The Hunger Games

The Games narrow to three survivors: Katniss, Peeta, and Cato. The Gamemakers release genetically engineered mutant wolves that drive all three to the Cornucopia for a final confrontation. Cato is forced off the top of the Cornucopia structure and mauled by the wolves through the night; Katniss eventually shoots him with an arrow to end his suffering, leaving her and Peeta as the last two tributes alive.

Since the earlier rule change allowing two tributes from the same district to win together, the Games should now be over. But the Gamemakers abruptly revoke that rule, announcing that only one victor can be crowned, effectively demanding that Katniss and Peeta fight to the death. Rather than comply, Katniss produces a handful of poisonous nightlock berries she had gathered earlier and splits them with Peeta, and the two prepare to eat them together in a joint suicide, denying the Capitol a victor at all. Just before they can swallow the berries, the Gamemakers panic and hastily declare both Katniss and Peeta victors of the 74th Hunger Games.

Katniss and Peeta are pulled out of the arena and given medical treatment and a hero's welcome as the first dual victors in the Games' history, celebrated publicly as the "star-crossed lovers" of District 12. Privately, though, Haymitch warns Katniss that her act of defiance with the berries was seen by the Capitol as a challenge to its authority, and that she may face consequences for it. On the train ride home, Peeta is deeply hurt to learn that Katniss's displays of affection toward him were, at least in significant part, a calculated performance to win sympathy and sponsors rather than purely genuine feeling. The book ends with Katniss uncertain about her own emotions toward Peeta and anxious about what her defiance of the Capitol will mean for her future, as the two of them prepare to face the cameras one last time before returning home.

The ending holds. In both, a rule change lets two tributes from the same district win together, and in both it is taken away again once Katniss and Peeta are the last two alive — so they call the bluff, raise the nightlock, and are declared joint victors rather than let the Games finish with no winner at all.

What the film adds is the room where that gets decided. The novel simply announces the rule change; on screen you watch Haymitch talk Seneca Crane into it, and you watch President Snow tell Crane to be careful. The last beat parts too. Collins ends on the journey home, where Peeta learns that Katniss's devotion was partly a calculated play for sympathy and she cannot say what she actually feels. The film sends them back to District 12 and cuts instead to Snow shutting Crane in a room that is empty except for a bowl of nightlock.