The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes recap

Decades before Katniss, eighteen-year-old Coriolanus Snow is a proud but secretly impoverished Capitol student staking his future on the tenth Hunger Games, where Academy students now mentor the tributes. Assigned the District 12 girl, Lucy Gray Baird, a charismatic singer with the traveling Covey, he schemes to keep her alive and popular, inventing sponsorship and betting to draw the Capitol's attention, and falls for her along the way. He bends and breaks the rules to help her win, even tampering with the Gamemakers' venomous snakes, and she survives the arena. But his cheating is exposed; stripped of his prize, he enlists as a Peacekeeper and is sent to District 12, where he reunites with Lucy Gray. When his friend Sejanus becomes entangled with rebels, Coriolanus informs on him and Sejanus is executed. Fleeing north with Lucy Gray, Coriolanus finds evidence of his own crimes and turns on her; she vanishes into the woods, and he returns to the Capitol to be rewarded by Dr. Gaul, stepping onto the path that will make him President Snow.

Ten years after the war between the Capitol and the districts, the Hunger Games are still a shabby, unpopular spectacle. To boost interest, the Academy assigns its top students as mentors to the twenty-four tributes of the tenth Games. Coriolanus Snow, heir to a fallen Capitol family that hides its poverty behind its famous name, is dismayed to draw the girl from District 12, Lucy Gray Baird. At her reaping she stunned the crowd by singing and by dropping a snake down the mayor's daughter's dress, and she performs with the traveling musicians called the Covey. The tributes are shipped to the Capitol and locked in the monkey house of the old zoo, treated as animals. Sensing that Lucy Gray's showmanship could make her memorable, Coriolanus visits her openly at the zoo, begins to win the Capitol's sympathy for her, and pushes the idea that citizens should be able to sponsor and gamble on individual tributes. His idealistic friend Sejanus Plinth, meanwhile, is increasingly sickened by the whole enterprise.

As the Games approach, the mentors' new sponsorship and betting schemes start to change how the Capitol watches. A rebel bombing tears through the arena during a pre-Games visit, killing and injuring several people and briefly trapping Coriolanus and some tributes; the Gamemakers press ahead regardless. The boastful mentor Arachne Crane is killed by her own starving tribute during a broadcast, a shock that underlines how dangerous the spectacle is. Coriolanus grows genuinely attached to Lucy Gray and keeps finding ways, some against the rules, to feed her, protect her reputation, and funnel sponsor gifts to her. When the tenth Hunger Games finally begin in the damaged arena, tributes die quickly and violently, but Lucy Gray survives the early carnage by hiding, staying mobile, and relying on the quiet help Coriolanus smuggles to her. Dr. Gaul, the Head Gamemaker, watches Coriolanus closely, testing his instincts and drawing him deeper into her grim view of human nature.

Lucy Gray wins the tenth Hunger Games. In the final stretch Coriolanus secretly enters Dr. Gaul's laboratory and handles her tank of brightly colored venomous snakes so that they will recognize Lucy Gray's scent and leave her unharmed when they are released into the arena, and she outlasts the last of her rivals to claim victory. Their bond feels, to him, like love. But the ways he cheated to help her are uncovered, and instead of the scholarship and glory he expected, Coriolanus is disgraced and faces exposure. To escape punishment and start over, he enlists in the Peacekeepers, the Capitol's military police, and is shipped out to a posting in far-off District 12, the very district Lucy Gray comes from. Sejanus, wracked by guilt, uses his family's money to enlist alongside him. Arriving in District 12, Coriolanus is reunited with Lucy Gray and her Covey family and tries to imagine a future with her, even as the Capitol's reach and his own secrets follow him.

In District 12, Coriolanus and Lucy Gray rekindle their romance while he serves as a Peacekeeper, but the district seethes with unrest. Sejanus, still tormented by conscience, conspires with local rebels to help people escape north. Coriolanus, fearing the plot will doom them both, informs on Sejanus to Dr. Gaul through a jabberjay recording, and Sejanus is arrested and hanged, a betrayal Coriolanus hides from everyone. When his own crimes, including killings he committed, threaten to come to light, Coriolanus agrees to flee into the wilderness with Lucy Gray. At a cabin by a lake they discover a cache of hidden guns, and he realizes one of them can tie him to murder. His paranoia curdles into a decision to silence her. Alone in the woods, Lucy Gray sees what he is and slips away among the singing mockingjays; he fires wildly into the trees but never finds her. Coriolanus returns to the Capitol, where Dr. Gaul rewards him with a place at the university and a future in power. He learns that Dean Highbottom created the Hunger Games from an idea Coriolanus's own father twisted, settles that score, and steps fully into the ruthless man who will one day rule Panem as President Snow.

Coriolanus gets Lucy Gray through the tenth Hunger Games alive, partly by secretly handling Dr. Gaul's venomous snakes so they will not strike her, but his rule-breaking is discovered and he is stripped of the scholarship he needed. To avoid disgrace and punishment he enlists as a Peacekeeper and is posted to District 12, where he reunites with Lucy Gray and the Covey. His conscience-stricken friend Sejanus Plinth conspires with local rebels; Coriolanus reports him to Dr. Gaul, and Sejanus is hanged. Terrified that his own crimes, including killings he committed, will surface, Coriolanus plans to run away north with Lucy Gray, but at a lakeside cabin they uncover the hidden guns and he realizes the evidence ties him to murder. He turns on her in the woods; she disappears among the mockingjays and he fires blindly, never finding her body. Returning to the Capitol, he is welcomed by Dr. Gaul as a promising protege, discovers that Dean Highbottom devised the Hunger Games from his dead father's idea, and coldly secures his own rise. The boy who began desperate and charming ends the book hardened into the ruthless future President Snow.