Watership Down recap

When the timid, visionary rabbit Fiver foresees the destruction of their warren, his brother Hazel leads a small band, including the strong Bigwig and the clever Blackberry, away to find a new home. After surviving a sinister warren where a farmer secretly snares the rabbits, and crossing dangerous country, they settle on a high down, guided by Fiver. Realizing they have no does to breed and keep the warren alive, they befriend a gull, Kehaar, and learn of Efrafa, a large, oppressive warren ruled by the tyrannical General Woundwort. Bigwig infiltrates Efrafa and, with the doe Hyzenthlay, engineers a daring escape of does down a river. Woundwort pursues them to the down and besieges the warren, but Hazel breaks the siege by luring a farm dog to attack the Efrafans, and Woundwort vanishes charging it. The warren survives and prospers, making peace with a reformed Efrafa. Years later, an old Hazel dies peacefully, his home secure.

In a warren in the English countryside, a small, nervous rabbit named Fiver is seized by a vision of some terrible danger coming to their home. When the warren's chief dismisses the warning, Fiver's brother Hazel gathers a handful of rabbits, among them the strong former guard Bigwig, and leads them away in the night. The band crosses fields, a wood, and a river, relying on the wits of the clever Blackberry to get the weaker rabbits across the water, and after hard and frightening travel they come upon a warren of unusually sleek, well-fed rabbits who invite them to stay.

The strangers' warren proves deeply wrong. Its rabbits are fed and left unharmed by a nearby farmer only because he snares them for meat, and they survive by refusing to speak of those who vanish. When Bigwig is caught in a snare and very nearly dies, the travellers grasp the horrible truth and flee. Guided by Fiver's unshaken certainty about a safe home, they press on and climb to a high, open hilltop he has foreseen, and there, weary but hopeful, they begin to dig a warren of their own.

Settled on the down, the rabbits realize their new warren cannot last, because it has no does to bear young. Holly, an officer from their old home, arrives half-dead and confirms Fiver's vision: men destroyed the warren they had left. The rabbits find and nurse an injured gull, Kehaar, who recovers and scouts for them from the air, reporting a farm with caged rabbits and a large warren some distance off that holds many does. Hazel leads a raid on the farm to free the hutch rabbits and is shot and wounded in the escape, but he survives.

To find does, the rabbits turn to the large neighbouring warren, Efrafa, a crowded and strictly controlled place ruled by the powerful and merciless General Woundwort, where rabbits are marked and forbidden to leave. Bigwig goes in as a spy, posing as a new recruit, and joins its guard. Working in secret and at great risk, he makes contact with an intelligent doe, Hyzenthlay, and other does who long to get out, and together they begin to plan a mass escape from under Woundwort's watchful control.

Bigwig's plan succeeds. During a thunderstorm the does slip away with him, and the group escapes Efrafa by floating off down a river on a boat, evading Woundwort's pursuers with help from the gull Kehaar. They bring the does safely back toward the hilltop warren, giving it a chance to grow and survive at last. But Woundwort, humiliated by the escape from under his rule, gathers a force of his fighters and sets out to hunt the runaways down and take his revenge.

Woundwort marches his Efrafan fighters to the down and lays siege to the warren, breaking into its tunnels. As Bigwig holds the passages in fierce defense, Hazel carries out a desperate plan: he frees a dog from a nearby farm and lures it to the down, where it falls upon the attackers and scatters them. Woundwort charges the dog without fear and is never seen again. Hazel, nearly killed by a farm cat, is saved by a human child who sets him free. The warren survives, the does who fled Efrafa join it, and in time the rabbits make a lasting peace with a gentler Efrafa.

General Woundwort tracks the escaped rabbits to Watership Down and attacks with an Efrafan force, breaking into the warren's tunnels. Bigwig fights him off in the dark, and Woundwort is shaken to learn that Bigwig is not even the chief, sensing some greater rabbit behind him. Meanwhile Hazel, with two companions, goes to a nearby farm and looses its guard dog, then leads it back to the down, where it falls upon the besiegers and scatters them. Woundwort turns and charges the dog head-on and is never seen again; his body is never found, and he passes into rabbit legend. Hazel, caught by the farm cat, is rescued by a young human girl who carries him off and later sets him free, and he returns home. The warren endures, the does who fled Efrafa settle into it, and in time a lasting peace is made with Efrafa under gentler leadership. In an epilogue set years later, an aged Hazel, having watched his warren flourish, is visited by the spirit of the rabbits' folk-hero, who invites him to join him; Hazel quietly leaves his tired body behind and dies content.