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One of the biggest news items the came out of the 2019 WWE SummerSlam pay-per-view was the in-ring debut of The Fiend - Bray Wyatt's new gimmick - and him hitting it out of the park at the first opportunity. Wyatt garnered a huge amount of hype and praise when his new demonic character squashed Finn Balor, who was visibly horrified by The Fiend's entrance at the PPV.
This is even more incredible when you think that Bray Wyatt had almost failed to live up to his potential as the next 'supernatural' character in WWE, and desperately needed to be rehabbed to get him back into the world title picture - hence his break away from WWE television and subsequent reinvention as the 'Firefly Funhouse' host and The Fiend.
While many will assume that Wyatt came up with the Fiend character during on his extended hiatus from WWE, there is another argument to be made. One that says that not only has Wyatt been planning this 'next step' in his wrestling character for years, but that his taking time off to come back as The Fiend wasn't a knee-jerk reaction but rather always part of the plan!
His feud with Randy Orton, which culminated at WrestleMania 37, was one of the most interesting angles the WWE had played in recent times. Adding Alexa Bliss to the mix was a stroke of genius as the eerie feud continues to keep fans in anticipation over what could transpire next.
In light of the above mentioned events, let us take a look at 4 things that prove Bray Wyatt planned to be The Fiend in WWE for a long, long time.
#4. Firefly Funhouse episode titles
Wyatt's return to WWE was predicated by a series of backstage vignettes called 'Firefly Funhouse' within which Wyatt had said goodbye to his former self (more on that later) and acted like a children's television host, working with an array of sinister puppet 'friends'.
However, little did we know that outside of the obvious metaphors that were taking place within the Funhouse episodes, that the skits themselves, and their titles, were part of a larger puzzle that Wyatt had started four years ago in 2015.
Eagle-eyed wrestling fans then immediately rushed to try and solve the secret message that Wyatt had alluded to, and eventually the WWE superstar revealed exactly what it was,
You'll notice that they seem to be a fairly disconnected series of sentences and phrases, but we've only peeled back one layer from Wyatt's four-year-long breadcrumb laying as a smart Twitter user guessed that these were the episode titles for Firefly Funhouse and were thematically relevant to what happened in them.
This was important because it revealed how many episodes there would be and got people wondering what happened when the last one had finished.
But it also helped to highlight how long-term Bray Wyatt must have been thinking when he started laying the groundwork for The Fiend we see today. It also highlights how deliberate everything that Wyatt says or does is, no matter how random or weird.
#3. Unearthed WWE YouTube Video of Bray Wyatt telling a 'ghost story'
Around the same time that Bray Wyatt was adding random sentences that didn't fit into his promos as breadcrumbs for The Fiend, Wyatt also filmed a seemingly innocuous WWE YouTube video called 'Superstar Ghost Stories: Bray Wyatt' and within it was a huge allusion to The Fiend.
The video was unearthed and transcribed by Sportskeeda's own Gary Cassidy, but you can watch Wyatt talk about The Fiend below,
First of all, Wyatt mentions that he was hunting in the woods for rabbits, and what happens in an episode of Firefly Funhouse? Ramblin' Rabbit gets eaten by Mercy the Buzzard. But then things get really interesting.
Wyatt complains that as he gets closer to the figure in the woods the noise radiates in his ears so much it hurts, he then holds his ears in a particular way that will be familiar to anyone who has seen The Fiend's ambushes and his SummerSlam match.
Wyatt then goes on to describe what the figure in the woods looks like,
"He was about seven foot tall, walking upright. No pigment in his skin, he was as pale as a pearl. He had thin yellow hairs running all the way down to his knees. He was carrying an alligator with one hand, dragging it across the beach-line....and that's when he looked at me, his eyes were yellow like a cat."
Now, that description fits perfectly with Bray Wyatt as The Fiend as he has a pale white mask, yellow dreadlocks, yellow eyes and the alligator in one hand? Well, that's the mandible claw isn't it? I'm also willing to bet it's the hand that has 'hurt' written on the glove.
The 'ghost story' ends with the iconic Sister Abigail telling Bray Wyatt that he is the man in the woods. Which, again, hints directly at the fact that The Fiend was inside Bray Wyatt all along and now it's finally been awakened.
The number of uncanny similarities between this story that Wyatt told four years ago and the Fiend as we know him today certainly make it seem like we were given the origin story for the Fiend character and we just didn't know it yet.
Not convinced, how about this tweet?
#2. The 'Death' of the old Bray Wyatt
Everything Bray Wyatt has done since he's been back as The Fiend has been choc-full of Easter Eggs, alluding to his former cult-leader gimmick, but especially that first episode of Firefly Funhouse where new children's television presenter Wyatt decapitated a cardboard cut-out of his former character.
Other allusions to Wyatt's former self include a painting of Wyatt's burning barn where the grave of Sister Abigail was situated being hung up on the wall by Wyatt, The Fiend still using Sister Abigail and, of course, the Firefly Funhouse puppets all having allusions to aspects of Wyatt's personality and former characters.
What makes this Wyatt's gimmick change different, however, is that usually when a Superstar goes away and gets repackaged with a new gimmick they completely sever ties with their old gimmick (Brodus Clay and Funkasaurus, Isaac Yankem and Kane are two fairly egregious examples). The Fiend, however, has been presented as a natural evolution of Wyatt and sits firmly on top of the foundations set by everything we've seen Wyatt do in the past.
You won't get a more pointed example of this than Wyatt's entrance at SummerSlam, during which he holds a new lantern, this one made out of the severed head of his former cult-leader gimmick.
What's particularly interesting is that Firefly Funhouse seems to exist in some kind of pseudo-supernatural realm, possibly entirely within Wyatt's own mind. However, when he decapitates the cardboard cut-out in episode one of Firefly Funhouse, he then actually manifests a severed head of that character that he's turned into a lamp in reality.
As you can see there are so many layers to the new Fiend character, and so many allusions to the 'death' of Wyatt's old character that it has to have been a long-term plan.
#1. Wyatt himself has hinted he is 'finishing something he started a long time ago'
If all of the other points haven't convinced you that The Fiend may be one of the greatest examples of long-term storytelling that professional wrestling has ever seen, then why not accept it from the horse's mouth, Wyatt himself!
As you can see, Wyatt is telling people outright that he started this ages ago, and again alluding to the fact that he was actually The Fiend the whole time. Everything else we've seen - from Axel Mulligan, to Husky Harris to Bray Wyatt and now the Fiend - has simply been steps in a larger story.
We've already seen how Wyatt laid out the blueprints for the Firefly Funhouse episodes, and we also saw how Wyatt told us exactly what the Fiend was and what it looked like and then explained in great detail how Wyatt evolved into the Fiend.
Just take the exercise episode of Firefly Funhouse for example, where Bray Wyatt introduces a new puppet Huskus the Pig Boy, and then Wyatt tells Huskus he needs to take better care of himself because one day all this excessiveness and gluttony is going to come back and bite him on the tail. He then says 'One day you could be great, one day people are going to tell you, you're a genius'
He's telling his past self Husky Harris that he's going to be considered great and a genius, and hopefully his SummerSlam debut proved to everyone that The Fiend is going to be great and this article has proven to everyone that the whole Fiend storyline is a work of genius long-term storytelling. After all, Wyatt has had too much time to think,
What's incredible, especially in this day and age of instant gratification. It seems that Wyatt's incredibly slow-burn, long-form storyline is paying off.
The WWE has often been known to repackage superstars and more often than not, these have failed owing to how badly they get executed. But in this case, it is a stroke of genius and Wyatt has done complete justice both backstage and in the ring to deliver the gimmick.
I can't wait to see what happens next!
What are your thoughts on the latest incarnation of Bray Wyatt? Share your ideas in the comments section below!
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