This is the feminist ending to Mockingjay that we deserved

By now you’ve probably seen the final installment of the Hunger Games saga, and read all of the articles recounting each and every difference between the film and the book. If you haven’t you’ll want to bookmark this for later as there are oodles of spoilers ahead.

The noteworthy differences in the film for me are few: Katniss doesn’t kill a citizen in a Capitol apartment, there is ambiguity about Gale’s responsibility for the bomb that kills Prim and Katniss receives a heart-wrenching final letter from games-maker Plutarch, which was written into the script after the untimely death of Phillip Seymour Hoffman. While the movie mostly clung to the text, a small part of me hoped the film might go off book entirely for the final scene, and give us all the feminist conclusion to the Hunger Games saga that we deserve, one which I will share with you here.

Before I offer you my fanfic ending, I should say that the same weekend I saw Mockingjay Part II, I spent hours binging on Marvel’s new female-driven offering Jessica Jones, which paints a world driven by fierce women. The show doesn’t just pass the Bechdel test, it fails a reverse Bechdel (Translation: at no point are there two named men in conversation about anything other than a woman). So my disappointment in the Hunger Games’ ending may have been a result of being amped up on the Marvel series’ feminism fumes, but even if so, I wasn’t the only dejected audience member. The rest of the theater did not erupt into applause at the end of the film, instead stumbling out meekly, tripping over half-eaten bags of popcorn, looking dazed rather than triumphant. Why, in a movie franchise that had me clenching my fists, holding my hands to my heart, and flat out weeping over the years, was there not a more emotional climax to the final scene?

Even in the book, which never lets you forget that Katniss is plagued by PTSD, I felt that the epilogue was too neat and too pink a bow for what had otherwise been a complicated story. In the book, I could accept the idea of Katniss ending up with Peeta, but the movie goes even further, promising any young would-be Katnisses that on the other side of the war against the patriarchy is a future of marital bliss and a certain quality of golden light previously reserved for Renaissance canvases.

In a film series where I can count the number of times our hero smiles on one hand, this ending feels less like a triumph of happiness for Katniss than the fate President Snow menacingly promised her. Even wardrobe betrayed our hero: my Katniss wears a hunting jacket, not a ditsy floral dress, even if she is from Appalachia. What was intended as a fast-forward scene felt more like rewinding from the dystopic Pan Em, to a pastoral fairyland of yore, where everyone lives happily ever after.

One of the strengths of the series is that is shies away from these sorts of easy answers. They resisted the temptation to make the engine of this story a Twilight-like love triangle. Sure, the triangle is there, but it is not the reason for the story. Not even killing the villain dictator was going to solve the real problem. The subversion of familiar endings is part of what makes this movie feminist.