After eight long years, fans of the Hunger Games can return to the bloody dystopian world of Panem in The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, coming this November. Set sixty years before the main films, we will see the 10th Hunger Games and an entirely new aspect of the society that forces children to fight to the death in order to serve as both oppressive control over the subjugated Districts and wild entertainment.

Based on Suzanne Collins’ novel of the same name, Songbirds and Snakes will focus on the President of Panem Coriolanus “Coryo” Snow (Tom Vlyth) when he was just a high school senior long before he became a tyrannical dictator and the female tribute from District 12 Lucy Gray Baird (Rachel Zegler), whom he must mentor for the Games. Going so far back in time in the history of Panem, there are a lot of questions and mysteries from the main films that Songbirds and Snakes could answer and solve, with lots that we want to visit again, and there is much that we hope to see carry over from the novel, so here’s what we want to see in The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes.
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The First Rebellion That Started the Games

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Catching Fire ends with the 75th Hunger Games, the final official Games (we don’t know if Coin’s Games to kill Capitol children ever happened after her death), but Panem is older than the Games, and the rebellion of the Districts we see in the main films wasn’t their first. We don’t know the origins of the dystopian nation or how the world became so, but we know that Panem instituted the Games for a reason, ironically the same reason that ended the Games – rebellion.

Just like how District 13 led the successful Second Rebellion that destroyed Snow’s Capitol regime in the main films, District 13 also led the failed First Rebellion. The first attempt of the Districts endured for three years until the Capitol systematically crushed them one by one until only 13 remained, which only survived by threatening the Capitol with nuclear war, and remained hidden until the time was right for the Second Rebellion.

The Capitol suffered greatly because of the Rebellion and launched the Hunger Games as a reminder of what happens when people decide to rebel. Snow helped modernize the Games to make it more entertaining and cruel as a school project in revenge for his family’s suffering during the Rebellion. So we want to see what happened during the First Rebellion because it led to the Hunger Games and Snow’s hateful heart.

Related: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes: Meet the Tributes and Mentors in the Hunger Games Prequel

The Rest of the World Outside Panem

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We know nothing about the world outside Panem or even how Panem came to be in the first place. We only know that after some great series of ecological disasters across the globe brought the collapse of modern civilization, Panem might be the only semblance of society left on Earth. We never see anything outside the Districts, so we don’t know.

Lucy Gray Baird and her family, though, are like gypsies, traveling across Panem to perform and even outside the borders of the Districts, so there may be more left in the world after the global disaster, and we want to know what’s happening out there. Is the rest of the world as horrible as Panem, or are they okay with letting Panem murder children and minding their own business?

Who Tigris Is to Snow

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In Mockingjay: Part 2, Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence), The Mockingjay, the face of the Rebellion, hides out in the basement of Tigris (Eugenie Bondurant), a Capitol citizen with surgical alterations to make her look like a tiger. Tigris helps Katniss and co hide from the Capitol because she has some unspecified reason to hate Snow.

While it’s never stated in the films, Tigris was once a sweet, sympathetic, and close cousin of Snow, who helped each other survive during the First Rebellion, but later they had a falling out, at one point when she thought Snow was dead, Tigris was happy. From the films alone, we have no clue about Tigris, but given her role in the novel, Songbirds and Snake will show us more of Tigris and the history of the Snow family.

Related: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes: What We Hope to See

The Brutality of the 10th Hunger Games

As if the Hunger Games weren’t brutal enough, the first ones early on were even worse. The 10th Games weren’t much of a sport and had very little viewership, as the reaped children were hauled to the small crumbling arena in cattle cars and then dumped with each other and a pile of weapons, and it was over in a matter of hours with little spectacle.

Snow did much to make the Games more palatable, like including mentors to teach the children more ways to kill each other, but that didn’t make it any nicer. Short, brutish, nasty, and amazingly even worse than the later Games we see in the main films, the 10th Hunger Games should be as horrible in the movie as it is in the book.

The Link Between Snow and White Roses

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Throughout the films, Snow taunts Katniss with white roses, leaving them for her to find wherever she may be as a sort of calling card. He cultivates and nurtures them in his garden and seems to be the only living life that Snow cares about. We don’t know why Snow loves these white roses more than any other life, but the prequel can show us the link between Snow and his most recognizable symbol.

Many other franchises like Maze Runner and Divergent have tried and failed to recreate the success of The Hunger Games, which is hailed as probably the last great young adult franchise ever, though even after nearly a decade, Songbirds and Snakes can reignite the fire for The Hunger Games and jumpstart the franchise, putting it back in its place as some of the most loved movies ever, because the odds were always in its favor.