The legacy characters in Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping are so much more than fan service

The new Hunger Games prequel book, Sunrise on the Reaping, takes place roughly 24 years before the start of Suzanne Collins’ original book trilogy, which gives Collins the chance to include younger versions of a whole host of legacy characters. Sunrise on the Reaping doesn’t just bring back Haymitch Abernathy — Katniss and Peeta’s eventual surly mentor, who narrates the events of the book — he comes with a whole host of other characters who appeared across the original Hunger Games trilogy. Some readers have complained that this comes across as simple, indulgent fan service. 

But Collins has always been methodical and deliberate about what she includes in her text. For instance, she never revealed the names of Katniss’ parents until Sunrise on the Reaping, even though she says she parsed out their full backstories: “Her parents have their own histories in District 12 but I only included what’s pertinent to Katniss’s tale,” she told Scholastic Press in a 10th-anniversary interview. 

The characters who return for Sunrise on the Reaping are all specifically and thoughtfully included, for more than just gratuitous name recognition. They’re here to make a significant point about the nature of political rebellion and resistance against tyranny. 

[Ed. note: This post contains some major spoilers for Sunrise on the Reaping.]

Rebellions don’t happen overnight

The previous Hunger Games prequel, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, also brought back some familiar characters, but because it was set more than 60 years prior to the core trilogy, there weren’t as many familiar faces. Sunrise on the Reaping is packed with them. Hunger Games victors Wiress, Mags, and Beetee — who Katniss teams up with in Catching Fire, the second book of the first series — also make significant appearances, along with Plutarch Heavensbee, the Gamemaker turned rebellion leader.

Sunrise on the Reaping sees them more than two decades prior to Catching Fire, where they’re all in radically different places in their lives. Mags is younger and has more of her wits about her; Wiress has yet to be broken by torture. Beetee is forced to watch his son compete in the Games, where he’s likely to die, as a punishment for Beetee’s rebellion against the Capitol. And Plutarch is simply a filmmaker tasked with documenting the Hunger Games tributes from District 12, though as Haymitch slowly learns, he has his own rebellious agenda.

In this case, seeing the legacy characters is a reminder that the rebellion against the Capitol has been in the works for a long time, far before Katniss was even born. Collins wrote the Hunger Games trilogy to get her readers to think about just war theory, and she continues to return to the world in order to explore other ideas of rebellion and resistance. She never intended Katniss to be some sort of “Chosen One,” a trope which usually focuses on a lone hero who rises up against all odds. Collins very deliberately showed that the Hunger Games rebellion had been building for decades.

With Sunrise on the Reaping, she further emphasizes that fact. Revolutions take time, effort, and most importantly, people. In both the books and in the real world, rebellion against tyranny takes trial and error, and each time something goes wrong, it gives would-be rebels insight into what they can get right next time.

Beetee pays dearly after he figures out how to take down the Capitol’s communication system in Sunrise on the Reaping; when he later uses the same skills in Mockingjay to hijack the Capitol’s broadcast network to air rebel messages, it now feels more like a culmination of an old plan than the rise of a new one. As a filmmaker in Sunrise on the Reaping, Plutarch can only shape the narrative around Haymitch and the other tributes so much; he ends up rising through the ranks of the Capitol, so he can more directly infiltrate and control the Hunger Games. Later, when he works with the rebellion, he uses his hard-won film-editing prowess to create powerful rebel messages to air across the Districts.

What we see in Sunrise on the Reaping is the earlier stages of what would become a huge rebellion — and a reminder that the rebellion’s eventual success was never primarily about Katniss’ skills. As Haymitch and Plutarch discuss at the end of Sunrise on the Reaping, they didn’t need someone vastly different or more skilled than Haymitch to kickstart a rebellion; they just needed someone luckier. 

Katniss was never alone in her journey

Critics sometimes lump the Hunger Games series in with its shabby imitators — given the YA dystopia fad the original trilogy kicked off, it’s understandable if readers are dubious these days about teenagers who lead entire social movements as the adults stand back and watch. But that couldn’t be further from the truth, and Sunrise on the Reaping shows why.

Katniss isn’t a standard Chosen One archetype; she makes a series of decisions that reinvigorate and enable a rebel movement that had already been brewing for decades. She doesn’t fearlessly lead the rebellion; she’s a symbol being propped up by the real leaders. Collins deconstructs that misrepresentation in Sunrise on the Reaping, by showing us directly that the adults in Catching Fire and Mockingjay had been working at this for their entire lives. 

Beyond the rebels, other characters, like District 12 stylist Effie Trinket and Katniss’ parents, make appearances in Sunrise on the Reaping. They have smaller roles, but their presence serves another purpose. The District 12 characters remind us that their home District is very small, with a population of just under 8,000. They’re constantly overlooked and underestimated, but they have a strong sense of solidarity and culture in a way that other Districts might not. By including references to Katniss’ parents and other characters, like the surviving family of Lucy Gray, the District 12 tribute introduced in The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, Collins colors out the District and makes it feel more lived-in. 

Effie, meanwhile, gives us a viewpoint into a more typical Capitol citizen. She recognizes that Haymitch is a good person at heart, from the moment her makeup bag falls to the floor during the hullabaloo of Hunger Games interview preparation and he picks up the contents for her. More than any of the other members of the District 12 tribute prep team, Effie vouches for and believes in her charges. And yet she still believes that the Games are necessary to keep the peace in Panem. Considering that her viewpoint remains largely unchanged for the next 24 years, this backstory puts more emphasis on just how deeply entrenched in Capitol propaganda some of the Capitol residents are. For every Plutarch, who’s been rebelling since the early days, there are even more Effies: good-hearted, but still buying into the Capitol’s messaging, even after years of shepherding children to their deaths. 

Even more than The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, Sunrise on the Reaping is tragic because we know intimately how this story will end. Aside from President Snow, most of the Songbirds and Snakes characters were new to readers, with uncertain fates and futures. But reading Sunrise on the Reaping, we already know that Haymitch will win the Games at great personal cost, and that all the tributes he bonds with will likely die before the book is over. We already know exactly how Wiress and Mags will die. We know how Beetee and Plutarch will carry on the rebellion. We know where Katniss’ parents, Effie, and everyone else will end up. But even though we know how the story ends, Collins manages to make their presences not only satisfying to fans, but meaningful, a significant part of her greater themes of rebellion in the face of authoritarianism.