Even though it’s become common for television shows to be released all year, it’s still rather exciting when the fall releases come around. At some point, the 2025 TV schedule will bring those with a Netflix subscription more fantasy in the form of The Witcher Season 4, which is the first one where Liam Hemsworth takes over for previous lead, Henry Cavill. There had been hopes of building a whole televised franchise around other tales on The Continent, but I had basically forgotten that The Rats spinoff was in the works, and new word on the project doesn’t sound good.
What’s Going On With The Witcher’s Rats Spinoff?
For a while there it seemed like things were basically going well when it came to developing author Andrzej Sapkowski’s Witcher books into stories for streaming giant, Netflix. Not only did The Witcher make waves with an enthusiastic Henry Cavill as star when it debuted in late 2019, but a 2021 animated tale, The Witcher: Nightmare of the Wolf, was also well received and helped set up the second season.
This is why (despite the poor reception to prequel series, The Witcher: Blood Origin, and its ending) a spinoff called The Rats was put into development and began filming, wrapping in early 2023. The potential show was another prequel, but this one was set to follow the band of young criminals that Ciri found herself with during The Witcher: Season 3 ending. However, a new report from Redanian Intelligence alleges that production on that spinoff was a “disaster” behind the scenes, and “everything went wrong” during filming.
One of those things was the 2023 WGA strike, which led to showrunner Haily Hall being present during production, along with The Witcher’s showrunner Lauren Schmidt Hissrich, but neither being able to actually work on the show because of strike guidelines. Filming was planned for six months, but ended after two, and the reason is supposedly because Netflix executives saw early footage and deemed it unreleasable. Leading to the drama being shelved.
With many Witcher fans still upset that the show will return without Cavill for the final two seasons, I doubt that there will be much interest in reviving a series that was never set to involve Geralt (or any other current Witcher players).
So, what’s going to happen to the Rats footage that was filmed? Reportedly, it won’t all suffer the fate of being shoved into a box in the corner of a dark, dusty room. Two alleged possibilities noted by the outlet’s sources say that we could see either a one-off film, The Rats: A Witcher’s Tale, or see scenes used as flashbacks in the upcoming season of the parent series.
All things The Witcher will likely come to a stop after the next couple of years (Season 5 is already well into filming and will be the fantasy’s last), so my bet is on that latter option more than the former. Fans will be able to see what happens when the main show returns later this year.
