Grab a plate of potatoes and get ready to head back to Panem.
Here's a breakdown of the 10th Hunger Games, Snow's short-lived excursion to the districts,
and where he and Lucy Gray landed after the Games.
"The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes" takes audiences through the 10th Hunger Games and Coriolanus
Snow's role as a mentor to Lucy Gray Baird, the female tribute from District 12.
At the beginning, the Snow family is in ruin, unable to pay rent and struggling to maintain
their place in Capitol society.
The Plinth Prize, a scholarship to the university, should change their life, but the Academy
students find out they need to complete one last project to prove themselves before the
winner's announcement.
Each student in the graduating class is assigned a tribute to mentor.
Their job is to make a spectacle of them to help encourage citizens to watch the annual
Games.
Snow takes this job particularly seriously, going against the grain and breaking the rules
of the project to guide Lucy Gray to victory.
However, his choices catch up with him when the dean of the Academy, Casca Highbottom,
discovers Snow's cheating and banishes him to a 20-year sentence as a Peacekeeper.
Snow pays off a member of the Capitol military to be assigned to District 12, wanting to
know if Lucy Gray makes it home.
While there, Snow continues to make selfish decisions to ensure his survival.
After Snow kills the mayor's daughter and witnesses the death of her boyfriend alongside
Sejanus and Lucy Gray, he and the winner of the 10th Hunger Games decide to run away from
Panem and go up north.
While on their journey, the dynamic between the two changes.
Lucy Gray realizes Snow lied to her and tries to leave.
Snow puts together what she's doing and follows her, resulting in a snake bite from a trap
she sets.
When he thinks he sees her, he uses a gun to shoot in her direction.
She falls, but when he checks on her, she's gone.
Snow heads back to District 12, ready to go to officer training in District 2.
However, he's instead sent to the Capitol for an apprenticeship under Dr. Gaul, the
Head Gamemaker of the 10th Games, because of the information he sent her about Sejanus
and the rebels.
But Snow can't have someone ruining this new chapter in his life, so he also eliminates
who he perceives as his final enemy: Highbottom.
When audiences meet Snow, he is self-assured and confident that he is the winner of the
Plinth Prize.
However, the new project causes him to question the purpose of the Games and the inherent
nature of mankind.
He finds himself struggling with his motivations to cheat, telling himself it's for Lucy Gray,
not for himself.
After entering the arena to save Sejanus, Snow kills one of the tributes.
He realizes how quickly someone's goals can change to protect themselves but is still
shocked that he took someone's life.
At this moment, Snow understands that humans will do anything in the name of self-preservation,
and he needs to act first moving forward.
"Everything is about winning."
When he moves to District 12 as part of his military service, this notion only intensifies
as he begins to hurt others for his own gain.
He kills someone who could report Sejanus' actions — not to protect Sejanus, but to
protect himself.
He then throws Sejanus under the bus to keep his name clear.
But Lucy Gray turns the tables on him.
Seemingly bested at his own game, Snow returns to District 12 and continues on to the Capitol.
In poisoning Highbottom, he cements his new life view and how he will handle business
moving forward.
It's a dark path, but Snow doesn't hesitate.
The movie opens with Snow losing his trust in the Academy.
He works hard to earn the Plinth Prize and be able to support his family, only to find
out at the last minute there's another obstacle to overcome before he can claim the award
as his own.
Then, he can't trust this new obstacle because Highbottom says he will do anything to prevent
Snow from winning the scholarship.
He also learns that, despite what she says, he can't trust Lucy Gray, even though he gives
up everything for her.
"If you can trust anyone in this world, you can trust me."
In his eyes, Lucy Gray betrays him.
She leaves him, sets up a trap for him, and decides to continue on without him.
She's the only person he can trust in the districts, and when she leaves him, his grandmother's
ideas about the nature of "district" people resonate with Snow.
To him, the only person who will ever look out for him is himself.
It's an important lesson to learn and helps inform audiences about the choices Snow makes
moving forward.
As audiences watch Snow make all these tough decisions, it becomes clear that he's slowly
but surely turning to the dark side.
Snow rationalizes his actions during the Games because he's trying to help someone else.
He argues that winning doesn't just benefit him since it also ensures his cousin and grandmother
are taken care of.
However, his later actions in District 12 are purely for personal gain and show how
he's letting go of the whole notion of being a good person.
He doesn't hesitate to turn Sejanus in or to turn his gun towards Lucy Gray when they
aren't serving a purpose in his life anymore.
He is the one who survives in the end, which only reinforces — to him — that he made
the right choices in these situations.
"The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes" shows every side of humanity, from the good to the evil.
But the character who unexpectedly displays the most humanity is Casca Highbottom.
In the final moments of the movie, we learn that Highbottom, along with Snow's father,
is responsible for the Hunger Games.
They drunkenly came up with the idea together, and Snow's father submitted it to Dr. Gaul
behind Highbottom's back.
Years later, Highbottom feels guilty that his idea caused the death of so many children.
He admits to Snow that he tried to cancel the Games and now fears that Snow's actions
will ensure the Games live on, forcing Highbottom to continue to have blood on his hands.
This information, combined with the knowledge that he gives Lucy Gray money before she goes
back to District 12, reinforces the idea that, despite what he's been through, Highbottom
never lost his humanity.
In contrast, Snow definitely loses his humanity, following the same path as Dr. Gaul.
He comes around to believing that all humans are inherently evil, and the Games simply
remind the citizens of Panem of that.
Snow takes on his father's role, becoming the "evil" counterpart to Highbottom's "good."
"You can either cross that line into evil, or not."
At this point, we have to speculate a little bit.
Lucy Gray seemingly got up and walked away after falling in the forest, but what ultimately
happened to her is still a mystery.
There are numerous theories trying to account for her life and death, many of which first
materialized with the release of the book.
Some of them still apply to her ambiguous ending in the film.
One of the leading theories is that Lucy Gray survives, eventually returning to District
12, where she had children and became Katniss Everdeen's grandmother.
This theory hinges on the passing down of "The Hanging Tree" song, the similarities
in their personalities, and how they both have a tendency to vex Snow.
Some even argue that President Snow suspects this, and that's why he feels so threatened
by Katniss in the time of the main Hunger Games franchise.
Another theory is that Lucy Gray did make it up north, starting a new life away from
Panem and breaking free from the rule of the Capitol.
Variations of the theory say she even made it to District 13, becoming a part of the
underground society that lives there after the First Rebellion.
Maybe she continued to watch Snow from afar, seeing how the man she thought she knew turned
away from the light forever.
In the end, though, her fate is still a mystery.
"And mysteries have a way of driving people mad."
The ending of "The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes" has many moving parts, but it was always a
foregone conclusion that Snow would turn into a bad guy.
We all know he eventually grows up into this fellow.
The narrative challenge of "Songbirds and Snakes" was convincing the audience to root
for Snow all the way up to the end.
Then, when he fully embraced his villainy, the moment would feel all the more real.
As producer Nina Jacobson told Screen Rant:
"You have to have this like, desire to somehow want to see him go make a different decision,
even though you know he won't.
And yet, ultimately, you have to get to a place where it feels really satisfying, when
he finally lets go of the impulse to do good, and let himself be the villain we know he
will ultimately become."
Director Francis Lawrence agreed, telling Screen Rant:
"So when he does go dark, which I think people find very satisfying, it feels believable
and honest and truthful."
Jacobson and Lawrence agree that there was never a question as to whether Snow would
go down a dark path, it was just a question of what he would encounter along the way.
"The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes" doesn't have a mid-credits or post-credits scene,
leaving audiences with nothing to chew on as they speculate what a sequel could look
like.
While there isn't yet another book between "The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes" and "The
Hunger Games," the creative team behind the movies has ideas about where a sequel could
go — and who it would focus on.
Nina Jacobson told People:
"I would love to see Snow's rise to power because he's just a great character.
But [it's] Tigris, and understanding how this girl who loves him so and cares for him and
becomes the woman that we saw in 'Mockingjay,' that I'm really fascinated by."
"You're a stylist in the games."
"Until Snow decided I wasn't pretty enough anymore."
That idea has the backing of actress Hunter Schafer, who portrayed Tigris in "The Ballad
of Songbirds and Snakes."
She told Entertainment Weekly:
"I want to know what happens, even if I wasn't playing her.
I want to know how we get there."
Lawrence and Jacobson do note that author Suzanne Collins has the final say, but they
are always open to hearing her ideas.
As Lawrence told EW:
"If Suzanne has another thematic idea that she feels fits into the world of Panem [...] I'd
be really interested in looking at it and being a part of it."
Of course, there are other stories fans of the series would love to see.
Two that come up often are Haymitch's Hunger Games, which are the 50th Hunger Games, and
Finnick's Games, which he won at 14 years old as the youngest victor up to that point.
While additional films of this nature would satisfy the fan base's want for more content,
once again, it's up to Collins to decide if we ever get to see them.
As Francis Lawrence told EW:
Suzanne always writes from a thematic foundation.
[...] That's what makes them feel rich and not superficial, and I think it's why they've
stood the test of time, honestly."
That means the future of the film franchise rests in the hands of the author.
The creative team is willing and ready to bring more stories to life, but only if Collins
is the one writing them.
In a world where so many sequels are made based on the money they could bring in, that's
a refreshing perspective.
We can rest assured that if we ever do revisit Panem on the screen, it will be for a story
worth seeing.