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

2. Paul Heyman's Honesty

Paul Heyman is one of the most universally respected figures in all of pro wrestling. A savant who has been in the business long enough to have worked with Vince McMahon Snr., and is contemporary enough to relate to the likes of Bron Breakker and Liv Morgan, his nickname of The Oracle feels as accurate as it does grandiose. In a show that can sometimes feel like a propaganda piece, Heyman being openly critical of WWE Unreal's existence felt like a vital component to this season.

Heyman is mostly used to explain the importance of making the audience believe in what you're selling, as an accompaniment to Seth Rollins' 2025 fake knee injury storyline in Episode 3. He talks about wrestling's past, explaining that you would be beaten and ostracised from the industry for exposing the business in the days of old. He's brilliant when selling wrestling as performance art, telling the famous story of The Sandman selling an eye-injury in ECW that involved not leaving his house to preserve fans' belief that Tommy Dreamer had injured him for real.

Hearing Heyman say he's not a fan of Unreal is an important nod to the intellect behind pro wrestling. He points out that wrestling lives and dies on the audience's belief in what is happening in WWE's stories, and how that becomes a more difficult endeavor when you're giving everyone a new level of access as a result of Unreal's existence. When WWE spends a lot of Unreal pretending that the audience is gullible, someone of Heyman's stature acknowledging the dangers of giving too much away is an important and gratifying aside.