President Snow visits Katniss at home and threatens her family unless she convinces Panem she truly loves Peeta.

A man in District 11 is shot dead by Peacekeepers after leading the crowd in a salute to Katniss.

Peeta gets down on one knee and proposes to Katniss on live Capitol television to support their fabricated love story.

Katniss overhears a news broadcast at the mayor's house showing riots and burning buildings in District 8.

New Head Peacekeeper Romulus Thread publicly whips Gale for selling a turkey he poached from the woods.

After nursing Gale through the night, Katniss kisses him and resolves to stay in District 12 and fight.

The Capitol announces the third Quarter Quell: tributes for the 75th Hunger Games will be drawn from existing victors.

Haymitch's name is drawn at the District 12 reaping, but Peeta immediately volunteers to take his place.

Katniss and Peeta are taken away immediately after the reaping with no chance to say goodbye to their families.

During her private Gamemaker session, Katniss creates a hanging effigy of the executed former Gamemaker Seneca Crane.

Cinna's secret alterations cause Katniss's wedding dress to transform into a black-feathered mockingjay costume during the tribute interviews.

Peacekeepers beat Cinna savagely in front of Katniss moments before she is lifted into the arena.

Katniss wraps Beetee's wire around an arrow and fires it into the arena's forcefield as lightning strikes the tree.

Katniss wakes on a rebel hovercraft where Plutarch Heavensbee reveals there was a secret plan to break her out.

Gale tells Katniss that the Capitol has destroyed District 12 and that Peeta was captured inside the arena.

After winning the 74th Hunger Games, Katniss Everdeen discovers that her victory has ignited rebellion across Panem, and President Snow demands she use the Victory Tour to extinguish it. Despite performing a public engagement with Peeta Mellark, Snow remains unsatisfied as uprisings spread and brutal new enforcers arrive in District 12. The announcement of the Quarter Quell forces Katniss and Peeta back into the arena, stripping away the safety they thought they had earned. Inside the deadly new arena, Katniss fights alongside veteran tributes who are secretly protecting her as part of a larger rebel scheme. In the climactic moment, Katniss destroys the arena's forcefield and is extracted by rebel forces. She emerges to learn that Peeta has been captured by the Capitol and that her entire home district has been reduced to ash.

The defining events that drive Catching Fire's central storyline.

On the morning of the Victory Tour, Katniss visits the Hob and hunts in the woods to delay her departure.

Haymitch tells Katniss she will have to pretend to be in love with Peeta for the rest of her life.

Peeta apologizes to Katniss for his coldness since the Games and they agree to try to be friends.

At a Capitol party, Katniss learns that wealthy guests drink emetics so they can vomit and keep eating.

Head Gamemaker Plutarch Heavensbee asks Katniss to dance and shows her a pocket watch bearing a mockingjay image.

In the woods near District 12, Katniss discovers two fugitives from District 8, Bonnie and Twill, hiding by a lake.

Bonnie and Twill share their theory that District 13 survived its past rebellion and relocated entirely underground.

Katniss returns from the woods to find the fence permanently electrified and must climb a tree to get back inside.

Katniss reviews old Capitol broadcasts and notices that footage of District 13 appears to be recycled, suggesting the district still exists.

On the train to the Capitol, Katniss and Peeta watch footage of Haymitch winning the 50th Hunger Games by exploiting the arena's forcefield.

During Capitol training, Katniss meets the assembled victor tributes including Finnick Odair, Johanna Mason, Mags, Wiress, and Beetee.

Wiress and Beetee teach Katniss how to detect an invisible forcefield by spotting a faint shimmer in the air.

Peeta paints a portrait of Rue covered in flowers during his private Gamemaker session as a quiet act of defiance.

Peeta shocks the Capitol audience by announcing on live television that Katniss is carrying their unborn child.

All the surviving victor tributes join hands on the stage during the pre-Games interviews in a unified show of solidarity.

Before the Victory Tour begins, Haymitch warns Katniss that her fabricated romance with Peeta will never be allowed to end, setting up a lifetime of performance and pretense. As the tour proceeds and Katniss returns home, she gathers scattered clues — from Capitol excess to a cryptic pocket watch — that hint at a wider rebellion taking shape around her. Back in the Capitol for the 75th Games, Katniss builds key alliances with a diverse group of victors and learns skills that will become critical inside the arena. Her relationship with Peeta deepens as they study their opponents together and share a night watching footage of Haymitch's own brutal victory decades earlier. The pre-Games interviews become a flashpoint of defiance, with Peeta's shocking pregnancy lie and the victors' joined hands representing the boldest acts of resistance yet seen against Snow's regime.

The supporting moments that flesh out Catching Fire's full story.

In District 11, Haymitch and Katniss finally reveal Snow's threat to Peeta, who is furious at being deliberately excluded.

Snow watches Peeta's televised marriage proposal and makes clear to Katniss that her performance has failed to convince him.

Accepting she can never satisfy Snow, Katniss decides to drop the charade entirely and plan an escape into the woods.

Katniss asks Gale to run away with their families into the wilderness before the Capitol retaliates against them.

Gale refuses to flee, insisting that if an uprising is coming in District 12, he wants to be part of it.

Katniss's prep team mentions a weeks-long seafood shortage, prompting Katniss to suspect a rebellion is happening in District 4.

After learning Peeta intends to protect her at any cost, Katniss privately commits to doing everything possible to save him instead.

Peeta strikes the arena's invisible forcefield and is electrocuted; Finnick saves his life with mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

Elderly tribute Mags walks voluntarily into the poison fog so Finnick can carry the injured Peeta to the beach.

A morphling addict from District 6 throws herself in front of a monkey mutt attack to shield Peeta from injury.

Wiress repeats 'tick tock' until Katniss studies the arena as a whole and realizes it is shaped like a giant clock.

Jabberjays trap Katniss and Finnick in a jungle section, tormenting them with perfect imitations of their loved ones screaming in agony.

Johanna cuts the tracking device from Katniss's arm during what appears to be a betrayal but is actually part of the escape plan.

Katniss attacks Haymitch in a rage when she discovers Peeta was captured while she was rescued by the rebels.

After being sedated following her attack on Haymitch, Katniss wakes to find Gale sitting at her side.

The first major turning point comes when Snow remains unmoved by the televised proposal and Katniss accepts that compliance is impossible, briefly shifting her plan from submission to escape before Gale's public suffering forces her to choose between fleeing and fighting. Inside the Capitol, seemingly small details — prep team gossip about food shortages and recycled broadcasts — lead Katniss to piece together a picture of country-wide rebellion unfolding just out of her reach. Once inside the arena, a series of shocking sacrifices reveals that multiple tributes are secretly conspiring to keep Peeta alive, a pattern Katniss cannot yet explain. The arena's clock structure and the jabberjay attack push Katniss to her emotional limits while deepening her hard-won trust in allies she once considered enemies. In the novel's final revelations, Johanna's apparent betrayal is exposed as a rescue act, and Katniss discovers she was deliberately kept ignorant by the very people she trusted most. Her fury at being used without consent mirrors Peeta's earlier anger and leaves her in a shattered state as the rebellion's true cost becomes clear.