It will be a week tomorrow since the publication of Sunrise on the Reaping, the fifth Hunger Games novel and the second prequel to the original trilogy. I think it’s time to start talking about its artistry and meaning beyond suggestive idea ‘placeholder posts’ as I have been putting up as markers for future discussion. Elizabeth Baird-Hardy started us off in this direction yesterday with her remarkably comprehensive survey of the Sunrise flora; today I want to address the Arena monster in the room, the question that I had as soon as I finished reading the Sunrise epilogue.
Is Sunrise on the Reaping the last Hunger Games novel? Have we reached the sunset of the series, no more prequels, no more sequels?
After the jump, I will share the seven reasons that I think make this a reasonable assumption, counter as it was to my expectation last Tuesday that we would be reading at least a third and concluding prequel in correspondence with how Mockingjay closed the first series. I will of course be discussing the end of Sunrise, so, spoilers, etc.
1. The Epilogue
The last chapter of Sunrise on the Reaping ends with Haymitch Abernathy, victor of the Second Quarter Quell, reflecting on his Victor’s Tour conversations with Plutarch Heavensbee about becoming a team member in the secret cabal to take down the Capitol and stop the annual Hunger Games. I expected the Epilogue that follows to be a story of his experiences as Mentor to Tribute pairs from District 12, an event or person that so touched Haymitch that he commits to join what would one day become the Mockingjay rebellion.
Instead the Epilogue fast forwards to the end of Mockingjay and acts as an Epilogue to that book’s epilogue or better to the entire series. The second prequel’s finish, in other words, links the ‘before Katniss and Peeta’ stories with the end of Mockingjay; there’s nowhere else for the story to go. Collins, instead of leaving ‘space’ or creating a ‘time’ in which a third prequel would take place, takes us to the original trilogy’s finish and ties a bow on it.
The Hunger series, the Panem Saga, is over.
2. Collins Has Done This Before
By closing the Hunger Games series at five novels, Collins is only conforming to type. Her own type.
Her first series, The Underland Chronicles, was a five novel series with such topical fare as the Holocaust, the destruction of Native American tribes, and the Israel-Palestine nightmare presented in YA adventure allegories. If you’ve never heard of them, the best short course is here: Three Good Reasons to Read Suzanne Collins’ Five Underland Chronicles: Gregor the Overlander Meets Harry and Katniss.
To those who say, “There’s no way Collins is walking away from a successful series of books that has not been exhausted of its potential,” a decent answer is, “Colins has written a successful five novel series and walked away from it before; this is conformity to a pattern or preference.”
3. She’s Answered the Essential Questions
There were unresolved questions about what went on behind the scenes of the original Hunger Games trilogy, hence the ‘Pearl Plot’ theory of adults conspiring to create the Mockingjay revolution; Sunrise effectively answers those questions. It just wasn’t credible how everything always tilted in Katniss’s favor throughout her two games and her near madness with critical levels of PTSD in Mockingjay. Now knowing about the union of Plutarch, Beetee, Mags, and Haymitch, the latter committed by a death oath to forever stop the Hunger Games, there isn’t a need for more prequels and back story.
4. Meta-Critical: What is Collins’ Intention With Her Prequels?
It’s a truism from John Gardner and Ananda K. Coomaraswamy that critics should not judge the worth of any narrative text, poem, or play except by the degree to which it achieves or fails to achieve what the creative mind behind it intended the work to do. We can, of course, only guess Collins’ intentio auctoris based on her work and from her public statements about her themes and inspiration; most guesses are about her work being intended to be understood as political allegories and morality tales.
I disagree with that guess, though clearly there is political messaging in the original series and its two prequels (see the first three posts here for my view of the best lenses through which to read Collins’ Hunger Games).
I want to flip my guess about the author’s intention in writing the series to include the desire to re-set the critical lens through which the first three books have been understood; we have a fresh appreciation, for example, of her political themes and her contrast of art and political messaging. I have suggested before that this is what Rowling-Galbraith may have been doing with her playful echoing of the Potter novels in their corresponding Cormoran Strike numbers.
I understand this is a stretch beyond the usual meta-fiction mind-bender. I want only to put down a marker that it would be natural for a writer of a best selling book series whose work is slipping away from the collective memory to want to re-visit it not only to refresh memories and excite new readers but also to put a different focus on specific elements of Panem for her legacy critics.
5. Filling in the Holes of Historical Context and Continuity
Collins’ prequels give the original trilogy an invigorating historical context that they lacked. The addition especially of the Covey players in District 12 as the seed that takes down the Capitol is essential for understanding the stories’ artistry and meaning. The lives and lies and loves of Cornelius Snow and Haymitch Abernathy, too, in relation to their shared misery consequent to not living out their days with the songbird-activists who stole their hearts, were stories we had to know.
I expect Elizabeth Baird-Hardy will be explaining tomorrow that there are still a host of historical holes that need to be filled. I think we have all we need and anything more will be over-kill and fan servicing.
6. The MAGA Revolution, the Covid Hysteria, Populism and Propaganda
As mentioned above, the prequels served a function of re-introducing the entire Hunger Games series to a new audience post Covid and within the populist revolution of our times. Looking at the United States in 2025 through a Panem eye-piece, depending on your political partisanship, the Capitol is either being overthrown after an historical overreach of its authority and its abuse of the Districts or the Capitol’s right to rule the dangerous know-nothings in fly-over country is gaining fresh appreciation.
Collins in her two prequels has again served up, as she did in the District 13-Capitol Snow and Coin two sides of the same authoritarian dime, a brilliant and nuanced presentation of how both sides of the political spectrum, Elitists and Trumpsters, have been captured by their own ‘propos.’
Have done that twice and brilliantly, does she have to do it again? In the original Hunger Games trilogy, the third installment was essential with respect to the core characters’ transformations (again, see the three ‘Unlocking Mockingjay‘ posts here). There is no such need driving a third prequel.
7. Let’s Not Jump the Shark
Orson Scott Card is a writer I admire for several reasons. For one, he asserts convincingly that ‘created worlds’ in science fiction and fantasy novels that do not include religious beliefs and cosmologies in the peoples populating their worlds are more unrealistic in that quality than in any magic beasts or hyper-technology they include. His novels don’t fail that test, if they reflect the fictional bends of Joseph Smith, Jr., and his fantasies a little too closely at times.
Card also is an author who speaks his mind freely and without respect either of persons or predominate beliefs. In this respect, he makes Rowling look like a conformist coward cowering before all consensus. Hats off to him for that.
The man also writes a great novel — and in a grand variety of genres and in prodigious beyond prolific quantities. Stephenie Meyer has said Card is her favorite writer and that she has read everything he’s written two or three times. I’m not sure I believe that — see his Wiki bibliography for the sheer number of his works — but, judging from the quality of the few I have read, if Card was her template (and she read his books on writing novels); it’s no surprise that her first efforts were as successful as the Twilight novels were.
But Card’s most famous novel, Ender’s Game and the consequent quintet of books has mushroomed to a mind-boggling nineteen novels, two collections, twelve short stories, and an audio play. Speaker for the Dead is perhaps his best book; it is Meyers’ favorite. When the series became unnecessary knock-offs I can’t tell you.
I worry that more prequels will bring us to Ender’s Game territory a lot sooner than the nineteen novel standard. Especially because the film adaptations have from the start hijacked the anti-Big Media messaging of the books to celebrating Hollywood as the heroic resistance to authoritarian government and oligarchy. Which, of course, is irony beyond farce. Gamesmakers Hijack Story: Capitol Wins Hunger Games Again
Scholastic and Lionsgate have successfully made a huge profit-taking with two fan-servicing exercises, Collins’ personal fortune and legacy is secured, and she can close the series on a very high note; time to shut down lest we get into Orson Scott Card territory and perspective-re-writes of favorite tales to keep the lights on.
Conclusion: Volte Face
Having said all that, there is one character I would like to learn more about: Plutarch Heavensbee. I can see a prequel novel that tells his experience as a child of privilege inside the Capitol who learns to play the propaganda game but never loses sight of the need to resist Snow and free the Districts. His story and his relationship with Beetee, Mags, Finnich, and Haymitch in the Second Quarter Quell and Mockingjay? Okay, I’ll buy that book to learn all about Heavensbee, about Snow’s history after Haymitch’s victory as a tribute, and about the Capitol exiles in District 13 post Catching Fire. Bring it on.
But unless there is a great story there to be told, as we knew there was with Ripred Abernathy, five is a great place for Collins to stop.
With that, I’ll stop and hand the platform to Elizabeth Baird-Hardy for the counter-point perspective!
Plutarch’s story could be fascinating! I would definitely read that.