Katniss Everdeen might be the unwilling star of the series, but The Hunger Games is full of fascinating characters with their own rich stories. For instance, former stylist Tigris was only a minor character who sheltered Katniss and her allies in Mockingjay, but The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes revealed her surprising backstory. It turned out the Capitol-born rebel was actually President Coriolanus Snow’s first cousin, and they were raised together by their grandmother after the First Rebellion left them both orphans. Considering how close they were growing up, this raised a lot of questions about Tigris’s journey in the series.

Since Tigris only appears in Mockingjay and The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, the franchise’s first and last installments chronologically, this leaves a 65-year gap in her story. The Hunger Games books may not directly explain everything she was up to during these lost decades, but fans can surmise some details based on where she ends up in Mockingjay and what Katniss knows about her. Here’s everything fans know about what happens to Tigris between The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes and Mockingjay.

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A Timeline of Tigris’s Journey After The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes

While the Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes movie shows Tigris already starting to see the darkness in Coriolanus, they’re still on good terms at the end of the book. After all, she doesn’t know about the people he killed during his time in District 12 or that he tried to kill his now missing love interest, Lucy Gray Baird. The 10th Hunger Games didn’t have stylists, but with young Snow implementing certain changes, like letting viewers bet on the death pageant and rewarding the victors, it probably didn’t take long for him to suggest it. Tigris helped Lucy Gray clean her dress and find some makeup before her interview, becoming the first unofficial stylist, so the future president of Panem might even have asked her to lead the initiative when it became a regular part of the Games.

It’s unclear when exactly The Hunger Games‘ Tigris became an official stylist, but Katniss says in Mockingjay that she was “a fixture … in the earliest Hunger Games I can remember.” With Katniss being 16 years old during the 74th Games, the first Games she remembers were probably between the 60th and 65th Games. Even if it took a while for the Gamemakers to add stylists for every tribute, it would make sense that Tigris would be seen as a fixture in the Games by Katniss’s time, as she could’ve been working on them for up to five decades by then. Katniss also notes that although Tigris had already started working on her catlike transformation at this point in her life, she hadn’t had that much work done yet.

At some point before The Hunger Games, Tigris retired from being a stylist and opened a shop that sold fur-lined clothes. She also had heavy plastic surgery and got tattoos on her face and arms to make herself look like a tiger. Katniss speculates that she may have been fired from the Games because of her unsettling appearance, which is extreme even by Capitol standards. While Tigris confirms this in Mockingjay – Part 2, claiming that Snow decided she “wasn’t pretty enough anymore,” she doesn’t confirm or deny anything in the book. Either way, it’s clear that she no longer harbors any loyalty toward her cousin by the time she meets Katniss in Mockingjay because she has joined Plutarch Heavensbee‘s network of rebels in the Capitol. She even smiles when Katniss says she’s going to assassinate Snow, causing many readers to wonder what made her decide to turn on her once beloved cousin.

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Why Did Tigris Join the Rebellion Against Her Cousin?

Katniss’ Theories Were Proven Wrong by the Revelations of the Prequel

During Mockingjay, Katniss, while obviously accepting Tigris’ help, clearly doesn’t trust her that much, and a good deal of her reasoning is because she sees Tigris and her plastic surgeries as everything Katniss despises about the Capitlo’s excesses. In Mockingjay, she notes:

Everything about the situation screams trap. I have a moment of panic and find myself turning to Tigris, searching those tawny eyes. Why is she doing this? She’s no Cinna, someone willing to sacrifice herself for others. This woman was the embodiment of Capitol shallowness. She was one of the stars of the Hunger Games until…until she wasn’t. So is that it, then? Bitterness? Hatred? Revenge? Actually, I’m comforted by the idea. A need for revenge can burn long and hot. Especially if every glance in a mirror reinforces it.

Obviously, what Katniss doesn’t realize is that Tigris is Snow’s close relative, and thus, that clearly Tigris is not motivated by something as simple as being fired as a stylist. But why?

What we know about Tigris and Snow’s connections at the end of The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes is that she notes that Snow looks like his father. We know that Tigris doesn’t mean that as a compliment, and clearly she is suggesting that Snow has the hate behind his eyes that his father had before him.

Thus, for someone who is clearly extremely empathetic towards the tributes than Coriolanus in The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, it’s almost a bit of a case of Res ipsa loquitur, the famous legal doctrine based on that Latin phrase (translated as “the thing speaks for itself”), which is to say that Tigris is an empathetic person, and her cousin Snow clearly is NOT, so does it really require much imagination to figure out why she would be against her cousin after 60 years of him sending kids to their deaths in the Hunger Games?

Also, to be fair, while unlikely to be THE reason for her turning on her cousin, it IS pretty messed up that Tigris did so much for her cousin over the years, only to be pushed out as a stylist at one point. That would be a problem for anyone, really, to be cast aside after doing so much for your kin.

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Could Tigris’ Split From Her Cousin Have to Do With Finnick?

Hunger Games Fans Have Their Own Theories About Tigris’s Turn

However, whether it is clear why Tigris turned on her cousin (note, by the way, that in the books, Katniss just THINKS Tigris is smiling at the mention of killing Snow) or not, the lack of definitive information regarding Tigris’ past has left fans to speculate about what finally pushed Tigris over the edge, having lived through 75 years of Hunger Games. It’s possible that Tigris started finding subtle ways to rebel against her tyrant cousin before she was allegedly fired. With her bearing more of a resemblance to Coriolanus when they were younger, perhaps drastically altering her appearance was Tigris’s way of rejecting her family. This, in turn, could suggest that she turned against her cousin while she was still a stylist in the Games.

A fan theory from the Super Carlin Brothers YouTube channel delves into one potential reason for Tigris’s changing allegiance. They speculate that Tigris may have worked with Finnick Odair, winner of the 65th Hunger Games. As Finnick reveals in Mockingjay, he and other victors were sex trafficked for political gain by President Snow, who threatened to kill their loved ones if they didn’t cooperate. The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes hints that Tigris may have resorted to prostitution to keep her family afloat, putting her in a unique position to understand just how terrible this practice was. Based on their time estimates, the end of her stylist career may have coincided with Finnick becoming a victor. Combined with her already considerable empathy for the tributes, it seems quite likely that learning about the victors’ fate through Finnick would push Tigris to support Coriolanus’s downfall, but fans would need another Hunger Games installment that touches on her story to know for sure.

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Could Tigris Appear in Sunrise on the Reaping?

The Next Hunger Games Prequel Could Fill in Some Gaps in Tigris’s Story

Hunger Games fans were ecstatic when it was announced that Suzanne Collins was penning another prequel about Haymitch Abernathy titled Sunrise on the Reaping. The synopsis confirms that the new novel will open with the start of the 50th Games, which Haymitch won, but some are speculating that this book could venture far beyond the second Quarter Quell and explore Haymitch’s time as a mentor. It could even include some other familiar faces, like Tigris, who was probably a stylist at this point in the franchise. The two never meet in the original Hunger Games trilogy, and considering how little Katniss knows about Tigris, she wouldn’t know if the former stylist ever crossed paths with her mentor before.

Although Katniss claims that Tigris wasn’t a stylist for District 12, it’s still possible that she styled Haymitch for his Games or perhaps just met him when he was a tribute in the second Quarter Quell. Tigris also could’ve gotten to know District 12’s second victor during his mentor years, having been a “fixture” of the event in Katniss’s eyes. Since audiences don’t know exactly when either character got involved with Plutarch’s resistance, they could even have met through the Gamemaker. Of course, there’s no guarantee that they ever met or that Sunrise on the Reaping will explore Tigris’s story at all, but considering when the novel takes place, it’s in the perfect position to help flesh out some of her missing years. Otherwise, Collins might have an excellent candidate for her next Hunger Games prequel.

The Hunger Games

The Hunger Games franchise shows a dystopian future where teens are forced to battle to the death for the amusement of the wealthy. Everything changes when Katniss Everdeen volunteers in place of her sister, Primrose.

Created by

Suzanne Collins

First Film

The Hunger Games

Cast

Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, Liam Hemsworth, Woody Harrelson, Elizabeth Banks, Amandla Stenberg, Rachel Zegler, Tom Blyth, Viola Davis

Where to Stream

Peacock, Fubo TV, Philo