- Warning: There are spoilers ahead for "The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes."
- Lucy Gray Baird's (Rachel Zegler) fate is left a mystery at the end of the movie.
"The Hunger Games" prequel movie leaves Lucy Gray Baird's fate as much a mystery as the District 12 songbird herself.
While running away to start a new life together, Coriolanus Snow (Tom Blyth) finds the guns that implicate him in the murder of the mayor's daughter. Snow realizes that if he gets rid of them, he could return to his life at the Capitol because nothing would tie him to her death anymore.
Already losing her trust in Snow, Lucy Gray (Rachel Zegler) suggests she'd still be a loose end. Confused, Snow says she would never turn on him. Unconvincingly, Lucy claims "'Course not." She then tells the Capitol teen that she's going to gather some food and bolts into the forest.
When a concerned Snow searches for her, he finds the shawl he gifted Lucy Gray tossed on the ground, hiding a snake that bites him. Snow snaps.
Paranoid and convinced his crush wants to kill him, Snow hunts Lucy Gray through the woods with a gun, shoots at her, and seemingly hits his mark as we see her stumble.
But all Snow manages to find of Lucy Gray is a singular earring.
He follows her tracks until they mysteriously stop. The last he hears of Lucy Gray are the echoes of her voice singing through the forest's many Mockingjay birds, creatures he despises. Snow decides to quash his silly love story and return to the Capitol to reclaim his old life.
Dean Casca Highbottom (Peter Dinklage) later tells Snow there's a rumor Lucy Gray disappeared or was killed by District 12's mayor for the murder of his daughter. It's unclear if he's telling the truth or trolling Snow since he holds a grudge against the boy's father.
Either way, no one seems to know what became of the 10th Hunger Games victor. She's never mentioned again in any of the franchise's movies.
Keep reading to see how the book handles Lucy Gray's disappearance, theories on what happened to the singer, and whether or not we could ever see more of her story.
What happens to Lucy Gray in the book
The movie stays mostly faithful to the book.
However, the final time Lucy Gray appears in the novel is when she departs the cabin to gather katniss plants for her and Snow.
Unlike the movie, there's no line of dialogue exchanged between them where Lucy Gray suggests she may be a loose end who could prevent Snow from returning to his former cushy lifestyle. Since the story is told from Snow's perspective, readers never get insight into whether or not Lucy Gray fully trusts him at this point.
In the book, it's not clear if Snow ever glimpses Lucy Gray again in the woods or if he's hallucinating. It's possible something really could've happened to her when she went searching for food. Perhaps she was taken.
And though Snow believes he hears her, shoots at something, and claims to hear a faint cry, he never finds anything. Not even an earring.
He's simply surrounded by a chorus of Mockingjays swirling above him as they sing Lucy Gray's "Hanging Tree" song.
By the book's end, Snow receives a letter from a Peacemaker comrade in District 12 who says everyone thinks the mayor had Lucy Gray killed, but they couldn't prove it.
Snow decides Lucy Gray is either alive, dead, or a ghost haunting the wilderness.
What likely happened to Lucy Gray
After reading the book and watching the film, it seems clear that Lucy Gray realizes Snow was responsible for the death of his friend Sejanus Plinth (Josh Andrés Rivera). If Snow could sell his best friend down the river for personal gain, it was only a matter of time until he did the same with her.
Lucy Gray is initially aware that Snow killed a Hunger Games tribute and the mayor's daughter. It isn't until Snow slips up in the forest, mentioning he killed three people, that Lucy Gray becomes suspicious of Snow. When she inquires about the third death, Snow hesitates, scrambling for a response, before claiming he killed his old self to come with her.
How romantic. Except it's not. It's tough to discern in the book, but the movie version of Lucy Gray doesn't seem to buy this half-baked answer.
Earlier in the movie, Lucy Gray tells Snow that trust is everything to her. If she doesn't trust someone, they may as well be dead to her. Lucy Gray likely rejects Snow's response and begins plotting the right time to make a break for it.
It's likely that after she leaves the cabin, she dumps the shawl, and never looks back to put as much distance as possible between her and Snow.
Lucy Gray could've been found by District 12 Peacemakers and killed for the death of the mayor's daughter. In the movie, the mayor apparently rigs the Hunger Games' reaping so Lucy Gray's name is plucked.
Some fans believe Lucy Gray is shot and dies in the woods. Others believe she kills herself with her knife and wants to die with Snow, pointing to the lyrics in "The Hanging Tree" which ask for someone to wear a necklace of rope, side by side with her.
However, it's possible Lucy Gray stumbles upon the hidden District 13 or makes it north to the place she originally planned to run off to where a group of free people was rumored to live.
Whatever happened to Lucy Gray, she's free from Snow at the story's end.
Could we see Lucy Gray again?
When asked if Lucy Gray's story is truly over or if there's more to tell, "The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes" director Francis Lawrence told Business Insider, "I don't know."
"That's entirely up to Suzanne," Lawrence said of the book series' author, Suzanne Collins. "I don't want to comment too much because the idea is Lucy Gray is a mystery and I prefer people to sort of interpret what happens to Lucy Gray after their experience of the movie."
"Not even just with Lucy Gray, but with any of the characters, to me, it's always up to Suzanne whether or not there's more story," Lawrence said.
Though Lawrence doesn't believe Lucy Gray is an ancestor of the main franchise's Katniss Everdeen, he says she could have ties to District 13 and its mysterious leader President Alma Coin, leaving the door open for further exploration of the character.
"Connections to 13, to Coin? Sure," Lawrence said, adding, "I don't think she is Coin by any means. Again, I don't want to spoil it because obviously there's mystery to Lucy Gray."
Though there hasn't been an official announcement regarding another entry in "The Hunger Games" book series, producer Nina Jacobson told Polygon in September that she believes and hopes Collins will write more books, saying, "Do I have any idea what they'll be? Not really!"
There's certainly more of Lucy Gray's story to tell, especially if she may share connections to District 13.