Coriolanus Snow’s Dark Ending In Ballad Of Songbirds & Snakes Explained By Hunger Games Director

Warning: SPOILERS ahead for The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes!

The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes director Francis Lawrence has explained Coriolanus Snow’s dark ending, which transforms him into the character seen in the core films. During the final sequence of the prequel, Snow is bitten by a snake while angrily pursuing Lucy through the forest. The final part of the movie shows him shoot at her before having a psychological breakdown, the symbolic transformation of his character now complete.

Speaking with The Hollywood Reporter, Lawrence revealed how The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes ending for Snow underscores who he becomes during the main series. The director explains how his breakdown in the forest relates to everything he’s gone through in the film, setting the stage for his rise to power in the Capitol. Check out what Lawrence had to say below:

I love that sequence. It’s my favorite sequence in the movie. It’s where we really see Snow go through this series of emotions for the first time and descend into the darkness that we know will come with the philosophies of the later Snow. And I just love doing sequences like this because it has very little dialogue. It’s very visual. It was a great day in the forest, and the light was beautiful, but Tom [Blyth]’s performance was amazing. So, to just watch him go through the fear of the snakebite and the anger of being betrayed to the grief of being left, darkness settles in, and he realizes, “If I can’t trust the last person on this earth that I thought I could trust, then Gaul must be right.” And to sell all of that with just performance was really beautiful and really satisfying to shoot. Yeah, it’s by far my favorite sequence in the movie.

More to come…