Bray Wyatt’s new gimmick presents WWE with a rare opportunity

After airing vignettes over the past couple of weeks, the WWE finally unveiled Bray Wyatt’s new gimmick on this week’s episode of Monday Night Raw and well, it was quite something.

Following a creepy little opening title-card, we were introduced to ‘The Firefly Fun House’, a children’s TV show hosted by none other than, you guessed it, Bray Wyatt.

Wyatt burst through the set door dressed in a bright red sweater with a burgundy shirt underneath and then proceeded to tell the audience, which was represented here by the sounds of children, just how much he had missed them.

He then continued this creepy act for a couple of minutes before oddly ducking down off the screen and returning with his two hands over his face, one wearing a glove that said ‘hurt’ and the other that said ‘heal’, in what is easily the most intriguing moment of the whole promo.

While Wyatt was, as he is so often is, suitably creepy here, it was that this moment that really grabbed the attention. The natural assumption from fans right now is that Wyatt is going to be playing some sort of creepy television host, but what if, he is in fact, going to be playing two sides of the same character?

Wyatt has shown on several occasions that he is capable of playing both a face and a heel, and the company could take the interesting option here and decide to book him as both- with his character simply changing at random intervals.

One side of Wyatt’s personality could be a Fred Rogers inspired do-gooder. One who wants to inspire children and put a smile on everybody’s face. The other could be a Pennywise inspired creep with a taste for the sinister. This was even teased during the promo itself, as Wyatt maniacally laughed as he took a chainsaw to his own character in what was one of the video’s finest moments.

It would no doubt be a hard act to pull off, and the company would have to tread very carefully, not only because Wyatt’s act could potentially involve children, but also because it could be seen as a depiction of someone wrestling with mental illness, which is a hot topic right now.

Handled correctly though, and Wyatt could truly become the superstar we all knew he had the potential to be. A character whose motivation can change, literally mid-match, would be something fresh and exciting and could finally make Wyatt feel interesting again without having to rely on spooky dolls and fancy-dress, though, it does look as though we will be getting some of those with this gimmick as well.

Wyatt has often been billed as ‘The New Face of Fear’ when actually he has often been nothing but a retread of better acts gone by, this new take on his character could finally help establish him as one of the most interesting acts on the roster, which is exactly what he should have been when he made his debut all those years ago.

This new character does feel like one last throw of the dice for Wyatt, whose character has consistently stalled over the last few years, and whether it turns out to be a massive success or a failure, it has, if nothing else, finally got everybody talking about him once again.