The Rats: A Witcher Tale

After watching the controversial 4th Season of the Witcher, which is a lot better as it's ratings, I was glad that it was over. Season 2, 3, 4 should have been 2 hour movies, especially when one deviates from the lore so radically as the untalented showrunners.

While I have enjoyed the storyline of Geralt and the artificially added story of Yennefer, the Rats story was nothing but atrocious, with was literally unbearable to watch due to it's cast and the poor execution. The fact that the showrunners pitched this exact cast and execution to Netflix, tells you everything how demented their decision making is.

The Witcher Universe needs a brand new approach, maybe even a reboot because this is not going to work.

The Rats: is a forgettable show, if you are coming from the games, you watch poorly designed NPC's doing things you don't care about. None of the actors has enough charisma, none of them are capable of carrying the show.

I get the desire to tell more stories about the characters, people would love to see the details of Yennefer in detail but they literally took the worst part of Season 4 and made it worse.

The Rats: A Witcher Tale (2025) is an action movie set in the Witcher franchise where a group of thieves planning the biggest heist of their lives and it was atrocious.

Positives for The Rats: A Witcher Tale (2025): The movie is only 82 minutes long and the cast is at least trying their best. That's all I've got to say for the positives.

Negatives for The Rats: A Witcher Tale (2025): There is no reason for this movie to exist as nothing happens here. The characters are remarkably one-dimensional as they act like jackasses. The big heist is underwhelming and is among one of the worst I've seen in my life. The action sequences are so lame and painful to watch. The movie drags its story through its very short runtime for no reason. And finally, this is a movie where it feels like Lauren Hisrich wanted to torture the audience more as if she hasn't done that with Season 3 and 4 and Blood Origins.

Overall, The Rats: A Witcher Tale (2025) is yet another atrocious entry in the Witcher franchise from Lauren Hisrich and I am so happy that it will be over after Season 5.

Lauren Hisrich the show runner for the Witcher, Blood Origin and The Rats makes some of the most incompatible tv and movie content available today. How Netflix ever managed to refund the 4th season of the Witcher, let alone this monstrosity of a disaster is crazy. There are very few men in the show and they are all bad people...evil slave drivers and criminal types. Like the Witcher it is mostly female cast which completely kills the Witchers core audience which is men who read the books and played the games. The Witcher season 4 isn't even about the Witcher,...its about The Rats and Falka (Siri) both of which are not interesting to watch and have no books to back them up. While they may be in the novels, they certainly arent the focus of the novels thats fore sure. What we have here is a twin of Kathleen Kennedy in Lauren Hisrich. Rather than write a tv show about the Witcher she thought it would be much better if she completely did her own thing and left the main story, the main character and the fans off to the side in favor of writing a show about whatever this show is about.

Its just terrible writing either. The story is about a bunch of dirty street thieves...only the dirty street thieves are better manicured, have their hair in fancy perms and $400 dye jobs all while wearing what would be considered upper class noble clothing! It just looks so out of place. I mean a group of people called the rats as street thieves you would expect to have dirty clothes, dirt on their skin and living in alley ways. Nope not this crew...they stay in fancy inn's seem to be living a lifestyle far above the commoners and possibly even above the nobles in the world of The Witcher.

As soon as I saw the cast give their interviews for the upcoming season 4 I immediately knew it was going to be terrible because you could tell that they didnt even want to be there and that they did not like the show either. I mean they could quit season 4 also, but I think everyone needs a paycheque quite badly in the acting world these days, so they are financially obligated///even if they clearly do not want to be there because they themselves know its a massive fail.

I would have thought Netflix knew not to use Lauren Hisrich after what happened with 2023s Witcher Spin Off Blood Origin. Never heard of it? Thats because its a 10 episode example of how not to make a tv show. Imagine the worst version of the Witcher possible and it doesnt even come close to how bad it was. They literally had The Witcher turning into the Incredible Hulk...turning green and everything. It was beyond bad and so is this show also. The Rats should never have been made.

This piece of garbage is completely unnecessary. It tries to make heroes out of villains and fails on every level. The rats want to rob a sporting event and it's cliché from start to finish. I love dolph lundgren and even he can't save this trash. He's a failed drunken Witcher and the rats convinced him to join their crew by asking nicely. None of these kids should ever get another job acting as none of them can. Everyone phones it in for a script that even the writer doesn't believe in. The dialogue is not just clunky but it seems like the writer has never met another human being and has only watched oceans 13, and oceans 8.

I'm a long time fan of The Witcher games and books. The Series wasn't so good, departing from the titular character in favour of an ensemble cast that leaned way too much on modern writing tropes for my liking.

I first heard about The Rats from Dolph Lundgren's Insta, and was immediately drawn in. Man, that guy would make a fantastic Witcher! He's tall and imposing, and actually looks tough, even at his age. I sat down to watch it the following day.

That's the good stuff out the way. Now on to the negatives.

I've never hated a group quite so intensely or immediately as 'The Rats', the supposed good guys of the story. They fall into all the same annoying, overdone pit falls as the main series.

The men are generally soft and clumsy, the women gruff and foul mouthed (perhaps an interesting twist once, not any more). They all speak and act largely like modern people (one of them even calls another one 'babes' at one point - I am now dying of terminal cringe).

They also complain about not having the money to buy food early on, even though one of the crew is heavily overweight. - threw me right off.

The characters do not look, feel or act like characters from the setting. They're essentially a soft, comfortable person's idea of what starving rogues are supposed to be. Dangerous characters, written by people who need safety scissors to open their crisps.

Overall, it's an interesting premise, a medieval heist backed up by a down on his luck mutant, but falls totally short in just about every way, hampered by poor actors and script writers. (Maybe i'm being harsh, the actors might have been better under different circumstances)

Watch it for Dolph, but if you didn't like the Witcher series, give this one a miss.