Becoming The Muse

The Rats: A Witcher Tale

The Rats: A Witcher Tale is a feature-length special that Netflix quietly dropped alongside Season 4 of the Witcher on 30 October 2025.

It focuses on the youthful band of misfit outlaws known as the Rats, whom Ciri runs off with at the end of season 3 of The Witcher. The Rats are planning to do a daring heist against against the most dangerous crime ring in the kingdom.

The Good

It’s a heist tale, and I love me a good heist.

The Rats picks up the story from the point where Ciri’s storyline ended in Season 4 of The Witcher which gives closure you may not have realised you needed, wrapping up the storyline and setting up for the next season. Bounty hunter and Witcher killer Leo Bonhart mentions having had a run in with the Rats before and this is that encounter, and thus begins the tale.

Essentially, The Rats: A Witcher’s Tale is a prequel, giving a backstory to the Rats and their past on the backdrop of planning to execute the biggest heist of their lives.

One of the reasons I had disliked the parts with the Rats, in The Witcher Season 4  was because the Rats’ characters were underdeveloped and seemed like a bunch of rebellious misfits, playing at being hooligans and villains, and calling that freedom. I might have been better invested had they dropped this special after the end of Season 3 when Ciri ran off with the Rats.

My bingo card did not have Dolph Lundgren playing a Witcher from the Cat School, who sobers up and does hero things, emphasizing that Witchers arent as emotionless as they pretend to be.

The Bad

The plot is paper thin, maybe they should have incorporated this as a flashback episode, instead of trying to flesh it out into an unnecessary feature film length.

Like all heist movies, it has a certain formulaic predictability.

For something that is supposed to give us a feel for the dark trauma that plagues the rats, it quickly pivots to whimsical chaos and rebellious growing pains.

The Ugly

Heist storylines tend to want you to be sympathetic with the villains, rooting for them to pull it off, instead of being law abiding citizens…

Final Thoughts

The Rats: A Witcher’s Tale is a scenic detour into the Witcherverse which should be a mainstream part of the Witcher episodes. While its not essential viewing fans of the show should give it a watch.

The Rats: A Witcher Tale was originally planned to be a spin-off streaming series similar to the 2022 series The Witcher: Blood Origin

Have you watched the special feature?