If we never get Haymitch’s game from Suzanne Collins, this will satisfy me. While I would obviously prefer to hear the story of Haymitch’s game how Collins imagined it, this was so good. It did such a great job piecing together the few facts we knew and adding their own spin on things. Like the mutt museum. I loved that idea and I would be disappointed if it wasn’t real. 

I truly think that having Haymitch’s story adds so much to the Hunger Games universe.

It’s one thing to know in theory that he had to face double the number of tributes. It’s one thing to have heard quickly in passing that he barely won the games thanks to the force field with his guts hanging out. And it’s one thing to also have heard in passing that the capital systematically killed everyone close to him after the games and continued to torture him in the way that they did. 

It’s another thing altogether to meet those 48 tributes and realize just how many kids that is. It’s another thing altogether to hear in detail what it was like for Haymitch’s intestines to literally be falling out of a wound in his side as he tried in vain to hold them in as they started to fall out of him and trail on the ground. It’s another thing altogether to realize just how close he came to not winning- that if one thing has been different, Haymitch would be dead. It’s another thing altogether to fall in love with his mother, brother, and girl only to have them killed by the capital so shortly after the games in order to punish Haymitch. It makes you understand why he is who he is. Why he drinks. Why he is such a big player in the rebellion.

We NEED his story to truly appreciate the rebellion and what it was like for other victors after the games. It makes me want Joanna’s story in particular all the more since she too mentioned that she had no one left that she loved for the capital to hurt/threaten her with. And Finnick, having his body sold by Snow. And really all of them. They all deserve to have their stories told.