Katniss's focus on survival and her family's safety prevented her from fully considering romance, but her feelings for Peeta and Gale diverged in the end. Katniss ultimately chose Peeta because he understood her trauma and she didn't want to lose him, proving her love for him.
Did Peeta actually have a crush on Katniss before?
Often, he would stare at her in school. Sometimes Katniss would make eye contact with him, only for his eyes to quickly flit away. During an interview with Caesar Flickerman preceding the Games, Peeta admits on national television to having a long-standing crush on Katniss.
The Hunger Games series, much like Harry Potter is for young adults, and the themes and motivations are not hard to understand. Katniss NEVER hated Peeta. She figured she'd have to kill him to survive and had no desire to like him because of that.
When Katniss comes home to District 12, Gale immediately confesses his love for Katniss, and she realizes she might have feelings for him, too — but she can't explore them, because she has to continue her fake relationship with Peeta or else her entire family, including “cousin Gale,” will be killed.
Does Katniss Truly Love Peeta By The End Of The Hunger Games?
Who was Katniss truly in love with?
Katniss made the choice to build her future with Peeta. If she didn't love him, she wouldn't have made that choice. Katniss made her whole world about getting the people she cared about to the next day, her choice to survive with Peeta proves her love for him.
Katniss's focus on survival and her family's safety prevented her from fully considering romance, but her feelings for Peeta and Gale diverged in the end. Katniss ultimately chose Peeta because he understood her trauma and she didn't want to lose him, proving her love for him.
Katniss here's this and understands that even though she may not love Peeta (then) that it's one less person who has to die. (At least that's what I have always thought.) Katniss realizes that if she pretends to be in love with Peeta people will want the capitol to let them survive.
Katniss Fell in Love With Peeta During the Quarter Quell
However, it wasn't until Mockingjay -- when Peeta got kidnapped by the Capitol -- Katniss realized how much she cared about him and that she couldn't live without him.
On March 23, 2011, Lionsgate began casting the role of Peeta for the film of The Hunger Games. According to The Hollywood Reporter, contenders for the role included Josh Hutcherson, Alexander Ludwig (later cast as Cato), Hunter Parrish, Lucas Till, and Evan Peters.
Peeta thanks Katniss for finding him and she says that he would have done the same. He talks about what Katniss should do if he doesn't make it back. She's worried that he might die, and to keep him from speaking of such things, she kisses him.
Gale was responsible for creating weapons that would trigger a second wave of bombs to target first responders and combat healers. This invention potentially ended up killing Prim, but even if he wasn't directly responsible, Katniss found this tactic so abhorrent that she lost her affection for him.
It's only implied that they get it on via snuggling and other affectionate acts in close quarters — but if you have read the book, they really imply that they took their relationship to the next level.
Why did Peeta tell everyone that Katniss was pregnant?
Biography. During the interviews for the 75th Hunger Games, Peeta lied about Katniss being pregnant to try to protect her from the Games, and Katniss later stated that she miscarried due to an electric shock in the arena to avoid further questioning.
Eventually, she finds herself truly worried about losing Peeta, being without him, and when they kiss, she feels her heart stir for him. They go to sleep, Peeta's arms around Katniss, and for the first time since her father used to hold her like that, she feels safe. They wake hungry.
She kisses him, thinking of how they're supposed to be in love. She steps outside, and a new gift from Haymitch arrives. It's a pot of hot broth, and Katniss realizes Haymitch wants her to play up the romance.
While the Hunger Games film never talked about it, the Catching Fire novel explained why she could only communicate through hand gestures. Katniss briefly mentioned that a previous stroke could have caused Mags' garbled speech. However, post-traumatic stress disorder could have also caused her speech incapacity.
During The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, the three-fingered salute is still used as a gesture of goodbye, but also comes to represent the anger and grief people feel toward the Capitol at taking their children to be killed.
The woods are now ruined. Katniss decides that the Capitol views her and Gale's weekly hunting trips — and the one time that Gale unexpectedly kissed her, which Snow knows about — as flaunting her defiance in front of the entire district.
Gale is jealous of Peeta and the relationship he has with Katniss, and he wants Katniss to decide between them, though he doesn't press Katniss during her recovery in District 13. Gale is an excellent hunter and excels at setting snares and traps.
Once he was stable again, Peeta seemed depressed and asked to be killed. For a long time afterwards he did not trust himself and refused to let the others remove his handcuffs. Eventually his personality went back to normal, and he never lost his grip on reality again.
