Mockingjay

The rebellion's final assault on the Capitol reaches its climax when Katniss, leading a small squad meant for propaganda but increasingly drawn into real combat, loses several teammates to booby traps and mutant creatures engineered by the Capitol, including Finnick Odair, who is killed by lizard-like mutts in the underground tunnels, and Boggs, who dies from a landmine early in the mission. Peeta, who was captured and tortured earlier in the war and hijacked with tracker jacker venom to associate Katniss with danger and hatred, remains unstable and dangerous throughout the mission, oscillating between clarity and violent flashbacks. As rebel forces converge on President Snow's mansion, Capitol hovercraft drop supply parachutes to a crowd of children gathered near the mansion; the parachutes explode, killing many, including medics who rush in to help the wounded. Katniss's younger sister Prim, working as a medic, is among those killed in the second wave of explosions.

Snow is captured, and Katniss is granted the traditional right to execute him personally in a public ceremony. Before the execution, President Coin, the leader of District 13, proposes holding one final, symbolic Hunger Games using children from Capitol families as punishment; Katniss appears to agree, but this is a ruse. At the execution, standing near Snow, Katniss instead turns her bow and kills Coin, having concluded that Coin orchestrated the parachute bombing that killed Prim in order to turn public opinion against Snow and consolidate her own power. In the ensuing chaos, Snow, already weakened and possibly poisoned, is trampled or otherwise dies laughing and choking, his death overshadowed by Coin's assassination.

Katniss is arrested and put on trial for killing Coin, but is ultimately judged to be mentally unfit due to trauma rather than a calculated assassin, and she is sent home to District 12 instead of being executed or imprisoned. Gale, whose weapons designs are strongly implied to be the source of the bomb that killed Prim, takes a government position in District 2, and his relationship with Katniss effectively ends, as she can no longer be near him without associating him with her sister's death. Peeta, gradually recovering from his hijacking, eventually returns to District 12 as well, and he and Katniss slowly rebuild a life together, drawn together by shared grief and healing rather than any dramatic reconciliation scene.

The book closes with an epilogue set years later: Panem has stabilized under new leadership, the Hunger Games have been permanently abolished, and Katniss and Peeta are married with two children. Katniss reflects on the trauma of the war, the friends and family she lost, and the necessity of remembering the horrors of the Games and the rebellion so that such violence is never repeated, even as she continues to struggle with nightmares and grief.

By the end of Mockingjay, the war between the rebel districts and the Capitol has ended. Katniss Everdeen, having served as the symbolic "Mockingjay" for the rebellion, is emotionally shattered after the deaths of many people close to her. Her younger sister Prim was killed in a bombing near the Capitol's presidential mansion during the final assault, an attack that Katniss came to believe was orchestrated by Alma Coin, the president of District 13, in order to eliminate President Snow's regime while also seizing power for herself. Finnick Odair, Katniss's ally and friend from the Games, was killed by mutant creatures during the final push into the Capitol, and Boggs, the soldier who had been protecting and guiding Katniss's squad, died earlier in that same mission.

Peeta Mellark, who had been captured and psychologically tortured by the Capitol and conditioned through tracker jacker venom to see Katniss as a threat, spent much of the book unstable and dangerous, but by the story's end he has largely recovered his sense of self, though he still experiences flashbacks. Gale Hawthorne, Katniss's other close ally and former hunting partner, is strongly implicated in designing the type of bomb that killed Prim; this rift, combined with Katniss's inability to separate him from that trauma, effectively ends their relationship, and he leaves to take a government job in District 2.

The major turning point of the book is Katniss's assassination of President Coin during what was supposed to be Snow's public execution. Believing Coin to be responsible for Prim's death and fearing she would become as tyrannical as Snow, Katniss shoots Coin instead. Snow himself dies in the chaos that follows. Katniss is arrested but is ultimately ruled mentally unfit to stand full trial due to trauma, and she is sent home to District 12 rather than punished. A new, more democratic government is established afterward, and the practice of the Hunger Games is permanently abolished.

Going into a next installment, the key open threads are: Katniss and Peeta living together in a badly damaged District 12, both still recovering from severe psychological trauma; Gale estranged from Katniss and working in District 2; a new Panic-wide government structure replacing both the Capitol's old regime and Coin's District 13 leadership; and the broader task of rebuilding a devastated Panem and reckoning with the atrocities of the war and the Games. The epilogue establishes that, years later, Katniss and Peeta marry and have two children, but the book itself ends with the immediate aftermath of the war rather than that future point, leaving the intervening years of recovery and rebuilding largely unexplored.