6 Tiny flaws in The Fiend's character presentation since its debut
April of 2019 will go down in the history of professional wrestling as the time when the world audience was introduced to a phenomenon known as The Fiend. Since its debut, WWE Superstar Bray Wyatt’s latest repackaging has continued to shock the world with not only the tremendous character work of the former Eater of Worlds himself but also with its splendid booking, great public recognition, and almost never-seen-before amount of creative control generously granted to a performer.
With his recent Universal Championship push and overall company’s acknowledgment, The Fiend’s success lays now more than ever on the fans’ reaction and support. It is safe to say, that back in this year’s spring, the wrestling community was not expecting Bray Wyatt’s return to strike that big. Even after that, during the whole time span of The Fiend’s exceptional character development, the wrestling audience was pretty cautious and wary about it turning to some questionable booking routes and losing some of its fire eventually.
Credit where credit is due, WWE still didn't show us any signs of slowing returned Bray Wyatt's push down or devaluing his momentum. However, with such worries on one side and the astonishing amount of hype surrounding our possible future Universal Champion on another, it is almost impossible to get even a slightly objective perception of his new gimmick and its use in the company. To get a fresh and original perspective on that matter, I suggest that we take a look back on some mistakes and questionable decisions made by WWE regarding The Fiend’s presentation since its debut.
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#6 First post-WrestleMania vignettes
Most of the wrestling fans, if asked, how Bray Wyatt has originally made his return to WWE television this year, sometimes struggle to remember those quite unique teaser-videos, that were shown to us on RAW and SmackDown after WrestleMania 35. It is notable, how the first look of what was about to become one of the most significant and successful repackaging in WWE history is still neglected by so many. I believe there is a couple of logical reasons for it.
First of all, the idea of some sort of 'creepy' puppets appearing in separate vignettes on the main roster TV leaves a couple of questions itself. In our days, it is very hard to make this gimmick not look childish. The fact, that its follow-up in a form of 'Firefly Fun House' series was pictured in a slightly different mood didn't help these vignettes' presentation either. Unfortunately, it was hard to take them somewhat seriously.
Post-WrestleMania RAW and SmackDown episodes are WWE’s time for returns, call-ups, and debuts. It has been like this for several years now. For the first half of this decade, it has meant, that we were annually treated with a couple of very exciting quality shows with pleasant surprises and some great angles and matches to hold up the bar. These days, unfortunately, all of the numerous comebacks and roster moves following WrestleMania are more or less expected and get smaller amounts of attention. It is not surprising, that those little vignettes about Bray Wyatt’s return felt a little lost in a shuffle.
One more disappointing thing about these short videos was the fact, that we all knew, what were they hinting all along. Bray’s voice behind the buzzard’s laugh revealed it all. Maybe this way of cryptically giving an audience a clue for some wrestler’s upcoming return would have worked better in the pre-Internet era. In our case, however, Wyatt’s voice ruined a significant portion of intrigue.