The Risks WWE Is Taking with the Bray Wyatt Slow Burn

The return of Bray Wyatt to WWE programming sparked interest in the program that it had not seen in quite some time, thanks in large part to a viral campaign that left fans scoping out clues and hints about the reveal of the former universal champion.

Since his comeback, Wyatt has remained cryptic, cutting a promo that appeared to be from the heart in his first in-ring appearance, only to have his own words and haunting videos call those sentiments into question.

Everything from the execution of the White Rabbit campaign to Wyatt's oration and visuals have been extraordinary, but it begs the question: Will WWE risk burning fans out or exposing their minute attention span with a slow burn?

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A Fast-Moving Industry

Pro wrestling, like all art forms these days, is a fast-paced industry. Fans want to see what they want to see, when they want to see it and holding out on them for the sake of a long-term storyline can backfire.

Wait too long and the expectation and anticipation can diminish to the point of no return, with all excitement surrounding a specific storyline or angle worn off by the time the company's creative forces pull the proverbial trigger.

Look no further than the Wyatt-Randy Orton storyline that slow-burned (literally and figuratively) from December all the way through April of 2021, failing to produce the memorable payoff due to fan exhaustion and lackluster creative.

In fact, Wyatt's storylines have traditionally gone on for too long, overstaying their welcome and resulting in nondescript conclusions that either hurt his character or ruined what had been a perfectly acceptable bit of storytelling up to that point.

The feud with John Cena in 2014, the rivalry with Orton that preceded The Fiend way back in 2017 and the Matt Hardy nonsense of 2018 are all examples of stories that dragged on to middling, at best, results.

For Wyatt, it burned through any momentum he had at the time of those stories and diminished his overall popularity as a character. There was, after all, only so much time fans were willing to commit to a given performer before moving on to the next big thing.

What Wyatt and WWE have accomplished with the White Rabbit story has been fresh, unique and engaging, but the company must walk the fine line between between dragging things out for narrative effect and simply for the sake of bridging premium live events.

The difference will be a successful storyline that reinvents Wyatt versus one that continues the long, dissatisfying creative journey of one of the most unique characters in WWE history.

The good news is that there is a new creative regime in power that has already demonstrated a better understanding of when not to milk things for effect.

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Bray Is In Better Hands

In the first eight years of Wyatt's WWE run, it became painfully obvious that Vince McMahon either did not understand or did not care to understand the character the third-generation star had created during his time in Florida Championship Wrestling.

Instead of creating a bad guy around whom he could build his shows, he crafted a flavor-of-the-month villain who Cena or Orton could dispatch in the midst of their latest run on top.

Triple H has exhibited an ability to build characters and factions.

Look at Judgment Day, a faction led by Finn Balor that was left for dead amid ineffective booking. Now, they are as over as any act on Monday Night Raw and a centerpiece of that brand's creative efforts.

Ditto Damage CTRL, which has given the women's division a central heel act that can compete on both shows and sustain several feuds at once.

The Head of Creative for WWE has done this before, most notably in NXT, where he built several stars and ensured they were ready for the main roster. Guys like Andrade Cien Almas, Drew McIntyre, Aleister Black, Shinsuke Nakamura, Sami Zayn and Kevin Owens were all put in a position to succeed and, like Wyatt, were all let down exponentially by McMahon's failure to grasp what made them special in the first place.

That will not be the case with Wyatt this time.

The young star, still only 35 years of age despite a lengthy run in WWE already, will be put in a position to succeed by a booker who will rein in the over-the-top tendencies that McMahon was too enamored with to police.

He should work with Wyatt to keep things more grounded and focused, with a clearer vision for where things are going than the previous regime. That will benefit both sides exponentially.

If he can do it in a timely fashion, resisting the urge to take too long to get to the introduction of new characters and the point of this new narrative, Wyatt will succeed in ways that the character never truly did under McMahon.

If The King of Kings makes the same mistakes as his predecessor, the result will be eerily similar to the same disappointing results that plagued The Eater of Worlds' previous stint with the promotion.