Mockingjay Part 2 (2015): Cast, Plot and Ending Explained

Mockingjay Part 2 is the final chapter of the story begun in The Hunger Games (2012), and it follows Mockingjay Part 1. Katniss is recovering in District 13 after Peeta, still conditioned by the Capitol, attacked her. President Coin will not let her go to the Capitol until the last Capitol held district is taken, so Katniss joins the push on District 2 to rally the rebels there.

A bulletproof outfit saves her when she is shot in the middle of a speech. She is then placed in a hand picked unit with Gale, Finnick and Peeta, sent to film propaganda near the front. Their orders are to stay clear of the fighting and to take a suicide pill if captured.

The full plot of Mockingjay Part 2 runs from the siege of District 2 to Snow's execution. Katniss pushes to join the war and Coin holds her back until District 2 falls. She is then placed in a small unit led by Boggs, with Gale, Finnick and Peeta, and heads for the Capitol using a holographic map that shows hidden booby traps.

Boggs is fatally wounded by one of those traps and passes the map to Katniss, warning her to trust no one, including Coin. Another trap floods the route with black acidic tar, and Peeta relapses, attacks Katniss and kills a squad member. The Leeg sisters die holding off Peacekeepers so the rest can escape. The Capitol announces that Katniss is dead, while District 13 hijacks Snow's broadcast so Coin can speak.

The unit then goes through the sewers, where mutant creatures attack and kill Finnick and others, and Katniss destroys the creatures with an explosion. Snow draws Capitol civilians into his mansion as a supposed shelter, and Katniss and Gale slip into the crowd. Bombs kill many children and then the medics, including Prim.

After the rebels win, Snow tells Katniss that Coin staged the attack. Coin refuses the promised election and proposes one last Games using Capitol children. At Snow's execution, Katniss shoots Coin instead, and the mob kills Snow. Katniss is arrested, then cleared by a letter from Plutarch that Haymitch reads out, and she returns to District 12 with Peeta.

Mockingjay Part 2 had its world premiere in Berlin on November 4, 2015, at the Sony Center on Potsdamer Platz. That put the finale's first public showing in the city where principal photography had wrapped in June 2014, and where the crew had spent 12 days at Tempelhof Airport to build District 2.

The general release came fifteen and sixteen days later. Audiences in the UK and Australia saw it on November 19, 2015, and US theaters followed on November 20, 2015. The ratings were PG-13 in the US, 12A in the UK and M in Australia.

In the ending of Mockingjay Part 2, Katniss shoots President Coin rather than Snow at the execution, and the crowd then turns on Snow. This is the key choice of the film, and in my opinion it is the clearest statement of what the series has been arguing since the first reaping.

Why does she do it? After the rebels win, Snow tells her that Coin staged the bombing in his mansion that killed the children and then the medics, including Prim. Coin, for her part, refuses the promised election and proposes one last Games using Capitol children. It could be argued that this makes the rebel leader a mirror of the regime she replaced. Boggs had warned Katniss, as he lay dying from one of the booby traps, to trust no one, including Coin, so the film plants the doubt well before it pays it off.

The shot also closes a loop that opened in The Hunger Games (2012), where Katniss volunteers to take Primrose's place at the reaping. Everything she did afterward, from the Victory Tour in Catching Fire to agreeing in Mockingjay Part 1 to become the Mockingjay on her own terms, was a way of keeping Prim alive. When Prim dies anyway, in a bombing that Snow says was staged by the side Katniss fought for, the war stops being about a cause and becomes a question of who gets to run the Games next. Perhaps that is why she turns on Coin and not on the man she has hated for four films.

The aftermath is quieter. Katniss is arrested, but Plutarch's letter, which Haymitch reads out, clears her and promises an end to the Hunger Games. The letter exists for a sad production reason: Philip Seymour Hoffman died on February 2, 2014, with most of his scenes already shot, and the two remaining scenes were rewritten rather than recreated with CGI. That choice keeps Plutarch's last words in the film without a digital double, which I think was the right call.

Katniss then goes home to District 12, where Peeta slowly recovers after being attacked by and then attacking her in the tar and sewer sequences. Years later they are married with two children, and Katniss plans to tell their story. Compared with the prequel The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, where a young Snow is shaping how the Games run, this ending shows the man's regime finished and the Games ended. The film closes the series, so it sets up nothing further.

Mockingjay Part 2 was filmed mainly in Atlanta and elsewhere in Georgia, and the shoot ended in Berlin. The locations were:

• Atlanta and Georgia (Rockmart, Newnan, Marriott Marquis), USA: the main production base and sets
• Paris, France: Capitol scenes at Les Espaces d'Abraxas
• Berlin, Germany: Tempelhof Airport for District 2, and Das Kraftwerk for Beetee's lab, where the shoot ended in June 2014
• Babelsberg Studio, near Berlin: scenes with about 1,000 extras
• Rüdersdorf, Brandenburg: a former cement factory for District 8
• Boston and Los Angeles, USA: listed among the shoot locations for the two part production

The crew spent 12 days at Tempelhof Airport, which stood in for District 2, the stronghold the rebels must take before the push on the Capitol can begin.

Mockingjay Part 2 has several production details that explain how the finale was made, from a Berlin shoot to the loss of a cast member:

• Mockingjay Part 1 and Part 2 were filmed back to back, with principal photography running from September 2013 to June 20, 2014 and finishing in Berlin.
• Philip Seymour Hoffman died on February 2, 2014, with most of his scenes already shot. Two remaining scenes were rewritten, so Haymitch reads Katniss a letter from Plutarch, and no CGI recreation was used.
• The production budget was $160 million.
• The crew spent 12 days filming at Berlin's Tempelhof Airport.
• About 1,000 extras for the Babelsberg scenes were recruited through an April 2014 casting call.
• There was no companion pop soundtrack album, and James Newton Howard's score was released on November 23, 2015.
• The world premiere was held in Berlin on November 4, 2015.

On money, it ranks fourth of the five Hunger Games films, behind Catching Fire, Mockingjay Part 1 and The Hunger Games (2012). See the Hunger Games box office page for the full table.