The Revival of Peeta Mellark

The Return of Our Favorite Boy Next Door

If you’ve been active on social media lately — Tiktok in particular — then you might be witnessing the triumphant return of The Hunger Games to pop culture. If you were fortunate enough to be a tween and upwards in the early 2010s, then you experienced The Hunger Games frenzy that swept the country firsthand in real time.

The Hunger Games began a movement of dystopian stories aimed for teenagers (more specifically girls). But it largely retained its status as most influential and successful for the genre, both in literary and cinema.

Whether you were a book-reader, movie-watcher, or both, we all agreed that we loved the franchise. It dominated the first half of the 2010s in popular culture, rocketing the stars to fame (if they weren’t there already) and cementing each actor as the forever face of our beloved characters.

But, unfortunately, all good things must come to an end. The franchise faded into the background. Fans grew up or grew out of their memorable and beloved “Hunger Games phase.”

New movies and franchises developed. The 2016 election hit. Then the pandemic began. America has been really busy. So, outside of a handful of followers that use the series as comfort films, many people forgot about it — at least in their…