If WWE Was Being Honest About Bray Wyatt’s Firefly Fun House

You forgot the buckets of blood, the lisped line readings of Sister Abigail, the maggot projections, the exploding TV monitors, the Hell In A Cell holograms, the constant empty threats, the ceaseless gibberish, the hokey lightning effects, the refrigerators, the spooky interfering children.

That intro wasn’t flippant hyperbole: the Bray Wyatt character was dead. Dead. And now, somehow, he has Risen.

This particular line reading, and indeed all of it, was something that should not be. A beast of a supernatural entity should not look like that. A beast of a supernatural entity should not be presenting a TV show fit for nursery children. Ironically, given the sinister disassociation of the bit, this represented a performer and company in perfect harmony.

This was a masterstroke on WWE’s part. The incredible tonal dissonance of the presentation mirrored this new character’s divided mind. This was pure nightmare fuel exponentially more effective than any and indeed all of Wyatt’s knotted fabric quilt of goofy horror cliché. Years back, as Wyatt cut strange and intriguing promos, many fans attempted to decode the mysteries within—only to find nothing. Bray Wyatt was a charlatan. This one segment accomplished what Bray Wyatt never once had, and undid every disaster. This one segment polluted the mind with the lingering, unshakeable dread only a nightmare can induce.

This was elite acting, too, from a performer that had, by the end of his first, catastrophic run, mirrored the spooky sh*tty booking with a string of woeful, rambling segments. This was remarkably subtle, layered character work. Just a few days ago, many fans never wanted to watch Bray Wyatt ever again. Gauging by the numbers on that YouTube clip, most WWE fans wanted to re-watch him over and over again.

CONT'D...(3 of 5)