Who Is Maysilee Donner? The District 12 Tribute Who Changes Haymitch’s Story

Maysilee Donner is one of District 12’s tributes in the 50th Hunger Games and Haymitch Abernathy’s unlikely ally in Suzanne Collins’s Sunrise on the Reaping. She’s also the girl who owned the mockingjay pin before it reached Katniss Everdeen. Mckenna Grace plays Maysilee in the film adaptation, which is scheduled to open in U.S. theaters on November 20, 2026.

Readers first met Maysilee through old Games footage in Catching Fire. The prequel gives us a much better introduction. Before she saves Haymitch with a blowgun, she’s the girl on the train to the Capitol demanding plates and cutlery. Haymitch thinks she’s being fussy. Maysilee understands something he hasn’t yet figured out: how quickly the people running the Games can get away with treating the tributes like animals.

Spoiler warning: The first two sections explain Maysilee’s background and early role. The sections after that discuss her fate in the novel and the mockingjay pin’s history.

Who is Maysilee Donner in Sunrise on the Reaping?

Maysilee is the daughter of District 12’s candy-shop owners and the twin sister of Merrilee Donner. Her family has money by District 12 standards, and Haymitch initially reads her fine clothes and sharp tongue as signs that she looks down on him. She can be cutting, and the novel lets that first impression sit for a while. It takes being thrown together as tributes for Haymitch to notice where else she directs her anger.

Maysilee is reaped for the Second Quarter Quell, the 50th Hunger Games. For that anniversary, the Capitol doubles the number of tributes. District 12 sends four children to the Games instead of two, and Maysilee and Haymitch are among them. Why Haymitch’s Quarter Quell had 48 tributes

Why do Maysilee and Haymitch become allies?

In the arena, Maysilee uses a blowgun and poisoned darts. When Haymitch encounters Career tributes, she comes to his aid. It’s easy to see the practical reason for the alliance: each is more likely to live through the next encounter with the other nearby. The more revealing choice comes as their chances of winning improve and they have to consider what they’ll do if they end up facing each other.

The train scene helps explain why that choice matters. Asking for a plate is a small demand in a situation where Maysilee has almost no say over what happens to her. She still insists that the attendants do something as ordinary as setting a table for children about to be sent to their deaths. Once Haymitch starts to understand what she’s doing, it’s easier to see why he comes to trust her. She recognizes the difference between going along with something to stay alive and agreeing to become the person the Capitol wants on camera.

What happens to Maysilee Donner?

Major book spoilers follow.

Maysilee dies after a flock of deadly birds attacks her in the arena. Haymitch hears her scream and runs to her. He can’t save her, but he holds her while she dies. She hooks her little finger around his, recalling their promise that whoever survives will be a victor who refuses to play the part the Capitol has written for them.

Haymitch thinks of Maysilee as his sister by then. He keeps her copper flower necklace and later uses the copper to make a small light for Wellie, another tribute he’s trying to keep alive. That quieter use of the necklace is easy to miss. After losing someone who fought to have the tributes treated like people, Haymitch uses what she left him to give a frightened child a little comfort.

By the time Katniss and Peeta watch the recording in Catching Fire, Haymitch’s victory is a matter of public record. Sunrise on the Reaping lets us spend time with the person whose death is part of that record. The boy who holds Maysilee as she dies is easier to recognize in the mentor who helps Katniss and Peeta survive years later. He already knows what it costs to care about someone in an arena that’s designed to make you turn on them. What happens to Haymitch after the Games

How is Maysilee connected to Katniss’s mockingjay pin?

In the novels, the pin reaches Katniss through Madge Undersee. Madge is Merrilee’s daughter, which makes Maysilee her aunt. Madge gives Katniss the pin in The Hunger Games, and Catching Fire reveals that it belonged to Maysilee. The first film gives the pin a different route to Katniss, through the Hob and then Prim, which is why viewers who know the movies may have missed the Donner connection.

Sunrise on the Reaping adds a wrinkle. Maysilee is uneasy about wearing a mockingjay because the bird is partly descended from a Capitol creation. Haymitch sees something else in it. Mockingjays survived beyond the Capitol’s control. Maysilee considers wearing the pin if she makes it home. Knowing that makes it more poignant when a later District 12 tribute wears it into the arena and gives the Capitol a fresh reason to regret what it helped create.

Which book should you read for Maysilee’s story?

Sunrise on the Reaping is where to start if you want the full story of Maysilee and Haymitch. Read chapter 14 of Catching Fire afterward to revisit the version of the Quell that Katniss and Peeta see. The two accounts make an absorbing pairing once you know how much a few minutes of Games footage can leave out.

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• Read Sunrise on the Reaping on Amazon for the full Second Quarter Quell from Haymitch’s perspective.
• Revisit Catching Fire on Amazon to see what Katniss and Peeta learn from the footage of Haymitch’s Games.
• Read The Hunger Games on Amazon for the original scene in which Madge gives Katniss the pin.

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