The Dark Potential of a Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes Sequel

The Origin of a Dark Story

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes could continue with a sequel, and given the changes in the 11th Hunger Games, this has the potential to be the darkest story yet. Lucy Gray's story explained how President Coriolanus Snow became the dictator seen in The Hunger Games, and though the ending brought a satisfying close, there is room to expand.

Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes Hunger Games Arena

In the years that followed, Snow implemented a variety of changes to the games. The most significant of these changes would have started with the 11th Hunger Games, and this could be worth exploring.

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The 11th Hunger Games: Mags' Brutal Victory

The year after Lucy Gray's Hunger Games is especially interesting since the victor was District 4's Mags Flanagan, the old woman who volunteered to be tribute along with Finnick for the Third Quarter Quell in The Hunger Games: Catching Fire. Given what we know about this gentle, kind, and sweet character, it would be interesting to see what Mags' games were like, especially considering she was among the first to experience the event after Snow's changes.

Finnick and Mags smiling at each other in The Hunger Games

Mags' Hunger Games was the first that saw the District tributes treated like celebrities. Rather than being tossed in a zoo enclosure as they were in The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, those reaped for the games were given clean and safe living quarters full of luxury they had never experienced before.

Hunger Games Mags Young and Old

The Brutality of the 11th Hunger Games

Snow saw in The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes that starved and ill tributes weren't much fun to watch kill each other. When the Hunger Games started, many of Lucy Gray's fellow competitors were already dead. So, the new Gamemaker established changes to ensure they were at their very best when they entered the arena. What's more, he introduced incentives. For the first time in a decade of Hunger Games, the winner would get a prize—a mansion in Victor's Village, a lifetime worth of wealth, and 12 monthly deliveries of food for their fellow District citizens.

A blended image features Peeta and Katniss as the focal point with the rest of the Hunger Games victors from Catching Fire below them

Once again, Snow didn't offer these prizes out of the goodness of his heart. The District tributes would have struggled with hunger their entire lives, and Snow made the Hunger Games their single chance of changing this for themselves and their families forever. The prizes would have seen the birth of the 'career' Districts, and since Mags was from District 4, she would have been among the very first blood-thirsty tributes who eagerly entered the arena ready to kill. With such high stakes, the 11th Hunger Games would have been the most brutal yet.

Hunger games catching fire mags and annie

The Transformation of Mags

As the very first career victor, Mags must have been very different at 16 than she was in The Hunger Games: Catching Fire. She would have never known what it felt like not to be hungry, and seeing the Victors' Village built in her District leading up to the reaping ceremony could have changed how she saw the Hunger Games. Perhaps Mags was even the very first career tribute to volunteer. Then, in the arena, there is no way this District 4 tribute could have won without becoming deadly.

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A Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes sequel set during the 11th Hunger Games would be especially intriguing considering how much this version of Mags' character contradicts the old woman we see in The Hunger Games. It would be similar to the arc seen with Snow in the first Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, but rather than seeing a teenager become more corrupt, the sequel would explore a girl who slowly becomes more horrified at what she has done. As the story progresses, we begin to see hints of the rebel that Mags would one day become—as well as what Snow did to drive her there.