4 genius things that prove Bray Wyatt becoming The Fiend was WWE's plan all along
One of the biggest news items the came out of the 2019 WWE SummerSlam pay-per-view was the in-ring debut of The Fiend - Bray Wyatt's new gimmick - and him hitting it out of the park at the first opportunity. Wyatt garnered a huge amount of hype and praise when his new demonic character squashed Finn Balor, who was visibly horrified by The Fiend's entrance at the PPV.
This is even more incredible when you think that Bray Wyatt had almost failed to live up to his potential as the next 'supernatural' character in WWE, and desperately needed to be rehabbed to get him back into the world title picture - hence his break away from WWE television and subsequent reinvention as the 'Firefly Funhouse' host and The Fiend.
While many will assume that Wyatt came up with the Fiend character during on his extended hiatus from WWE, there is another argument to be made. One that says that not only has Wyatt been planning this 'next step' in his wrestling character for years, but that his taking time off to come back as The Fiend wasn't a knee-jerk reaction but rather always part of the plan!
His feud with Randy Orton, which culminated at WrestleMania 37, was one of the most interesting angles the WWE had played in recent times. Adding Alexa Bliss to the mix was a stroke of genius as the eerie feud continues to keep fans in anticipation over what could transpire next.
In light of the above mentioned events, let us take a look at 4 things that prove Bray Wyatt planned to be The Fiend in WWE for a long, long time.
#4. Firefly Funhouse episode titles
Wyatt's return to WWE was predicated by a series of backstage vignettes called 'Firefly Funhouse' within which Wyatt had said goodbye to his former self (more on that later) and acted like a children's television host, working with an array of sinister puppet 'friends'.
However, little did we know that outside of the obvious metaphors that were taking place within the Funhouse episodes, that the skits themselves, and their titles, were part of a larger puzzle that Wyatt had started four years ago in 2015.
Eagle-eyed wrestling fans then immediately rushed to try and solve the secret message that Wyatt had alluded to, and eventually the WWE superstar revealed exactly what it was,
You'll notice that they seem to be a fairly disconnected series of sentences and phrases, but we've only peeled back one layer from Wyatt's four-year-long breadcrumb laying as a smart Twitter user guessed that these were the episode titles for Firefly Funhouse and were thematically relevant to what happened in them.
This was important because it revealed how many episodes there would be and got people wondering what happened when the last one had finished.
But it also helped to highlight how long-term Bray Wyatt must have been thinking when he started laying the groundwork for The Fiend we see today. It also highlights how deliberate everything that Wyatt says or does is, no matter how random or weird.