Hunger Games Theories: What Happened to Lucy Gray?

Spoiler Alert for Sunrise on the reaping!

Every series that people care about has theories. One of my favorite book series is The Hunger Games. It has theories too. The most popular of the theories is, what happened to Lucy Gray

This theory is from the prequel book The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. The book follows President Snow and follows the first victor from District 12, Lucy Gray. They grow a relationship, and at the end of the book, they are leaving together, and after a turn of events, Lucy Gray ends up running away through the woods, and Snow shoots into the woods to try and hit her. After that, he goes back to the Capitol, but we never find out what happened to Lucy Gray. There are tons of theories about what happened to her, but we are going to touch on three. One that is the most popular, but I think is very incorrect, one that is so absurd and makes me chuckle, and one that I believe to be true.

Lucy Gray is President Coin.

One of the biggest theories out there is that Lucy Gray is Coin from Mockingjay. This theory states that Lucy Gray escaped Snow in the forest and made it to District 13. There, she became the leader, Alma Coin, and played a vital role in the revolution to take down the Capitol.

Evidence

One of the strongest pieces of evidence for this is that Coin clung so much to this image of the mockingjay. In the original trilogy, the mockingjay started because of the pin that Katniss wore in the games and continued on into her transforming wedding dress, then became the symbol of the rebellion. In The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, we learn that mockingjays had much more of an impact on Snow than we knew to begin with. Mockingjays had become connected in his mind with Lucy Gray. On the second-to-last page of the book, it says,

“She could fly around District 12 all she liked, but she and her mockingjays could never harm him again.”

Keeping this in mind, people say that only Lucy Gray would know how much mockingjays affected him, so that is why Coin made it such a central part of the rebellion. That she did this to not only give people a symbol for the revolution, but every time Snow would see it, he would be reminded of her.

Then you look at the character of Lucy Gray. She wasn’t this naive girl from District 12. She was smart, cunning, and at times manipulative as a way to survive. If you take these characteristics and let them sit for years with some bitterness for Snow, then it could turn her into what we see in Coin.

The holes in the Theory

I do not believe in this theory. For me, this theory feels like people pulling at straws to give things more of a connection than there is. When you look closer at the facts of the book, this theory starts to fall apart.

Credit: Lionsgate

First of all, we look at age. In The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, she is 16. Fast forward around 65 years to Mockingjay, which would put Lucy Gray at 81. Coin is in her mid-late 50s, so looking at the ages, Lucy Gray can’t be Coin. Now there is another theory that Lucy Gray is Coin’s mom, but that is an article for another time.

Next, looking at the free-spirited Lucy Gray with the colorful dress, I find it hard to believe that she would change that much to create and lead District 13 the way it is. I can’t believe that she would create District 13 that in many ways mirrors Panem and the Capitol just out of hatred. I also believe that if she were to go to District 13, she would have taken the rest of her Covey family with her. Especially after seeing Snow climb to power, knowing what he could do to hurt them, she would not have left them.

Lucy Gray is Buttercup.

Credit: Lionsgate

The next theory is so far-fetched, but I think it is just so funny. The theory is that Lucy Gray once again escaped the forest and made it to District 13. When she made it to 13, she joined a lab team and became a test subject. In these tests, they turned her into a cat and sent her back into District 12 as a spy. When she arrived to District 12, she was found by Prim and became her pet cat, Buttercup, that we see in the original trilogy. People say that this is why Buttercup seems to live so long and why Buttercup seems to be comfortable in District 13.

As I said, this theory is so absurd, but it makes me chuckle so much.

Lucy Gray did die.

The final theory for today comes from the newest book, Sunrise of the Reaping. The theory is that she did get hit with some of the bullets Snow fired in the woods and died from them. Then the covey found her body, buried her in a secret place, and didn’t tell anyone outside of the Covey.

"Oh, not again."

Credit: Lionsgate

There are a few pieces of evidence to give this theory validity. First, towards the end of Sunrise on the Reaping, when Lenore Dove is dying, her uncles come out and while one is trying to revive her. The book says,

“ Tam Amber standing stiffly over them, his head shaking as he mumbles, “Not again. Oh, not again.”

What does he mean by again? Both of Lenore Dove’s uncles are Covey and knew Lucy Gray. So, the theory says that they found Lucy Gray in the woods, either dead or dying, and they put together that it was probably Snow. So, seeing Lenore Dove dying like this is reminding them of that, and he says, “Not again.”

Why is it a secret?

Towards the beginning of Sunrise on the Reaping, Haymitch briefly mentions the only other victor from District 12 and explains how no one knows anything. But in this, he says,

“I brought our victor up with Lenore Dove a few times, but she never wanted to discuss her.”

If she didn’t know anything, she would have just said she didn’t know, but her not wanting to talk about it makes it seem like there is more to it. Then there is the question if they knew she died, why didn’t they tell anyone else? It could have been just that it was too painful to talk about, but this theory thinks there is more to it than that. The theory says that they deliberately didn’t tell anyone to keep it a mystery to everyone else.

In the Covey, their names are important to them. They are named the name of a person in a poem or song, then a color. Lucy Gray is from a 1800s poem named Lucy Gray. The poem talks about a little girl named Lucy Gray who goes out into the snow. The next morning, she is nowhere to be found, so they go look for her. They find footprints, they trail off, and they don’t find her. It seems that she has just disappeared. It ends by saying that some people still think she is out there.

The theory says that Covey, honoring her through her name, keeps it a mystery to people, the way it is in the poem. Sunrise on the Reaping backs this up. When Haymitch visits Lenore Dove’s grave, he sees another one, and on the stone it says,

“-Yet some maintain that to this day/She is a living child; /That you may see sweet Lucy Gray /Upon the Lonesome Wild.”

This shows that they honored her story on her grave, and the theory says they continued it into how they talked about her as well.

So, Lucy Gray gets hit in the woods and dies. The Covey finds her, buries her, and, to honor her, keeps it a secret. They tell Covey, so Lenore Dove knows, but they don’t share outside of the Covey. When Tam Amber sees Lenore Dove dying, he remembers Lucy Gray and says not again. This is the theory that I think is the most plausible out of the theories I have heard.

We may never know.

But, in the end, these are all theories. We will not know for sure what happened to Lucy Gray unless Suzanne Collins tells us, and I don’t think she will. I think she will keep it a mystery because the point isn’t what happened to her; it is the impact she had on the games and on Snow.

What do you think?

• Lucy Gray is Coin
• Lucy Gray is Buttercup
• Lucy Gray died
• Other