The Hunger Games: Love or Hijack?

Happy Saturday, Fanaticals! Today we wrap up Hunger Games week with an interesting little thought nugget about our favourite star-crossed lovers. It's been mentioned by quite a few people that there is a possibility that just like Peeta was hijacked to hate Katniss, she was hijacked to love him.

While we don't really find out what hijacking is until Mockingjay, anyone who really stops to think about how they describe it in District 13 will start to put two and two together about Day 5 in the Arena during the 74th Games. It's from that mental math that we come to today's theory: was Katniss hijacked to love Peeta?

When the concept of hijacking is introduced in Mockingjay, it is explained as a process where the victim is injected with Tracker Jacker venom. After the venom begins to create hallucinations, the victim is then basically terrorized, confused, or convinced that certain memories and feelings are not what they "remember", or the victim is put into a situation where their sense of fear is heightened. In the case of Peeta, after they injected him, they showed him scenes from the Games convinced him that it was all fake.

The theory surrounding Katniss comes from the fact that she was injected with the venom when she crashed the nest down onto the Careers. While she may have caused Glimmer's death, after she got the bow and arrows from her dead body, Peeta appeared while she was still in a slightly hallucinatory state.

After he saved her, Katniss' feelings start to mesh and get confused as she is still under the influence of the venom. Suddenly, we see her feelings change towards him and her "acting" becomes a little bit stronger and better, to the point that Haymitch sends her more Sponsor gifts.

If she was still under the influence of the venom, it is easy to piece together that her "acting" in the Arena during the 74th was nothing but her being hijacked, ironically by her own thoughts. We also know that Peeta's severe reaction is because he was hijacked over and over again for a long period, versus where Katniss only had it happen the one time.

This could also explain why after the Games when they got back to the District she was extremely cold towards him, because the venom had been flushed from her system and so she was back in her normal frame of mind. Unfortunately, that means that she was now even more confused and unsure about what her real feelings are. This is how we get to see her actually fall in love with him, despite everything they have to go through.

While she may have had a lot of internal battles, she finally realized where her true feelings lied; most likely somewhere in the 75th Games Arena, which wouldn't be a surprise as she had just seen Cinna being dragged away. She had lost one person she cared about, she had to listen to the Jabberjays as they screamed for her in Prim's voice, and when she saw HIS District Token, it was actually a necklace with pictures of the people that she was fighting for. Who literally would not realize the man in frount of them is in love with them and realize how good that relationship would be?

Realistically, I feel that if this theory lands on the side of true, all it did was give make her actually give him a chance in the end which gave us the real story of our star-crossed lovers. Conditioned to hate, or conditioned to love... She had a moment of clarity where she decided to love him, and then had the opportunity to remind him of that while helping him through something extremely traumatic.

So, did the 74th Hunger Games have real love? Or an accidental hijack? Come tell us your thoughts! Meanwhile, tune in next week as we dive into another fandom. Until then, keep on theorizing, Fanaticals!