The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes has now landed on Prime Video in the UK, leaving a whole new audience asking the big question: did Lucy Gray Baird die?
That's the question many fans have been asking since Suzanne Collins' book was published back in 2020. The movie was faithful to the book and offers no clearer resolution to the big mystery.
We might know exactly where Coriolanus Snow (Tom Blyth) ends up due to the first four movies, but Lucy Gray Baird (Rachel Zegler) was always more of a mystery as she's not mentioned in any of the previous movies.
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All outcomes were open to Lucy Gray in The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes and the movie, like the book, doesn't give us an easy answer as to her fate. So if you're wondering just what happened to her, we're here to help.
Major spoilers ahead for the new movie, so don't read on if you haven't seen it yet.
The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes ending explained
After Coriolanus cheats to help Lucy Gray win the 10th Hunger Games, he's forced to become a Peacekeeper as a punishment and finds himself sent to District 12, leading to a reunion with Lucy Gray.
Everything seems rosy with them until Sejanus Plinth, who decided to follow Coriolanus and become a Peacekeeper, starts to work with local rebel Spruce. Coriolanus records Sejanus talking about the rebels with a jabberjay and sends it to the Capitol.
An arms deal is later interrupted by Coriolanus and Lucy Gray, with Coriolanus killing the mayor's daughter Mayfair and Spruce killing Lucy Gray's former lover Billy Taupe. He asks Spruce to get rid of the guns, but when a search is started for the murderers, Spruce is captured by Peacekeepers.
It's not just Spruce who is hanged for the crime, as Sejanus is also hanged, with the recording Coriolanus sent to the Capitol outing him as a traitor. Coriolanus and Lucy Gray decide to leave District 12 in case their involvement in the murders is found out.
When they stop by a lake house on the outskirts of District 12, Coriolanus finds the guns that Spruce hit. He spots his chance to clear his name for good by getting rid of the weapons and, eventually, find his way back to the Capitol – potentially even with Lucy Gray.
Unfortunately, an earlier slip of the tongue where he told Lucy Gray that he's killed three people in his life comes back to haunt him. She knew about two – the tribute he killed in the arena when he snuck in to get Sejanus out and Mayfair – and works out that the third was Sejanus.
Lucy Gray escapes into the forest and lures Coriolanus to a snake that bites him. Delirious and angry, Coriolanus fires blindly into the trees and, at one point, looks to have hit Lucy Gray. When he goes to the spot though, her body isn't there and the footprints leading away from it disappear after a short while.
Coriolanus heads back to the lake house and disposes of the guns. When he gets back to District 12, he makes his way to District 2 for officer training, only to find that Dr Volumnia Gaul wants him back in the Capitol. She tells Coriolanus that he will now study at the university under her guidance.
In the final moments of the movie, Coriolanus visits Dean Casca Highbottom where he discovers that his father Crassus took Casca's drunken idea for the Hunger Games and made it his own. It's why Casca despised Coriolanus, but Coriolanus gets the last laugh as he poisons Casca's morphling, killing him.
Before he takes the fatal dose of drugs, Casca asks about the fate of Lucy Gray and Coriolanus tells him he doesn't know. "Mysteries have a way of driving people mad," Casca replies, and we're no clearer to what actually happened in the forest.
So is Lucy Gray alive? Or did Coriolanus kill her in the forest?
Does Lucy Gray die?
Even if Coriolanus did see Lucy Gray in the forest, it seems clear in the movie that he didn't hit her. Footsteps leading away from where he thought he saw her suggest that she managed to escape out of the forest to an unknown location.
She might have hung around to torment him by singing 'The Hanging Tree', leading to the mockingjays repeating it, but we think she survived. There is the alternative that he just chose not to see her body if he did kill her, yet there's no mention of Lucy Gray being found.
Casca mentions a theory that the mayor might have killed Lucy Gray, having discovered her role in his daughter's death.
However, there's no confirmation that this happened, so it's up to you if you believe that's what happened. She might have made it all the way to District 13 to live there.
Since the movie's release, Rachel Zegler pointed to Olivia Rodrigo's song for the movie, 'Can't Catch Me Now', as a potential clue for Lucy Gray's ultimate fate.
"It's not up to me but as Olivia Rodrigo said, 'She's in the trees, she's in the breeze'. So I don't actually know what's going to happen. I for one like to believe she's alive," she explained, adding that she "really hopes" a sequel happens.
Director Francis Lawrence knows he left it ambiguous in the movie, but he's hopeful about Lucy Gray's fate.
"We tried to make everything add up as much as possible, even if there's some mystery left," he told EW. "I think she's alive for sure. I think she vanished into the woods and made a life for herself."
Is The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes's ending the same in the book?
The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is a pretty faithful adaptation of Suzanne Collin's book, although we always get more details on paper.
For example, the book resolves a particular plot hole in the movie – why is Lucy Gray not mentioned in any of the previous four movies?
In the book (which is told from Coriolanus's point-of-view), during his final chat with Dr Gaul, Coriolanus is told that all recordings of the 10th Hunger Games have been deleted. It was wiped from the record as it led to the deaths of some of the mentors, potentially making the Capitol look weak.
Coriolanus is happy with the decision as it was "one more way to eliminate Lucy Gray from the world".
"In a few years, there would be a vague memory that a girl had once sung in the arena. And then that would be forgotten, too. Good-bye, Lucy Gray, we hardly knew you," he adds.
Now, if you're hoping the book can clear up Lucy Gray's fate, then you won't find much luck there. The forest incident is faithfully told in the movie and Coriolanus finds no trace of her and "could not even confirm he'd hit her".
As in the movie, it's speculated that the mayor might have killed her, but all we really know is that Lucy Gray disappeared.
Whether she was alive or not, she had effectively become a "ghost girl" and her fate was a mystery to Coriolanus.
For more on The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes, check out:
• The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes review
• How long is The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes?
• Does The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes have a post-credit scene?
• What age rating is The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes?
• Is Jennifer Lawrence in The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes?
• How to watch The Hunger Games movies in order
• The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes reveals origin of the Hunger Games
• The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes explains key Hunger Games moment
The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes is now available to watch on Prime Video in the UK.
Movies Editor, Digital Spy Ian has more than 10 years of movies journalism experience as a writer and editor. Starting out as an intern at trade bible Screen International, he was promoted to report and analyse UK box-office results, as well as carving his own niche with horror movies, attending genre festivals around the world. After moving to Digital Spy, initially as a TV writer, he was nominated for New Digital Talent of the Year at the PPA Digital Awards. He became Movies Editor in 2019, in which role he has interviewed 100s of stars, including Chris Hemsworth, Florence Pugh, Keanu Reeves, Idris Elba and Olivia Colman, become a human encyclopedia for Marvel and appeared as an expert guest on BBC News and on-stage at MCM Comic-Con. Where he can, he continues to push his horror agenda – whether his editor likes it or not.
