The Hunger Games franchise is set to return soon with this fall’s prequel, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, based on the novel of the same name by Suzanne Collins. The upcoming book adaptation marks the first movie from the dystopian world not to star Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss Everdeen since the film takes place decades before the character was even born. However, there are possible connections to the Girl On Fire to be found, including a possible familial affiliation.
Francis Lawrence has been directing The Hunger Games franchise since he came on board for the 2013 sequel Catching Fire, and the filmmaker returns for The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. While discussing the release with Entertainment Weekly, Lawrence shared his thoughts on what character from the prequel he believes may be an ancestor of one Katniss Everdeen. In his words:
I think Maude Ivory, the youngest in the Covey, is related to the Everdeens in the grand mythology of everything.
Whether the name Maude Ivory holds weight for you will depend on if you read the 2020 prequel. To explain, the character is the cousin of Rachel Zegler’s Lucy Gray Baird, who becomes the District 12 female tribute in the 10th Hunger Games. In The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, this character is set to be played by Vaughan Reilly, and she is supposed to be around eight or nine years of age.
Lawrence isn’t the end-all-be-all source of the subject given he’s not Suzanne Collins, but when the filmmaker was asked about another family relationship theory, that’s the character he decided to put his money on. Many fans of the novels believe Lucy Gray Baird could be Katniss’ grandmother, but it would be less on the nose if a relative of a tribute, rather than an actual tribute, was a direct relative to the Girl on Fire.
That being said, there are a few distinct connections that can be made between Katniss Everdeen and Lucy Gray Baird ahead of the prequel’s release. For one, in the latest The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes trailer, Zegler’s character can be heard singing “The Hanging Tree,” which Lawrence memorably sang in the franchise. Francis Lawrence spoke to this:
[Lucy Gray Baird is] a performer. After witnessing a man being hanged for multiple murders, she crafts ‘The Hanging Tree,’ which is, of course, 65 years later in these stories a song we hear Katniss singing. So this is a song that’s been passed down through generations of people in District 12.
As audiences of The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes will learn, it’s Lucy Gray Baird who wrote “The Hanging Tree” to begin with over 60 years prior, and Katniss Everdeen grew up with the song. Check out the new trailer below:
While there are certainly connections between Lucy Gray Baird and Katniss Everdeen, Lawrence has also called Rachel Zegler’s tribute the anti-Katniss due to their personalities and journeys in the Hunger Games being quite different. It’s almost time to see the prequel because it’s landing on the 2023 movie schedule and in theaters on November 17.