3 Ups & 5 Downs From WWE Unreal Season 2 (Review)

2. Portrayal Of Fans

Wrestling fans are proudly one of the most obsessive fanbases in all of pop culture fandom. They have a 24/7 news cycle that they follow religiously, which includes a massive interest in all shows and performers, from the indie circuit and lesser-featured televised wrestlers to the biggest names in the business.

As well as being incredibly focused on the product, wrestling fans have learned to become a cynical bunch. A business that is built upon surprising the audience means the audience has learned to question everything. This couldn't be further from the portrayal of fans on WWE Unreal. Close-up slow-motion shots of excited fans with mouths agape are shown to make every decision the booking team has made look like home runs.

The idea here is to make it seem like WWE's creative team is a group of super geniuses (and Road Dogg). This portrays the writer's room to Netflix's more mainstream audience as having every fan's number. Seth Rollins' fake knee injury is sold as a swerve for the ages, but was widely reported way ahead of its SummerSlam reveal, and Becky Lynch's return at WrestleMania 41 had little of the "shock and awe" that Unreal attempts to sell. Pretending these reveals were moments that fans adored via camera tricks and production techniques shows a disingenuous portrayal of the modern wrestling fan.