Wes Anderson's The Rat Catcher Ending Explained

In typical Wes Anderson fashion, the ending of his Roald Dahl-based Netflix short The Rat Catcher is somewhat ambiguous and open to interpretation.

Wes Anderson’s **The Rat Catcher** is as mysterious and inexplicable as its title character, with a few unanswered questions and unresolved plot threads. The Rat Catcher is the third installment in a series of short films based on Roald Dahl stories that Anderson has directed for Netflix, preceded by The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and The Swan*. It stars Ralph Fiennes as a professional rodent killer sent by the Health Office to rid a local hayrick of its rat infestation. Despite clocking in at just 17 minutes, *The Rat Catcher is a fully fleshed-out character study of the titular exterminator, with plenty of hidden meanings to unpack.

From symmetrical framing to stop-motion animation to deadpan line deliveries to meticulous in-camera editing, The Rat Catcher contains many of Anderson’s stylistic trademarks – not to mention the presence of Fiennes, who gave one of his best performances in the lead role of M. Gustave in Anderson’s magnum opus The Grand Budapest Hotel*. True to Anderson’s style, the ending of *The Rat Catcher is somewhat ambiguous and open to interpretation. The movie has invisible props, a confounding final scene, a crucial second character played by Fiennes, and an unresolved storyline that was paid off in a different Dahl story.