3 Ups & 4 Downs From WWE Unreal Season 3 (Review)
2. John Cena's Final Run
For fans coming into Season 3 of WWE Unreal, the biggest question revolved around "how is WWE going to spin the John Cena farewell tour as not a disaster?"
The most considerable way WWE combats that perception is to lean into John Cena, the man. It is no secret to WWE fans that Cena has always been a one-of-one when it comes to being the model professional who personifies everything you could ever want as the face of a billion-dollar, publicly traded enterprise. Unreal's job is to let the outside world know who Cena is, which is done by his faultless soundbites and general selflessness.
To nobody's surprise, Cena is all class, all the time. John himself is keen to sell himself as just a man who did the most with his opportunity. From working with kids to sharing his knowledge with members of the roster, to giving a pep talk to Trick Williams and Oba Femi at their first WrestleMania, this is great PR for letting the world know what a good example John Cena sets for others.
From his long-running affinity for CM Punk, how gracious he is with Liv Morgan on her big return, to giving fans what they wanted between him and AJ Styles, the relationship he’s shared with WWE cameraman Stew, and how that’s a mechanism to share his joy with the people watching at home, there is a notion that John Cena’s farewell tour was all about giving back. Unreal furthers that narrative every step of the way.
There's an enjoyable look at the creativity of Cena too, as he wanted to really ruin wrestling for fans during his heel turn. By making his appearances and matches as unsatisfying as possible, John was succeeding in being a "true heel". It's an interesting take, and one that Levesque has to force him to reconsider, as it was working so well that fans were getting mad at WWE as a result.
The decision around TKO board member The Rock vanishing from our screens after being the catalyst for Cena's heel turn and the complete disappearance of Travis Scott after WrestleMania 41 is completely ignored. As fans, we can't magically forget that this happened, and if Unreal is to have more value as a "Reality TV show", it has to do a better job of addressing the big questions that exist for fans around the incidents that they cover.