The Rats, a gang of young thieves who become Ciri’s (Freya Allan) surrogate family in The Witcher Season 4, are nothing if not sneaky. They’re always pulling off grand heists and executing ambushes to get by in the cutthroat climate of the war-torn Continent. So how fitting that their final appearance in The Rats: A Witcher Tale comes as a complete surprise. But what brought these outcasts together, and what really happened before their tragic end? Let’s break down everything you need to know about this surprise special.
The special’s available on Netflix, but only for viewers who have watched all eight episodes of The Witcher Season 4, out now.
The Rats: A Witcher Tale is set just before the group crosses paths with Ciri at the end of Season 3. The special chronicles their formation and the experiences that shape their worldview, and it reveals how they become targets of Leo Bonhart (Sharlto Copley) — the bounty hunter who savagely murders them in the Season 4 finale. Its central plot revolves around a daring heist at Dominik Houvenaghel’s new brutal fighting arena, with each Rat playing a critical role in the plan, which quickly goes awry and leads to devastating consequences.
According to showrunner Lauren Schmidt Hissrich, the Rats tell “a story about what’s happening to the younger generation in this world, who are just trying to survive as the Continent rages with war.” Each Rat — Mistle (Christelle Elwin), Asse (Connor Crawford), Giselher (Ben Radcliffe), Iskra (Aggy K. Adams), Kayleigh (Fabian McCallum), and Reef (Juliette Alexandra) — has been subjected to great trauma as a result of Emhyr’s (Bart Edwards) siege of the empire. But they’ve managed to survive by combining skills and forging an incredibly tight bond, which fans see even more of in The Rats: A Witcher Tale.
The actors’ first experience working together as the Rats started with two weeks of stunt training for the fight sequence that introduced their characters in Season 3. Not long after filming their Season 3 scene, the group traveled to South Africa to shoot the special. Then, work on Season 4 began. Though the special doesn’t become available until the entirety of the new season is watched, filming it before Season 4 was helpful for the actors. “Often, when you’re approaching a role, you work out the backstory of your character to get a sense of who they are and where they’ve come from, and that influences the decisions you make,” Radcliffe tells Tudum. “We had the most extensive background research on our characters because we’d shot this entire episode fully, showing how we all gelled as a group and how we solidified our gang.”
The experience of filming the special abroad also strengthened the cast’s offscreen relationships. “We’d hang out, constantly make jokes, and prank each other,” Adams says. But it wasn’t just time spent together that created the sense of closeness and history that’s so present onscreen. The actors also worked to build core memories that their characters shared. “It’s just lots of imagination and really believing that you’re there,” Elwin explains.
The Rats: A Witcher Tale follows an adventure shared by six kids and one Witcher — more on him later — but it’s Mistle’s experience and memories that drive the story. “Much of Asse’s journey is holding up a light to Mistle’s journey, which ultimately, in The Witcher, becomes the focus point of the Rats — it’s about Ciri and Mistle,” Crawford says.
In the special, it’s revealed that Mistle is highborn and was previously in a romantic relationship with her handmaiden, Juniper (Deoudoné van der Merwe). When a mercenary named Bert Brigden (Ben Robson) infiltrated their village on Emhyr’s orders, the girls were both kidnapped, and while Mistle was able to break free, she had no idea what had become of her lover. Cast out from her former life and left with nothing after escaping Brigden’s captivity, Mistle found herself alone, traumatized, and desperate for belonging in a world that suddenly felt hostile. The pain of losing Juniper and the collapse of everything she once knew left her searching for purpose and connection, which she ultimately found with the other outcasts who would become the Rats. Still, the loss haunts Mistle throughout the special.
Mistle carries that past love and tragic heartbreak with her into The Witcher series and into her relationship with Ciri. In this new romance, though, the roles are reversed. “There’s a switch that happens with the power dynamics,” Elwin says. “Ciri knows who she is and where her place is in the kingdom, whereas Mistle is no longer a highborn lady. She’s now this Rat on the street that most people don’t respect.” Having experienced this change of fate, Mistle is set up to try to find redemption — through this new love affair — for what she allowed to happen to Juniper. According to Elwin, with Ciri, Mistle wants to prove “I can protect you this time.”
Like with any group of friends, each member of the Rats has their own individual relationships with the others, and the prequel explores the complexities that lie within those layered dynamics. One of these is the friendship between Mistle and Asse, who we learn are from the same village. Asse worked as a stable-hand for Mistle’s noble family, and together the two escaped the ruins of their home after Brigden killed their loved ones. “There was a rich backstory already for Asse and Mistle that I think really helped me and Chris understand how we felt about each other,” says Crawford. “I wasn’t trying to earn her trust. It was already there.”
Kayleigh has a complicated past that includes selling out his own parents — an act that weighs on him and drives both his rebelliousness and his desperate attempts to prove himself to the group. But, in the special, we gain a deeper understanding of one of the gang’s most polarizing members thanks to his connection with Mistle. In one scene, as de facto leader Giselher lectures Mistle about not being distracted by fantasies of revenge before attempting to rob Brigden, stolen glances and furtive grins establish that Mistle and Kayleigh just get each other.
“Me and Fabian talked about how we thought we were each other’s favorites. We thought that we wanted to be, in a sense, like each other,” Elwin says. “Mistle, in a way, wishes she had Kayleigh’s protection. He’s a guy, and he’s not had to deal with all the brutality that women face in this world.” McCallum agrees. “I think Kayleigh is threatened by Mistle but also really admires her,” he explains. “Kayleigh is perhaps the most insecure of the Rats. He doesn’t feel comfortable being told what to do. He doesn’t know how to slot into that group dynamic, so I think a lot of conflict comes out, which you see more of in Season 4.”
Giselher and Iskra also share a special bond, though theirs is romantic. In the prequel, this love story is in its early stages. Over the course of the special, their chemistry grows through moments of mutual support and shared danger, ultimately blossoming into romance. “For Giselher, [Iskra] is this magical pixie fairy girl that is so caring and really looks after him,” Radcliffe says. “It feels like he’s the one trying to look after everyone else, but Iskra is there looking after him.” According to Adams, it’s that tenderness Iskra shows for Giselher that allows him to step up as the Rat’s key strategist. “I essentially ended up opening him up, and he takes on this role as a leader and becomes the true beautiful man that he is,” she says. “I think it is definitely love. I believe in that.”
Along with their relationships with one another, the Rats also forge a partnership with a new character in the surprise prequel. Dolph Lundgren (Rocky IV, Master of the Universe, The Punisher) plays Brehen, a gruff witcher from the Cat School who the gang recruits to help them rob Brigden after they discover he’s using a jalowick — a deadly, alchemically transformed monster — to protect the riches they’re after. Reluctantly, Brehen joins them on the job and forms a sometimes antagonistic, sometimes fatherly relationship with Mistle. According to Lundgren, Brehen and Mistle’s shared struggles are behind that complicated dynamic. “She’s been deeply hurt, same as him,” he says. As is true of all the Rats, Lungren believes there are both “positive and negative aspects that make up the washed-up witcher who wants to find his old self again.”
Brigden has been secretly siphoning funds from bets placed at Houvenaghel’s arena and keeping them for himself in a vault protected by the jalowick. This is the money the Rats are after, but they’re not the only wrench in Brigden’s plan. During the heist, Mistle makes the horrific discovery that the jalowick is actually Juniper — her former lover — who was transformed into a monster through Brigden’s alchemical experimentation. In the end, Mistle is forced to kill Juniper to save the Rats, who have become her family. But the twists don’t stop there: It turns out Bonhart is Houvenaghel’s cousin, and when he discovers Brigden’s misdeeds and the in-progress heist, he first goes after Brehen, whose witcher medallion he desires as a trophy. After Mistle stabs the jalowick Juniper to save her friends from its wrath, the usually passive Asse shocks them by courageously taking down Brigden. Then, Brehen locks himself inside the vault with Bonhart, allowing the Rats to escape with their treasure in tow. As they scramble to safety, Bonhart says, “You know, they can run, but I will find them. I always do,” revealing exactly why he goes after the gang in Season 4.
Brehen’s final act — sacrificing himself to buy the Rats time, which leads to his death at Bonhart’s hands — cements his place in their story as a flawed but heroic figure. Following their escape, the Rats toast to Brehen, Juniper, and “the possibility of a future,” which lies in Glyswen, where they’ll eventually meet Ciri in Season 3. The special concludes with a voice-over from Bonhart, who’s been telling the story to his captive, Ciri, after murdering the Rats in Season 4. “And that is how the Rats survived their blaze of glory long enough to join forces with you,” he says. “But as you now know, Falka, in the end, I always win.”
The context provided by The Rats: A Witcher Tale certainly enriches Ciri’s journey, which is at an extremely bleak turning point at the end of Season 4. But the special also emphasizes the role that destiny plays in each character’s story. Just like Ciri, Geralt (Liam Hemsworth), and Yennefer (Anya Chalotra), the Rats are inextricably linked — and they’re also connected to Bonhart. “Without each of them in that group, there wouldn’t be this story. None of them can exist on their own,” Elwin says. The actor calls their gruesome group death in the Season 4 finale “tragic” but also “bitterly sweet.” “They need each other. I don’t think they could have had it any other way. I can’t imagine them living in the world by themselves.”
Watch the next chapter unfold. All four seasons of The Witcher are streaming now, only on Netflix.
