Everything You Actually Need to Know Before the New Hunger Games Prequel

It’s been eight years since the Jennifer Lawrence–led series ruled pop culture, but fear not — here’s a refresher on the dystopian world of Panem.

When the last pair of Hunger Games movies came out in theaters, Barack Obama was still president of the United States, One Direction was (barely) still together, only two Avengers movies had been made, and to see a movie like The Hunger Games, you had to line up early outside a movie theater to get a good seat. This is all to say that a couple of lifetimes have passed since the Jennifer Lawrence–led series ruled pop culture. Now, eight years later, seasoned Hunger Games director Francis Lawrence returns with a prequel to Katniss’s and Peeta’s time in the Games with The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes, adapted from Suzanne Collins’s novel about President Snow’s early beginnings in the Capitol. If all you can recall about the original films is the height of Elizabeth Banks’s hair, fear not — we’ve put together a quick refresher on the dystopian world of Panem ahead of the film’s release.

Where on the Hunger Games timeline does The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes take place?

In the original series of books and movies, Katniss and Peeta are competing in the 74th and 75th annual Hunger Games, the Panem-wide competition in which two kids from 12 districts fight to the death as punishment for the districts’ rebellion against the oppressive regime of the Capitol during the Dark Days. In Ballad, Coriolanus Snow (who later becomes the president of Panem and is played by Donald Sutherland in the original trilogy) is mentoring Lucy Gray Baird, a young girl from District 12, to compete in the tenth annual Hunger Games. So there’s about a 64-year difference between The Hunger Games to The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes. Here, Panem is still fresh off the Dark Days and the Games are so new that there’s none of the pomp and circumstance you saw in Katniss and Peeta’s day; the Hunger Games in Ballad take place in a deteriorated amphitheater. And rather than being Panem’s most popular televised event, the Games aren’t yet something people in the 12 districts, or even the Capitol, are compelled to watch.

Does this movie want me to empathize with a young, hot, and murderous Coriolanus Snow?

When Ballad, the book, was first announced, a common complaint was “Why would we want to care about President Snow?” Valid. In the novel, Collins does position a teenage Snow as her protagonist but in a way that carefully examines his rise and transformation into the cruel president of Panem who tried to have Katniss killed. Just know that with every hair flip or cheeky smirk from Tom Blyth (who’s starring in Ballad as a young Snow), there are also glimmers of darkness and selfishness that slowly corrupt him into the evil megalomaniac we see in the original series.

Okay, but what else is this movie about?

When the Ballad book was released, Collins said, “In the first chapter of The Hunger Games, I make reference to a fourth District 12 victor. Katniss doesn’t seem to know anything about the person worth mentioning.” That victor was Lucy Gray. A girl erased from history, Collins finally got to tell the story of the first big-spirited songbird who really knew and went up against Snow. While Ballad is easily described as a character study on the future tyrannical Snow, it can also be characterized as a fascinating case study of the cyclical nature of history and how easily some of it can be erased — though from Lucy Gray to Katniss, it’s hard to extinguish a songbird.

Is Katniss related to Lucy Gray Baird in any way?

No, Lucy Gray Baird isn’t Katniss’s grandmother or any other blood relation, as some suspected when Collins’s novel came out. It’s understandable to want to draw a one-to-one comparison from Lucy Gray to Katniss, though, if you think of them as plainly as two girls from District 12 taken to play in the Hunger Games. Lucy Gray does share a few similarities with Katniss, in particular her love of song (though Katniss kept her musical inclinations more private). You could even draw a line from Lucy to Peeta, another shrewd player of the social aspect of the Games: She’s good at sweet-talking people in the Capitol and introduces an element of entertainment when she sings during her pre–Hunger Games interview. Rachel Zegler and director Francis Lawrence have also admitted to sprinkling in some extra parallels to Katniss, like the way Lucy Gray’s bow (seen in the trailer) matches Jennifer Lawrence’s in the first Hunger Games film. And, of course, Lucy performs the song “The Hanging Tree” (which Katniss also sang in Mockingjay Part 1). Thanks to her origins in a nomadic musical troupe called the Covey, Lucy is a performer through and through, unlike the more guileless Katniss.

Which Hunger Games character is Hunter Schafer playing again?

Schafer is playing a character named Tigris from Collins’s third novel who appeared as an older woman in The Hunger Games: Mockingjay — Part 2 (played then by Eugenie Bondurant). At the time, all we knew about Tigris was that she was a former Hunger Games stylist, fired after her facial and body modifications were deemed to be too much, and had become a District rebel, which is where she crosses paths with Katniss. It was in Ballad that Collins revealed that Tigris is actually Tigris Snow, a cousin of Coriolanus’s. The two are as thick as thieves in the novel and presumably will be in the film, as they were raised together by their Grandma’am.

Is Jason Schwartzman playing a younger version of Stanley Tucci’s character in the original films? They look alike.

He sure is a Flickerman, but no — he’s not playing a young Tucci. Schwartzman is Lucretius “Lucky” Flickerman, a weatherman who becomes the first host of the Hunger Games. It really is funny to see that the perfectly coiffed hair and smarm are Flickerman signatures passed down through the generations, though.

Is The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes the start of another trilogy or just a one-off?

It may depend on how the movie goes, but ultimately it’s in Collins’s hands, it seems. Hunger Games producer Nina Jacobson has said she and Lawrence are excited to continue making movies about Panem but only while following Collins’s lead: “If she has something to say, I want to hear it … Like Lucy says, ‘I don’t sing when I’m told to. I sing when I have something to say.’ That’s Suzanne.” As of now, Ballad is a one-off book and movie, but with 75 years’ worth of stories to tell in Panem, I’m sure they’ll find something to say for the right price. It just doesn’t seem likely that the story of Lucy Gray and Coriolanus Snow (or Katniss and Peeta for that matter) will be told again.