Sounds like The Witcher spinoff The Rats may be dead, or getting repurposed

Recently, we saw the cast of The Witcher — including newcomer Liam Hemsworth, who will be replacing Henry Cavill as lead character Geralt of Rivia — getting ready to start work on season 4 of Netflix's fantasy epic. New episodes are still a ways off, but Netflix is planning to entertain us in the meantime with a spinoff show called The Rats, about the group of teenaged criminals that Ciri (Freya Allen) encounters towards the end of The Witcher season 3.

Fans of author Andrzej Sapkowski's Witcher books know that Ciri travels with the Rats for a while. There's Giselher (Ben Radcliffe), Mistle (Christelle Elwin), Kayleigh (Fabian McCallum), Iskra (Aggy K. Adams), Reef (Juliette Alexandra), and Asse (Connor Crawford). The plan was for these six to headline their own prequel series, but apparently the show has run into trouble. According to Redanian Intelligence, Netflix only filmed two of a planned six episodes of The Rats. After seeing early footage, the streamer opted not to pick up the show for a full season.

That doesn't mean we couldn't see footage from The Rats turn up in season 4 of The Witcher, where they'll be part of the mix anyway. RI directs us to something The Witcher casting director Sophie Holland told Deadline last year:

"I had a really lovely opportunity recently with a very special — almost standalone — episode of season four of The Witcher, which is exploring a completely new group of people. We found a boy called Connor Crawford and we were able to put him in this group of kids in The Witcher. The whole group is very exciting in terms of talent: Christelle Elwin, Juliette Alexandra, Ben Radcliffe. You meet the characters in season three and then they come into their own in season four."

Holland is clearly talking about the Rats here. Maybe if they don't get their own series, some of the footage from the show could feature in flashbacks in an episode all about their merry band. It's also possible that Netflix could release The Rats as a Witcher movie. We'll have to wait for confirmation to be sure.

Netflix has released Witcher spinoff shows before, and it didn't go well; the prequel show Blood Origin was pretty much panned across the board, so if Netflix didn't like what it saw of the footage shot, it's probably better to air on the side of caution and not release what could be another bomb.

In any case, we're still getting a Witcher spinoff movie in the near future. The animated movie The Witcher: Sirens of the Deep, which stars video game voice actor Doug Cockle as Geralt, is coming out sometime this year.

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