These Characters in ‘The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes’ Deserved More Attention

Editor’s note: The following contains spoilers for The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes.

The Big Picture

• The film adaptation of The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes underutilizes the Covey, a group of musically gifted characters, which diminishes the impact of their influence on Lucy Gray’s character and choices.
• The Covey, with their nomadic lifestyle and musical talents, play a significant role in shaping Lucy Gray’s strong will, confidence, and moral values. They are crucial to her success in the Games and her pursuit of freedom.
• The lack of focus on the Covey in the film is a missed opportunity to further explore their dynamic and contrast their values with Coriolanus Snow’s thirst for power. Their limited screen time undermines the importance of their role in Lucy Gray’s life and her legacy in District 12.

The audience’s return to Panem in The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is an immersive and intense experience, taking viewers back to the early days of the Games, decades before an upstart young woman — Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) — becomes the face of a revolution. The story follows a young Coriolanus Snow (Tom Blyth) and his time as a mentor for a District 12 tribute, Lucy Gray Baird (Rachel Zegler), in an intertwined story about ambition, power, and freedom. However, there is a major facet of Lucy Gray’s background from the novel that is noticeably underutilized and lacking in the film adaptation, which is Lucy Gray’s musically gifted and adoptive family. Known as the Covey, this group consists of some of the series’ most endearing characters throughout all four books, yet they lack significant screen time and dialogue in the film. The minimal attention given to the Covey is a shortcoming that minimizes the importance of where Lucy Gray learned her values, taking away some of the impact of her pivotal decisions that affirm how she and Snow, regardless of their affections, could never truly be aligned.

Who Are the Covey in ‘The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes’?

In The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, the Covey consists of a unique group of characters, even among the already eclectic citizens of Panem. Unlike everyone else in the films and books, the characters that make up the Covey are neither from the Capitol nor from the Districts (despite living in District 12). They are an adopted family who live a nomadic lifestyle, moving from place to place without planting roots. Known for their musical talent and free-spirited personalities, the Covey used to wander from place to place, performing music for excited audiences wherever they went. However, according to Lucy Gray, they were forced to remain in District 12 by the Capitol’s Peacekeepers, making them another victim of the Capitol’s unjust political machinations. Thus, the few remaining Covey are young and orphaned but have stuck together in solidarity. Appearing in the third act of the film, the two most notable Covey members (aside from Lucy Gray) are Maude Ivory (Vaughan Reilly), her younger sister with an incomparable knack for remembering songs, and Billy Taupe (Dakota Shapiro), her ex-boyfriend who betrayed her for the mayor’s daughter.

The unique culture and personalities of the Covey weren’t just present in their natural inclination for musical performances, but also through their naming traditions and way of dress. Every member of the Covey has a name that is a combination of a traditional folk song and a color. Barb Azure (Honor Gillies) was inspired by “Barbara Allen” and the shade of blue, while Maude Ivory was taken from “Maude Clare” and the off-white color. The William Wordsworth poem “Lucy Gray” inspired the name of District 12’s tribute, which made her unique because both parts of her name were taken from the poem that already included the color gray in its lyrics. Similar to Appalachian naming conventions in the real world, the full first names of the Covey members always include both parts, which Lucy Gray politely (yet firmly) shares with Capitol audiences as soon as she is introduced to them by Coriolanus Snow.

Lucy Gray’s Best Traits Come From the Covey

Though their time was limited on the big screen, the members of the Covey are the driving force behind Lucy Gray’s most defining and endearing personality traits. Her eye-catching, colorful dress and powerful stage presence were integral to winning over Capitol viewers, proving to be essential for her survival. From her rambunctious introduction to Panem — where she put a snake down a rival girl’s dress, got struck by the mayor, and sang a song in angry defiance — her strong will and confidence immediately made her a fan-favorite. When she arrives at the Capitol, she is the first and best equipped to handle the games before the Games, quickly endearing herself to Capitol residents and setting herself up with better odds of victory despite not being as physically adept as other tributes.

In addition to the Covey charm that made her impossible to root against, Lucy Gray’s moral values are also intrinsically tied to the Covey. Her belief in freedom, independence, and most importantly, trust, were all built by her community back in District 12. As a group of orphans, the Covey members were forced to learn how to survive their unfortunate circumstances and needed to be loyal and responsible to one another. When Billy Taupe cheats on Lucy Gray with the mayor’s daughter, she is staunch in her anger for breaking that sacred Covey trust. Lucy Gray’s wanderlust and intrinsic need for freedom helped her with life before, during, and after the Games, continuing to influence her decisions through the very end. From her memorable appearance to her powerful beliefs and value system, Lucy Gray’s strengths are a credit to the Covey and their community.

‘The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes’ Vastly Underutilizes the Covey

One of the glaring shortcomings of The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is its stark lack of focus on the Covey, even after returning Lucy Gray to District 12. While their absence for the majority of the film is understandable, as the movie mostly takes place in the Capitol and from Snow’s perspective, their underutilization in the third act detracts from certain themes that were integral to Lucy Gray’s character.

Considering how instrumental these characters are to Lucy Gray’s development and decisions, their lack of dialogue and interactions is a missed opportunity. Lucy Gray mostly interacts with the Covey when she is performing on stage, with only limited time spent showing their lives when not performing. The Covey and Snow take an excursion to a lake beyond the borders of District 12, but the sequence misses out on the opportunity to juxtapose Snow’s family with Lucy Gray’s. In the book, Snow and Sejanus (Josh Andrés Rivera)have several interactions with Covey members other than Lucy Gray, giving more context to their values and beliefs about the world.

Snow’s incessant desire for power and control makes him perfectly incompatible with the Covey, but the movie doesn’t spend enough time illustrating these glaring differences. The lack of screen time and dialogue from the Covey makes them feel more like background characters rather than the most important people in Lucy Gray’s life, contributing to some of the criticisms regarding the pacing of the third act. Though the prequel film already has the longest runtime among the Hunger Games movies, spending more time with the Covey would have been an important investment in world-building.

Lucy Gray Baird Lives On Through the Covey

The limited use of the Covey also weakens the connection between the prequel’s District 12 with the District 12 we see in the original Hunger Games. Though Snow bridges the gap between the 10th and 74th Hunger Games from the Capitol’s perspective, the members of the Covey are needed to establish that throughline for the district and their suffering.

After Lucy Gray disappears at the end of the film, the Covey remains as her legacy in District 12. A notable example of this is through the passing down of “The Hanging Tree.” Though audiences first heard the song from Katniss in The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1, the prequel reveals the song has been around for decades and can be traced back to the Covey. Lucy Gray is revealed to have written the song, inspired by the tragedy she saw under the titular tree. However, with her unexplained disappearance at the end of the film, the song’s longevity must be credited to the Covey. Though it’s not explored very deeply, Maude Ivory is said to be able to play any song she’s heard even once, alluding to viewers that she and the Covey are likely the reason that the song becomes a well-known ballad in District 12. The influence of the Covey can be felt from the beginning to the end of the Hunger Games story, making their lack of screen time another sad tale in the history of Panem.

The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is in theaters now.

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