Summary:
The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (2013): After the 74th Hunger Games,
Katniss Everdeen and
Peeta Mellark return to
District 12, where President Snow visits Katniss. Snow explains that her actions in the Games have inspired uprisings. He orders her to use the upcoming Victory Tour to convince people that her actions were out of love for Peeta and not defiance against the Capitol, or District 12 will be destroyed, "just like
District 13". He makes Katniss promise that the two will not lie to each other.
As the tour begins, Haymitch Abernathy warns Katniss and Peeta that the "show" of their relationship must continue for the rest of their lives. Katniss suggests they announce their
engagement, which is approved by Snow, with their wedding to be staged at his mansion in the Capitol.
Katniss warns Gale Hawthorne of Snow's threat to kill both their families. Peacekeepers crack down on District 12, and Gale is publicly whipped after attacking new Head Peacekeeper Romulus Thread. Snow announces that the third Quarter Quell of the upcoming Hunger Games will involve tributes selected from previous victors. Katniss immediately devotes herself to ensuring Peeta's survival, and makes Haymitch promise to help. At the reaping,
Effie Trinket draws Katniss's and Haymitch's names, but Peeta immediately volunteers to take Haymitch's place.
Haymitch reveals that the tributes are angry about being returned to the Games, and all of them will most likely attempt to stop the games. For her pre-Games interview, Katniss wears a wedding dress, as ordered by Snow, but her stylist Cinna rigs it to transform into a representation of a
mockingjay. Peeta announces on-air that he and Katniss secretly married and are expecting a baby. The audience of Capitol citizens shouts for the Games to be stopped, to no avail. Just before Katniss enters the arena, Cinna is severely beaten and dragged away by Peacekeepers, as Katniss watches helplessly.
In the Games, Katniss allies with Finnick Odair and the elderly Mags, his mentor. When the arena's force field shocks Peeta, stopping his heart, Finnick revives him. The group flees from a
poisonous fog, with Finnick carrying Mags, but when Peeta cannot go on, Mags sacrifices herself so that Finnick can help him. When
mandrills attack, Peeta is saved by the unexpected sacrifice of a hiding tribute, the female from District 6. The group escapes to the beach around the central lake, where Finnick greets District 3's Wiress and Beetee and District 7's Johanna Mason. Wiress repeats the phrase "tick-tock", leading Katniss to realize that the arena is designed like a clock, with unchanging hazards each hour contained within their respective zones on the clock. As the team waits for the next danger, Wiress is stabbed to death by Gloss, who alongside his sister Cashmere, and District 2 tributes Brutus and Enobaria, comprise the Careers. Having wounded Gloss earlier, Katniss immediately fatally shoots him while Johanna strikes Cashmere with her axe, killing her. Enobaria wounds Finnick with a knife, and escapes with Brutus, while Katniss and the others flee the beach as well.
Beetee suggests luring the Careers to the wet beach and electrocuting them by running his wire to the lake from a tree that is struck by lightning every 12 hours, having won his games by doing so, killing six tributes at once. The group separates to prepare the trap, Finnick and Peeta protecting Beetee, and Katniss running the wire down to the beach with Johanna. While pulling the coil, an unknown source of tension makes it apparent another tribute is on their tail. When Brutus and Enobaria emerge, Johanna knocks Katniss to the ground, cuts the tracker out of her arm, and flees. Katniss returns to the tree and finds an unconscious Beetee. Unable to recover Peeta, and hearing a cannon, Katniss almost kills Finnick, but he reminds her to remember who "the real enemy" is, as Haymitch had advised her before the games. Katniss attaches the wire to an arrow and shoots it into the arena's roof just as the lightning hits. The lightning strike leaves her paralyzed, causes a power failure that brings down the dome and cuts off the Capitol's surveillance.
Katniss awakens in a hovercraft with Beetee, who is still unconscious. In another room she finds Haymitch, Finnick, and Plutarch Heavensbee, the head Gamemaker, who is revealed to be a rebel against Snow. He tells her they are bound for District 13, headquarters of the rebellion, and that half the tributes (the ones from 3, 4, 6, 7, 8 and 11) were recruited to help Katniss escape, as she is the symbol of the growing rebellion. They were unable to rescue Peeta and Johanna, and they are captives in the Capitol. Katniss is sedated after attacking Haymitch for not keeping his promise to protect Peeta. She later awakens to find Gale by her side. He assures her that her family is safe, but District 12 has been destroyed by the Capitol.
The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1 (2014): After being rescued from the destroyed arena in the 75th Hunger Games,
Katniss Everdeen and fellow tributes
Beetee and
Finnick Odair are taken to District 13, now an underground district isolated from Panem that has been spearheading the rebellion. There Katniss is reunited with
her mother and sister
Prim. While recuperating, she is introduced to
President Alma Coin, the rebel leader, and is told that immediately after the force field was destroyed by her arrow, riots erupted in over half the districts in Panem, which joined 13 in the rebel cause, though it also caused Snow to firebomb District 12 in retaliation. Coin asks her to become the "Mockingjay"—the symbol of the rebellion—as part of their "
hearts and minds" strategy but Katniss declines. After seeing how Peeta is being manipulated by Capitol state television to quell the rebellion, Katniss reluctantly agrees to become Coin's Mockingjay on the condition that Peeta and the other captured victors will be rescued and pardoned at the earliest opportunity. When Coin refuses, Katniss angrily demands their amnesty.
Plutarch Heavensbee, the head Gamemaker who rescued Katniss from the arena, convinces Coin to meet Katniss's demands.
After
Haymitch notes that Katniss thrives on spontaneity, she meets her film team (led by Capitol escapee
Cressida), is dressed up in a specially-designed Mockingjay suit, and is given
Effie Trinket as a stylist and close friend
Gale as a bodyguard. They go to District 8 to visit a hospital, but as the visit concludes, a Capitol bombing squadron arrives to attack the hospital. In reaction, Katniss and Gale shoot down two Capitol hovercrafts, which is captured on camera. In her rage, Katniss gives a rousing speech against the Capitol, which is broadcast when Beetee hijacks the Capitol's news feed. After it is broadcast, strikers in District 7 kill an entire team of Peacekeepers with hidden land mines; themselves climbing trees to safety.
After seeing a weakened Peeta in a propaganda clip, the team return to District 12, where Gale recounts District 12's destruction; Katniss is filmed singing "
The Hanging Tree". Soon after, hundreds of protesters in District 5, singing the same anthem, launch a suicidal
human wave attack against a
hydroelectric dam that is the Capitol's primary source of electricity. The attack destroys the dam, and causes an outage in the Capitol, forcing them to revert to secondary generators and weakening their abilities to broadcast propaganda.
That night, Katniss watches Peeta being interviewed by Caesar Flickerman, the Games' former presenter, when Coin and Beetee hijack the signal to air a clip of Katniss. After seeing it, Peeta shouts a warning that the Capitol is about to attack District 13. Capitol officials immediately cut the broadcast, and Coin orders a mass evacuation into deep underground shelters and the facility survives the attack unharmed. Upon emerging, Katniss discovers the area littered with white roses; she concludes that President Snow orchestrated this to inform her that the Capital is holding Peeta captive, whom they've been torturing whenever she speaks against the Capitol. As Peeta's warning gave the District an additional eight minutes evacuation time, Coin dispatches an elite special forces team, which includes Gale and Boggs, to rescue him, along with
Johanna Mason,
Enobaria and
Annie Cresta, the remaining Victors, from their prison in the Capitol's Tribute Center.
Beetee hijacks the Capitol's defense system to fill the frequencies with a propo narrated by Finnick, who explains how he had been prostituted by Snow under the threat of having his loved ones tortured and executed. During a live video call, Snow informs Katniss of his awareness of the rescue before cutting the broadcast. The Capitol hijacks their transmission, preventing Beetee from communicating with the special forces. Gale's team ends up escaping from the Capitol unharmed, indicating the Capitol reduced the security on purpose. When Katniss goes to greet a bruised and beaten Peeta (which was caused by the Capitol torturing him immediately after the last interview with Caesar), he unexpectedly attacks and strangles her into unconsciousness, before being knocked out by Boggs.
Katniss wakes up in a medical facility. She is informed that Peeta has been "hijacked" - brainwashed into killing Katniss by associating memories of her with the terror created by
tracker jacker venom, which explains why the Capitol allowed the team to escape unharmed. Peeta is restrained to a bed and placed in
solitary confinement, while a serum is being developed to reverse the hijacking effects. Meanwhile, Coin announces that the Victors have been rescued; their next objective is the Capitol's principal military stronghold in the ravines of District 2 - the only district still loyal to the Capitol. Katniss looks at Peeta as he thrashes, attempting to escape from his bindings.
