If you’re anything like me, then the resurfacing of the Hunger Games craze on TikTok has filled your feed with Peeta Mellark edits, aesthetic annotating, deep dives into obscure lore of the series, and about a million other videos that all surround the same topic. To say that I’ve been a fan of the series for a lot of my life is kind of an understatement—I literally had a cardboard cutout of Peeta in my room as a kid, which is usually a fact I’d take to my grave. Though the hype for the Hunger Games had definitely quieted over the years, the same renaissance that struck Twilight not long ago came back again, which I was incredibly excited about. Though I’m now much more of a Finnick girl than a Peeta girl, I definitely thought that I had seen the end of my Hunger Games obsession.
That was, of course, until April 27, when the first trailer for the Hunger Games prequel The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes dropped, and…well, it’s kind of everything.
The story centers around Coriolanus Snow, the President of Panem and the villain of the first series. However, what’s unique about the tale is that it takes place 60 years before the Hunger Games trilogy itself, adding a new cast of characters that we’ve never seen before into the mix. Though the book centers around Snow’s backstory and shows us how he became the truly evil villain in the main books, this is a different Snow than we’re used to, and one we’ve never seen before.
The plot follows young Snow as he mentors a District 12 female tribute called Lucy Gray Baird. Lucy Gray is a member of the Covey, a traveling music group that doesn’t limit itself to any one District in particular. When the Reaping arrives, the group is forced to remain in District 12, and Lucy Gray’s name is called, whisking her off to the Capitol. However, The Games aren’t anything like what we’ve seen before, the quiet political commentary of the arena literally being a dilapidated football field and the vintage vibe reminiscent of the American Dream, the quiet rumblings of a revolution coming close.
Though I’ll spare spoilers, the twisted relationship between Coriolanus and Lucy Gray is steady throughout the novel, with the themes of control and manipulation constant throughout the book. Snow is obsessed with control, and seeing a main character with such twisted ideals of living is rare amid many tales of hope that we often see in the media today. Though the original book was released in 2023, the movie is due to arrive in late November, and many of the iconic details from the pages spotted by eagle-eyed fans. The star-studded cast boasts Hunter Schafer, Rachel Zegler, Tom Blyth, Peter Dinklage, and many others that audiences will undoubtedly recognize, and personally, I can’t wait.
Want to see more HCFSU? Be sure to like us on Facebook and follow us on Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, YouTube and Pinterest!