A Convincing Starvation Video games Concept Reveals The Darkish Actual Cause Katniss Selected Peeta Over Gale

One of many extra difficult-to-swallow parts of The Starvation Video games‘ plot could also be solved with a chilling fan-theory that means Katniss Everdeen’s actions could not have been as in management as she initially thought. The beloved younger grownup dystopian science fiction sequence was tailored into The Starvation Video games movie sequence within the 2010s, lately re-invigorated by prequel movies like The Starvation Video games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes and the upcoming The Starvation Video games: Dawn on the Reaping.

A component of the long-term plot of the franchise that remained considerably puzzling for a few years is the fact of who Katniss will select romantically. Throughout The Starvation Video games motion pictures, protagonist insurgent hero Katniss Everdeen is caught in one thing of a love triangle between her hometown sweetheart Gale and her partner-in-revolution Peeta, who fights together with her side-by-side within the video games. Regardless of many feeling as if Katniss had much better chemistry with the previous, in a shock to many non-book readers, she really finally ends up with Peeta by the top of the story, married with kids, no much less.

Concept: Katniss Was Hijacked Into Loving Peeta In The Starvation Video games

Katniss’ Free Will Was Impeded Upon Early On

There have been many causes that it appeared as if Katniss ought to have ended up with Gale. Nonetheless, most of them boil right down to the identical factor — Whereas Katniss’ relationship with Peeta was extra of a political marriage to assist gasoline the romantic ideology of the revolution and guarantee each of their survival within the palms of the merciless Capitol, her emotions for Gale have been compelled by no such circumstance. It may very well be argued that Katniss’ emotions for Gale have been extra real, making it really feel like tonal whiplash when she finally chooses Peeta.

One darkish fan idea initially proposed by redditor u/lightning_fire years in the past accounts for a extra sinister vector by which Katniss’ emotions for Peeta could have developed. The crux of the idea revolves round a short sub-plot established within the third movie, The Starvation Video games: Mockingjay – Half 1, that goes on to proceed by the final movie of the preliminary quadrilology. After being kidnapped by the Capitol, Peeta is injected with a drug concocted from the venom of the tracker jackers, genetically modified creatures made for the Starvation Video games.

This drug causes Peeta to turn out to be irrationally hostile in direction of Katniss, trying to kill her in any respect prices when underneath its results in a course of known as “Hijacking”. Regardless of Peeta being genuinely in love with Katniss, the psychological conditioning of the Capitol mixed with the drug causes him to see her as a horrific enemy, stopping at nothing to place her down. It is also proven in The Starvation Video games: Mockingjay – Half 2 that the drug’s results are notably cussed, inflicting Peeta to relapse after initially seeming to be cleared of any signs.

In line with the idea, Katniss receives a primitive model of the “Hijacking” therapy within the first video games when she’s stung repeatedly by tracker jackers. Within the books, it is described that Katniss replays the picture of Peeta saving her again and again in her thoughts, probably establishing a man-made connection between her and Peeta due to the venom’s results, simply because the Capitol does with Peeta deliberately. This is able to imply that her eventual relationship with Peeta would possibly really be as a result of fallout of a drug-induced Stockholm syndrome slightly than real emotions.

How The Hijacked Katniss Concept Modifications The Starvation Video games’ Ending

The Implications Of The Concept Go A Lengthy Method

This idea makes Katniss’ eventual marriage with Peeta appear fairly darkish in retrospective, together with her romantic emotions seemingly solely spurred on by the lingering results of the proto-Hijacking within the intense life-or-death situation of the video games. It does assist clarify why Katniss chooses Peeta regardless of clearly seeming to have stronger emotions for Gale, implying that her showy romantic curiosity in Peeta could have been coming from a really actual state of drug-induced mania. If it weren’t for the tracker jacker stings, Katniss might need by no means had the thought to “fake” to be in love with him within the first place.

The speculation additionally provides one other layer of dramatic irony to the Capitol’s final defeat after Panem’s second revolution. Thematically, The Starvation Video games sequence emphasizes how the Capitol sowed the seeds of their very own defeat. If that they had by no means created the tracker jackers, Katniss would have by no means been Hijacked into loving Peeta, and he or she won’t have ever had the thought to stage their Romeo and Juliet-type suicide pact to deprive the Starvation Video games of a winner and power the Capitol’s hand in pardoning them each.

Why The Starvation Video games’ Hijacked Katniss Concept Might Not Be True

The Concept Is Intruiging, However Far From Hermetic

Convincing although the idea could also be, it actually has its flaws. To counsel that Katniss was in a position to unintentionally gaslight herself into loving Peeta with the identical depth that Peeta is conditioned into hating her by the Capitol is admittedly a little bit of a stretch. Reasonably than inflicting Katniss to slowly fall for Peeta over time, this idea can be extra seemingly if she was instantly infatuated with him, although it may very well be argued that she was and was merely veiling her love for him by the lens of their “faux” relationship within the public eye.

The results of the Hijacking could final a very long time, as proven when Peeta relapses within the last movie of the preliminary sequence, however to counsel {that a} less-refined model of the Hijacking components may really develop stronger over time in its suggestion would not observe with the constraints of Hijacking already established. The thought additionally considerably reduces Katniss’ company in her personal story, leaving her love life as much as errant drug dosage. In the long run, Katniss nonetheless had loads of in-universe causes to decide on Peeta over Gale.

As one of many few fellow Starvation Video games winners, Peeta was one of many uncommon individuals who may relate to Katniss’ lingering trauma, and so they did spend a lot time pretending to be in love over the course of their post-victory touring that it isn’t a stretch to think about they might fall in love for actual. Gale additionally grew to become a unique particular person in the course of the warfare, even implied to have had a hand within the bombing that killed the one particular person Katniss was attempting to guard by volunteering for The Starvation Video games within the first place.