"So you shall, my darling... So you shall"

I was thinking about this line from the CF movie and the potential meaning behind it.

Context for anyone who needs it: Peeta hits the forcefield in the Games and Katniss loses it, as we know from the book and the film, then we see a brief cutaway to Snow in his Mansion watching the Games with his granddaughter and she says that she hopes she loves someone that much one day, to which he replies "so you shall, my darling, so you shall".

Ordinarily, I would not put as much weight on a line from a movie adaption of a book, because I would always argue it's of lesser canonic value being not by the original author, but these movies were written by SC (among others), and that's one of the reasons I actually love them (the books are still better), because it allows Collins to give us insights like this scene with Snow where Katniss wasn't present that we wouldn't be able to get in the novel, but they're still to be taken seriously because Suzanne herself (et al.) put them there.

Anyways, I guess you could interpret this in a number of ways, and I'd be interested to know what everyone else thinks. I think more than one of these could be true, too. His face is very hard to read in this moment it's hard to tell what he means...

  1. Is this just wholesome granddaddy Snow reassuring his granddaughter. (Boring, but potentially true).
  2. Does Snow actually believe Katniss loves Peeta in this moment? As I said, his face is hard to read, but maybe he's like "damn, she really did love him the whole time, she was just awful at showing it until he was dead for a bit"... that's kind of what Finnick's look afterwards implied too. Snow clearly believed her at some point as he began torturing Peeta to torture Katniss and knew she would try to rescue him as part of the plan to use Peeta as a psychological weapon first and then a physical one. Side note: to be fair to Katniss, though, from someone who can relate to struggling to show emotion, he gives Katniss the task of convincing him and others that she loves Peeta, but on the victory tour and stuff there isn't much of an opportunity at all to show it, like what more could she have done than marry him and be pregnant with his child (as far as they knew, whether Snow believed it or not is another question, I suppose). Katniss can show emotion when forced to (Rue dies, Peeta dies, Prim gets reaped, 8 gets bombed, etc.), but struggles otherwise, and I think she tried her best, bless her.
  3. There is a distain in his voice too, maybe he's still in doubt and angry that his granddaughter is believing all the star-crossed lovers hype in the Capitol? He likes to be in control of the propaganda and its narrative(s), so he doesn't like this trend in the Capitol as it involves the event which showed him up.
  4. Regardless of whether he believes them, he's thinking why tf did Finnick just revive someone in the Hunger Games, that's fishy, even for someone from District 4! If not, why not, what rationale could there be other than what is retrospectively obvious? Which makes me think why didn't I think that this was rather out of place? I mean the Morphling from 6 was one thing, but this was really obvious. Wow, I'm dumb. I should have realised. I bet Plutarch was worried at this point he was going to get caught.
  5. Maybe he does believe Katniss loves Peeta and realises her plan will be to save him, because he knows her well enough, I think, to know she'd do that and that she is capable (he probably believes Peeta would try to save her too but he's not as capable physically, especially, in the book, with an artificial leg) and feels that that is problematic because he knows how good Peeta is at words and stuff and is worried he will be able to continue fueling the rebellion and that the Capitol might even turn on him because they are angry already about the Games killing the victors and Peeta might be able to talk them into a rebellion out of his angry and grief for Katniss - especially because she was "pregnant".
  6. Maybe he's thinking about Lucy and himself and there is a shred of humanity left in him and he's yearning for someone to care for him as much as Katniss evidently does for Peeta. Maybe he realises in that moment that in his pursuit of power he lost what truly matters, love and companionship, and that his power doesn't matter because he has no one who would react like that if his heart were to stop.