Bray Wyatt: An Overcritical Exploration of His Character in WWE

In the WWE, Bray Wyatt has been promoted as something that he has yet to live up to, let’s take a critical look into “The Eater of Worlds.”

For a moment, forget each character’s ebb and flow within the WWE is almost completely in the hands of another person, instead, focus directly on the wrestler’s portrayal, their story, and achievements. Have they lived up to their gimmick and attained success within the WWE or have they, to this point, failed on their path to greatness?

To put it bluntly, Bray Wyatt is one of the great disappointments within the WWE, a “holier than thou” individual that has been sold to the fans as one who knows the “truth” and can set people free, or destroy them in the process. He talks in riddles, shrouding his words in a fog that will only seem clear when he wants them to, but most people lose interest by the time he gets to the point.

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He has no boundaries when it comes to mind games, against John Cena he used his own fan base – primarily children – as a weapon against him in trying to corrupt Cena’s moral code, trying to pull the monster out and show everyone who the “real” Cena was inside. This, of course, didn’t quite come to fruition, because Bray has a pattern of winning the small battles, but rarely winning the war. Just look at his feud against Roman Reigns, he used Reigns’ own daughter as a mere distraction, causing Reigns to run around the arena like a mad man, eventually finding pictures of himself with his eyes cut out. In that moment, did Wyatt win? Yes, but when it came to their final match at Hell in a Cell, it was Bray’s eyes that were spiked into two kendo sticks, eventually succumbing to the Reign’s spear, losing the match, 1-2-3.

“Losing” is something that’s very familiar to Bray, in PPVs he’s a very average 12-10, but more closely to home, he lost his Dad, which according to Bray, after his father took him out of school, Bray lit his father’s shrimp boat on fire, with him on it, and “sunk him down into the doggone sea.” Clearly, he had issues with his father, and to make up for that loss, he’s started his own family, he is the father figure of the Wyatt Family and guides Luke, Erick, and Braun through the darkness with the help of his lantern.

It’s clear that Bray just wants to be loved, by his family, and by the fans. No longer used, but for a while he would announce to each live crowd “we’re here…” soaking up the pop that it received, a clear face tactic that shouldn’t have been anywhere near him. Walking down the aisle, Bray bathes in the light of all his fireflies, is he truly a bad man, or just a man who does bad things for attention or acceptance?

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In pop culture, he reminds me of Nelson Muntz from the Simpsons, a bully that just likes to point and laugh at others, even though he himself is nothing than an average punk. More personally, he brings me back to my high school days, when shortly after the 1999 Columbine shootings, the – for lack of a better term – “outcasts” would rock trench coats while walking around the cafeteria, they wanted not only to be feared but to be noticed.

All bark, no bite.

Until “The Man of 1,000 Truths” actually casts a dark cloud over the entire WWE, or more realistically, wins a title, any title, his gimmick becomes more and more of a farce. Forget the “The New Face of Fear,” more appropriately, he is “The New Face of Failure.”

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