By The fourth season of Netflix’s The Witcher wrapped production last October and has been in post-production ever since. One would think they have every piece of footage they need, but it appears that they didn’t.
The Witcher had additional photogpraphy before starting Season 5
The Witcher Season 5 started filming in Cape Town, South Africa late February this year with the cameras primarily focusing on Freya Allan’s Ciri. We initially thought everything they were doing there was for Season 5, but apparently not.
The earliest few days of those shoots were actually for Season 4. They were done by director Jeremy Webb who is responsible for the final block of Season 4 as well as the first block of Season 5, so the subsequent Season 5 filming was also done by him. These reshoots only took a few days, so nothing major.
As we mentioned previously, The Witcher used some of the sets and environments that The Rats: A Witcher’s Tale spinoff used for the town of Ebbing. For context, in Netflix’s The Witcher continuity, Dominik Houvenaghel is a crime lord, who has a cousin called Leo Bonhart.
The Rats spinoff was meant to be a heist, where the Rats (before they met Ciri) were robbing a powerful crime lord and Ebbing was Houvenaghel’s town. He also owns a fighting pit and after a bloody encounter with Bonhart, Ciri gets captured and is forced to fight in that pit.
That seems where Season 4 will leave Ciri and where Season 5 will start. Since the reshoots were so short, we’re thinking they decided to tweak the cliffhanger they had in mind for Ciri and film it in Cape Town instead.
As for what happened to The Rats prequel series, there’s still nothing concrete. It prematurely wrapped production exactly two years ago and was being retooled into a feature-length special in post-production last we heard. The other option Netflix were considering was to integrate some of that footage into Season 4. What they ended up deciding, we haven’t heard yet.
More that Ciri in South Africa
While on the topic of South Africa, as you’ll remember Anya Chalotra and Anna Shaffer were also there for one week. It was unclear what they filmed there, but now we have an idea and who else was with them. It turns out that Kate Dickie, who plays Skelligan priestess Sigrdrifa was also in Cape Town with them as well as Mahesh Jadu.
This is undoubtedly for Yennefer’s Season 5 arc in Skellige. In the books, while there, Yennefer tries to contact Triss via the megascope, hence Anna Shaffer’s presence. Perhaps in the show Vilgefortz interferes the connection, which would explain why Mahesh Jadu was there. In any case, we’ll see how that actually plays out in the show.
The Witcher Season 4 is has been out since October 30, 2025. Andrzej Sapkowski’s new Witcher book Crossroads of Ravens is available internationally since September 30, 2025. CD Projekt Red’s The Witcher 4 is now in full production.
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