The Rats: A Witcher Tale Recap: The Spinoff That Wasn’t

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Spoilers for The Witcher season four to follow.

Viewers who just finished the newest season of The Witcher might be surprised to see Netflix recommend a separate movie, The Rats: A Witcher Tale. It was released alongside the fourth season of The Witcher, but didn’t get much promotion – there wasn’t even a trailer or announced release date.

You might be wondering, aren’t the Rats… gone? And you’d be right! Everyone except Ciri, who went by the name Falka and traveled with a different group this season, is definitely dead. They weren’t just killed – Leo Bonhart brutally decapitated them, and their heads were even preserved in a barrel.

What is The Rats: A Witcher Tale, and why does it take place before the events of The Witcher season four? Why isn’t Netflix promoting it? And most importantly, is it any good? Keep reading to find out.

Where did The Rats come from?

To understand this, let’s remember back to 2021 when Netflix was incredibly enthusiastic about The Witcher. Following the success of the first two seasons – and hoping it could become the next big fantasy hit like Game of Thrones, as many networks were trying to find – Netflix decided to invest heavily in expanding The Witcher universe beyond just the original show.

Netflix clearly wanted to expand the Witcher universe quickly. After dipping their toes in with the animated Nightmare of the Wolf – which was honestly a pretty solid way to keep fans engaged between seasons one and two – they greenlit a lot of projects. We’re talking another animated movie, the Blood Origin prequel series, and even plans for a kid-friendly animated Witcher show (that one sadly never happened). But just as Blood Origin was about to drop in November 2022, the folks at Redanian Intelligence – who really know their Witcher stuff – reported that Netflix was already working on another live-action spin-off. This one would focus on the Rats, the band of thieves Ciri hangs out with during a particularly rough time in her story. It felt like they were throwing everything at the wall to see what stuck!

Why the Rats?

Dedicated fans of The Witcher were surprised by the announcement of a spinoff focusing on the Rats. These characters are generally unpopular in Andrzej Sapkowski’s books, and even the news source Redanian Intelligence questioned the idea. They pointed out that while Ciri will interact with the Rats, making a whole series about them would be a challenge, requiring significant effort to make them more likable and engaging for the Witcher fanbase.

Initially, a lot of work went into developing a series called The Rats. Production, codenamed Riff Raff, started in Cape Town, South Africa, with Haily Hall—a veteran writer from The Witcher—leading the project. The original idea was to create a show with six to eight episodes.

What happened?

Let’s look at what Redanian Intelligence reported. A Netflix series called The Rats, which began filming in May 2023 with plans for a six-month shoot, was cancelled after just two months. Executives reviewed the initial footage and decided the show wasn’t strong enough to warrant a full season. Two years later, Redanian Intelligence obtained quotes from a Netflix source who described the production as a complete failure, stating, “Everything went wrong” and that behind the scenes it was a “disaster.”

Similar to The Witcher: Blood Origin, which had its episode count reduced from six to four, The Rats feels like a project that was heavily cut during editing. It relies on narration to quickly explain confusing plot points, uses a long montage to rush through several days of events, and features an introductory sequence that seems like a last-minute addition to explain why The Rats takes place after season four of The Witcher, instead of before.

What’s the framing device?

The story begins right after Ciri’s last appearance in season four, finding her waking up on a wagon driven by the dangerous Leo Bonhart. She asks him why he’s doing this, and he promises to explain. Then, the show jumps back in time six months to a scene where a group called the Rats pull off a robbery at a fighting arena, stealing bags of gold.

The way this story is presented doesn’t quite work. If you think about how Leo Bonhart is supposedly telling it to Ciri, it doesn’t make sense. He wasn’t present for most of the events in The Rats; he only makes a brief appearance near the end. For him to be recounting this tale, he’d have to know details about private conversations between the Rats, which wouldn’t be possible given his limited involvement.

The most logical reason for the way this story is structured is that The Rats was intended to be watched before the fourth season of The Witcher, not after. Without the framing device and the spoilers it contains, it would naturally make more sense to see The Rats first. This would also explain several odd scenes in season four where characters discuss events from The Rats as if everyone already knows what happened.

What actually happens in the movie?

Let me quickly summarize the plot of The Rats. If you’d prefer to experience the story firsthand, feel free to stop reading here.

Okay, so things weren’t going great for the Rats, and they caught wind of this massive heist – think Ocean’s Eleven, but way more dangerous. It involved a new fighting arena run by this truly awful guy, Bert Brigden, who’s a war criminal. But this job hit especially close to home for Mistle, who’s quickly become my favorite of the Rats – she’s got a really compelling backstory. She revealed she used to be a noblewoman, engaged to the leader of a rebellion against Nilfgaard, but she was actually in love with her servant, Juniper. Then, just before her wedding, Brigden and his soldiers launched a horrific attack, wiping out her entire family… and seemingly Juniper too. It’s a really heartbreaking story that adds a lot of weight to everything.

Apparently?

We’ll cover that soon. For the most part, the rest of the movie follows a typical heist formula – the team plans the robbery by examining the location, creating fake identities, and figuring out all the small details needed to pull off the theft after a night of gambling. However, there’s a catch: they also have to contend with a monster.

They end up hiring a witcher named Brehen, who is a far cry from the famous Geralt of Rivia. Played by Dolph Lundgren, Brehen is a struggling alcoholic who takes the job simply for the money. The story of The Rats – or what’s left of it after the series was condensed into a movie – focuses on Brehen getting sober, guiding the young Rats, and ultimately becoming one of them.

I don’t remember him in season four.

He wasn’t able to save Juniper. When the group faces the monster, Mistle discovers it’s actually Juniper, transformed by a curse from Brigden, who was trying to create monsters to sell as weapons to Nilfgaard. Mistle ends Juniper’s suffering. However, as they try to escape, they’re stopped by Leo, a relative of the owner of the fighting arena. During their escape, Brehen sacrifices himself to hold Leo back, allowing the others to get away with the money. Sadly, Brehen dies, and Leo takes his witcher medallion – a detail that explains the earlier, significant shot of the medallion when Leo is first shown in season four of The Witcher.

So that’s The Rats. After all that, is it worth watching?

I can see why it took Netflix a while to decide what to do with The Rats. It’s not a terrible show, but it’s not compelling enough for a full eight-episode series. A movie length might have been ideal, but at only 92 minutes, the story feels very hurried. I ended up understanding and even feeling a little sorry for the characters, and their deaths at the end were surprisingly sad, but it’s hard to know what to do with those feelings since they’re gone.

Ultimately, there are two main reasons to watch The Rats. If you’re a big fan of The Witcher and want more content, this bonus episode will likely satisfy. And if you’re interested in the behind-the-scenes workings of Hollywood, this offers a uniquely fascinating look at a troubled production.

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2025-11-01 01:56