Hunger Games. The young students of the Capitol, including Coriolanus Snow (Tom Blyth), have been selected to mentor this year’s tributes, achieve their victory and thus earn the recognition of all of Panem.

The one he gave life to Donald Sutherland in the original saga The Hunger Games Here he is an ambitious young man who is fighting to make a name for himself in the Capitol and who, unfortunately, has had to take care of Lucy Gray Baird (Rachel Zegler), the tribute of the weakest district, the 12th. However, after the initial disappointment, Coriolanus will begin to develop feelings for her and discover that she is much stronger than she seems.

But this is not a love story. We wouldn’t have had the tyrant the Mockingjay wanted to kill for perpetuating the games 64 years later if that were the case. This is the origin of a villain. This is how he ends his story with Lucy Gray and begins the one we all remember.

Does Coriolanus Snow kill Lucy Gray?

After winning the tenth Hunger Games, Lucy Gray returns to her life with her music group, known as the Flock, in District 12. Snow, after being discovered helping her in the arena, is sent as punishment to act as an agent of peace to that same district. With him goes Sejanus Plinth (Josh Andres Rivera), his friend from the Academy who, contrary to the cruelty of the games, prefers to live the rest of his life with his partner, becoming a doctor and helping the districts.

Lucy Gray and Snow meet again and, despite being happy together, Snow begins to understand that he hates the rural life that she can offer him. Furthermore, he has an escape route: thanks to his involvement in training, he has been recommended to go to officer school in District 2, which would allow him, over time, to return to his life. in the Capitol.

At the same time, Sejanus begins to collaborate with the rebels of the districts, among them Billy Taupe, Lucy Gray’s ex who cheated on her with the mayor’s daughter. When Snow finds out what his friend is doing, he starts an argument with guns that ends with Snow shooting the mayor’s daughter and with the murder weapon hidden by one of the rebels in an unknown location.

Later, the future president, thanks to the help of chatterboxes, birds created by the Capitol capable of reproducing entire conversations, betrays his Academy classmate Without anyone knowing, he sends a recording in which his friend confirms that he is part of the rebels’ plan. For this reason, Sejanus ends up hanging from the famous tree that inspired Lucy Gray to write the song that Katniss sang in the original saga.

Convinced that, with the murder weapon missing, Snow will never be able to return to his normal life after killing the mayor’s daughter, decides to flee at dawn with Lucy Gray, who has become the first suspect in that murder due to her hate relationship with Billy Taupe. Halfway through their attempt to flee beyond the borders of Panem, they arrive at the lake cabin known only to the members of the Flock.

There, Snow finds the hidden murder weapon and realizes that he has a way out: he just needs to get rid of the weapon and his involvement with the murder will disappear, allowing him to return to his initial plan of going to District 2 and becoming an officer. without fear of what he did being discovered. There is only one last loose end: Lucy Gray.

Although he considers that she would be incapable of telling anything, he begins to doubt when he realizes that the girl has not returned from collecting food. Snow begins to suspect that his girlfriend has fled, that she probably knows that he handed Sejanus over to the Capitol, and that she has realized upon seeing the gun in the cabin that he is going to return home and abandon her, that is, if not He ends her first because she is the only one who knows what really happened.

Full of anger for the supposed betrayal of his companion, he begins to look for her in the forest and, finally, after hearing her among some branches, he shoots his gun at her after he believes she has tried to attack him with a snake hidden in the undergrowth. However, when he goes to check if she has hit him, the girl has disappeared and, with his arm full of snake venom, he is forced to return to the district as soon as possible.

Before heading back, and convinced that Lucy Gray will no longer be a threat, he decides to get rid of the weapon that started it all by sinking it into the depths of the lake. The question of whether Lucy Gray is dead is still alive in his mind.

What happened to Lucy Gray?

In both the film and the novel, at no point is it made clear whether Lucy Gray is dead. Snow manages to return to the Capitol without going through officer school thanks to Dr. Gaul (Viola Davis), who decides to help him with money for college after his demonstration of his loyalty to the Capitol with the supposed death of Lucy Gray and the betrayal of his friend Sejanus.

In Snow’s last conversation with Dean Casca Highbottom (Peter Dinklage) after returning to the Capitol, in which he confesses that it was the father of the future president who gave up against his will his idea of ​​holding a Hunger Games to punish the districts, something that he considers a monstrosity, the dean asks him Yes, it was hard to say goodbye to her and return to her normal life.

It is at that moment, before Snow finishes him off by poisoning him with some bottles of morphline that she knows the dean always drinks, when we learn from Dinklage’s character that Lucy Gray is missing and that people suspect that the mayor has killed her. . Additionally, in the novel, it is confirmed that the new commander of District 12 has banned Flock concerts and music in the district. “According to him, music only brought trouble. Yes, Snow thought, that’s undeniable.”

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