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In this essay, Leah Marilla Thomas explores the differences between The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes heroine Lucy Gray Baird and the original series’ protagonist Katniss Everdeen, and how those differences offer a refreshing kind of hero on screen.
The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes whisks audiences back to the world of Panem, six decades before Katniss Everdeen entered the sinister circus, with a new heroine for a new audience. Whether we’re watching Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) learn how to give a good interview, navigate a PR relationship, or shoot propaganda commercials, The Hunger Games has always been a crash course in media studies. But in Songbirds and Snakes winning over an audience comes as naturally to singer-songwriter Lucy Gray Baird (Rachel Zegler) as shooting a bow and arrow comes to the Girl on Fire. The contrast between the two tributes makes for a fascinating entry into this story.
Put simply: Katniss is a hunter in a performance and Lucy Gray is a performer in a hunt. (If that sounds familiar, yours truly tweeted that sentiment back in April, and it has taken on a life of its own since. Rachel Zegler herself has even said something similar in interviews.) They both have been reaped from District 12. They are both resourceful. They both made an impact on Coriolanus Snow. They both have an air of mystery about them: Katniss is very guarded, and Lucy Gray’s theatricality makes her a little bit unknowable. Katniss sings Lucy Gray’s songs and there is even strong evidence in the text to suggest that she is descended from Lucy Gray’s Covey family. But as women, and as heroines, they are very different people.
That not only sets the two heroines apart, but it informs how the Hunger Games may have changed once Coriolanus took over. Without meaning to, Lucy Gray set the tone for the future of Panem’s annual murder show. Her memory may be lost over time, but her impact is felt. She’s such an engaging fighter and victor that you can see why the gamemakers upped the production values in the years to come. Lucy Gray wears a colorful dress, befriends a small child on camera, and sings a sad song to the public. And so the Hunger Games turns into a pageant. That pageantry, as we see in Katniss’s world, only adds a layer of tragedy that’s not immediately apparent in Lucy Gray’s.
In The Hunger Games and as the Mockingjay, Katniss is made over and coached into how to appeal to an audience. She never really gets used to it either, does she? Peeta hears applause one time, on the first train into the Capitol, and he catches the theater kid bug quick. He has a natural charisma and discovers an instinct for how to get people to like him. He even gets into stage makeup. But not Katniss. She’s not a charm-offensive person. She’s an offensive-offensive person.
Everything Katniss does that resonates emotionally is 100 percent sincere and almost by accident. There’s a crucial scene in The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1 where Haymitch brainstorms exactly this with District 13’s propaganda team. They’re looking for the best way to use Katniss’ image to recruit rebel fighters, and a scripted statement clearly isn’t working. “Let’s everyone think of one incident where Katniss Everdeen genuinely moved you,” he says. “Not where you were jealous of her hairstyle, or her dress went up in flames, or she made a halfway decent shot with an arrow. And not where Peeta made you like her. No, I'd like you all to think of one moment where she made you feel something real.” What they come up with is real moments of heroism — volunteering for Prim, honoring Rue, etc.
Related: From Taylor Swift to Snow White, Every Time Rachel Zegler Said What Needed to Be Said
Lucy Gray Baird, on the other hand, can deploy sweetness and a self-deprecating joke at exactly the right moment. She’s not trying to win sponsors. She’s just like this. She knows that working a room is her best skill and figures that out before Coriolanus and the other mentors realize it. Their assignment is to get people to watch the Hunger Games, and she basically does their work for them. She has an emotional intelligence that, bless her heart, Katniss never has. That doesn’t do her well in violent situations. It’s actually when she’s in a fight that she is the most chaotic. But the odds are eventually in her favor.
She’s a great antidote, culturally, to the negative aspects of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl and Strong Female Character TM tropes. Katniss, adore her character as I do, was the type of heroine that is now a bit overplayed in 2023. We’ve had our fill of stoic, “not like other girls” types whose likeability comes from the way they reject femininity. Not saying that Katniss doesn’t have her reasons, but it's nice to see Lucy Gray succeed with a different skill set.
Lucy Gray is quirky and feminine — she wears a fluffy skirt into the arena, for goodness’ sake — but had an incredibly full and complicated life before stepping foot in the Capitol and meeting Coriolanus. The downside to the MPDG on paper is that, as whimsical as they are, they often lack substance. That’s not the case with Lucy Gray. She has not only family and friends, but a job, a drinking habit, an ex-boyfriend, and even enemies in District 12. In the film, just after Lucy Gray’s name gets called at the reaping, the camera closes in on who we later learn is the mayor’s daughter. “Sing your way out of this,” the girl sneers without an ounce of subtlety. It’s jarring. It’s intriguing. It’s mature, compared to Katniss’ more genuine “I volunteer” moment. It’s immediately clear that Lucy Gray has history.
And of course, Coriolanus’ ultimate downfall is not being able to recognize that and see either young woman as a full person outside of his control. Ain’t that the sad truth. Women can be as different as fire and water but men will think they’re exactly the same.
