The fact that Triple H is going to get as much mileage as he can is obvious. There is a lot of goodwill from fans to win by bringing back their favorites, and the business is about creating buzz from big or shocking moments. It has been a long time since the company was able to make hay with a raft of surprising debuts.
Bray Wyatt came back at Saturday's Extreme Rules PLE, possibly the biggest name to return to the fold. Fans rationalized McMahon's releases with versions of "Vince just didn't get them" He was always trying to do something different, something way more out there than anyone else, and he liked to explore a lot of genres. McMahon had always shied away from the supernatural, but that didn't mean he didn't care about it, as his character lived in a world that McMahon didn't understand. Bray's work felt to his fans that it never finished.
Bray didn't always get the big win. He won a top title three times, but two of them weren't taken very seriously by the company. The ring would be taken over by a video of bugs and worms every so often, as he lost the first match to Randy Orton at the beginning of the year. The Fiend's reign lasted 118 days, but no one remembers how he had to spit it up to Goldberg. Which person did. The Fiend won the title a second time, only to give it to Roman Reigns a week later, kicking off a years-long title run for him. After dropping the belt for the second time, he left.
The handling of Wyatt had been awkward at times, and all of that doesn't show how incapable at times. It is difficult to book a character who is always playing with demonic forces or spirits when few other wrestlers are doing so. It made Wyatt a perfect candidate for anUndertaker match, which he got, but there aren't many other characters who can believably dip into a fantasy world like that. When the wrestlers and creatives are given time and freedom, it is possible for the supernatural stuff to work within the confines of a WWE story.
The Firefly Funhouse Match is one of the best pieces of television the company has ever produced, and he had to make good on all of this. The company felt it had nothing to lose at the show in the Training Center during the first days of the Pandemic. It was a perfect time for the ideas to come to fruition.
The Fiend became popular immediately after his first appearance. He should have been treated as an unstoppable force that no one from the normal world would be able to stop, and should have shot straight to the title with a ferocious force. Instead, he was bathed in red light that made his matches hard to watch, and would take a lot of offense from his opponent. He shouldn't have opponents until someone could meet him on his supernatural level and take him down. But Vince didn't like him because he wore a mask and had to wrestle in red light. Bray wanted to make Shakespeare-comes-to-horror films while McMahon pushed him into something.
The Fiend's partnership with Alexa Bliss had promise, boosted by Bliss's total buy-in, but also fell flat thanks to wonky booking and the whole thing crashed down at Mania 2021.
It is difficult to do a program with a mind like that of Wyatt and make it work. It was under Vince's supervision. Almost no one came out looking better after a program like that. Was that the fault of the man? He had to work under shackles. Trying to fit any iteration of Wyatt into a tight window to look like a conventional wrestler with someone else is either going to piss off the fans or make the other guy look really awkward. Vince was afraid to make anyone else look different in service to work with Wyatt, even though he was a creative enough mind to justify any story with anyone. McMahon would claim that the green light for the Wrestlemania match with Orton was given by him. It doesn't balance out the years of mismanagement.
It felt like the only time Wyatt got to work with someone as weird and crazy as he was was when "Broken" Matt Hardy first showed up in WWE, and that program was treated as a side show by McMahon. He had to leave the way.
There shouldn't be any restrictions. Triple H is billing himself as someone who will allow his wrestlers to do what they want. There is nothing else out there, at least that is what he is selling, and doing as evidenced by the slow, careful, and abstract build-up to his return.
Is there enough dance partners for Wyatt? Will those who want to deviate from their regular characters be allowed to do so? Is there anyone who can do that? We'll find out if it works now. There will be no one to blame if it doesn't.
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