Warning: This article contains spoilers for The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and SnakesThe Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes will reveal what the early years of the Hunger Games were like, and a lot of the features of Katniss' games will be absent. Panem's terrible annual event was seen as a celebration during Katniss' 74th and 75th Hunger Games, but this wasn't always the case. The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is set during the 10th Hunger Games when the gruesome contest was seen as more of an obligation than something to be enjoyed. This means that Panem went about the games extremely differently—until a young President Coriolanus Snow came around and changed everything.
Katniss' story in The Hunger Games was set about 75 years after the end of the war caused by the District rebellion in Panem. Though the District citizens that had started the war were long gone, there was still a lot of resentment between the wealthy Capitol citizens and those of the outlying working class. Therefore, it's easy to imagine that this resentment was even more extreme in the early years after this war ended. This is when the Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes movie will pick up—during the 10th Annual Hunger Games when everything was much more brutal than it would be all those decades later.
7 Ballad Of Songbirds & Snakes Won't Have Tribute Escorts Or Stylists
Some of the first people that Katniss met after she was reaped for the Hunger Games were her escort, Effie Trinket, and her stylist, Cinna. They were responsible for making her fit in with the Capitol's structure and style. Effie kept Katniss and Peeta's schedule and taught them how to behave, and Cinna (and Peeta's stylist Portia) ensured they looked the part. It was all part of presenting them to sponsors, who would then bet on the tributes that they liked the best. However, the 10th Hunger Games were the first to implement the betting system, and the Gamemakers hadn't considered hiring Capitol citizens to make the tributes look their best.
6 Ballad Of Songbirds & Snakes’ Mentors Won’t Be Victors
Another person Katniss met shortly after getting reaped was her mentor, Haymitch Abernathy. As one of District 12's previous victors, it was his job to give the yearly tributes their best chance at survival. He would secure sponsors and teach his mentees everything they needed to know about making it through the arena. The 10th Hunger Games, which will be the ones featured in The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, were the first to implement the mentor system. However, instead of using past mentors, the Gamemakers recruited teenage students from the Capitol—including the young Coriolanus Snow.
5 Don't Expect Luxury Trains For The District Tributes
The first taste of Capitol luxury Katniss experienced in The Hunger Games was the train that took her, Peeta, and Haymitch to the Capitol after the reaping. In it, she had her own bedroom and access to a dining car full of the most lavish food she had ever seen. However, this wasn't the case back during the 10th Hunger Games. Though the tributes did arrive at the Capitol on a train, they were all forced to ride in a cattle car. Part of the plot of the Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes book was the realization that bringing sick and malnourished children to the Capitol in such conditions kept them from putting on their best show in the arena.
4 The Training Center Didn't Exist During Ballad Of Songbirds & Snakes
Once Katniss arrived at the Capitol in The Hunger Games, she was brought to the Tribute Training Center, where she would live and train during the weeks leading up to the main event. The building had 12 full-floor apartments—one for each set of victors—and an area where the fighters could train with weapons and survival tools. These were luxuries that, again, were not offered to the tributes of the 10th Hunger Games. Instead, the children were thrown into a zoo enclosure until it was time to enter the arena. By the time the Hunger Games started, several would already be dead from starvation or disease—which is why there will only be 16 tributes in The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes instead of 24.
3 The 10th Hunger Games Had No Tribute Parade
The Tribute Parade was how Panem kicked off the Hunger Games during the event's 74th year. Katniss, Peeta, and the other tributes were dressed in their best, placed on chariots, and paraded down the road to the President's mansion, where they would be welcomed. This was the chance for the wealthy Capitol citizens to get a first look at those they would potentially back as sponsors, which was an essential part of the process. However, since the sponsor program was only established (at the suggestion of Coriolanus Snow) after the start of the 10th Hunger Games in The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, the parade had not yet been thought up.
2 Early Hunger Games Tournaments Didn’t Have Unique Arenas
Katniss competed in two unique arenas during the 74th and 75th Hunger Games, the norm for that stage in Panem's history. The Hunger Games books explained that every year, the event was held in a different arena that would become an attraction after its game was concluded. Capitol citizens could pay to stay in hotel rooms built within the arena and see the places where their favorite tributes had been brutally murdered. Once again, this wasn't the case for the 10th Hunger Games in Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. During that first decade, the games were held in the same colosseum-like arena—a much lower-tech option.
1 The First 10 Hunger Games Victors Didn’t Receive Prizes
During Katniss' time, some Districts were eager to put their children forward to be tributes since winning the Hunger Games meant additional food for their people. The winner would be moved into a mansion within each respective District's "Victor's Village," and they would no longer be required to enter their names to be reaped for future games. This inspired the tributes to fight even harder than they would have for their own lives—since their survival meant glory for them and their families back home.
However, this incentive wasn't established until after The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, when Coriolanus Snow suggested it as a way to motivate the tributes. Ultimately, this was no real kindness. Without these measures, the Districts surely would have risen in rebellion long before the events of The Hunger Games: Catching Fire. By adding the idea of the Victors Village, as well as improving the conditions for the tributes entering the Hunger Games, Snow made the event palatable for the Capitol audiences while also making the Hunger Games seem like an honor to the Districts—it's all part of how The Ballad of Songbirds and Snake made the games what they would be all those years later.
