On the Oct. 14 SmackDown, Bray Wyatt’s first promo after returning to WWE the weekend before was cut off by... someone wearing a mask we’d first seen during the “White Rabbit” reveal at the end of Extreme Rules.
Wyatt got to finish his thoughts this time. In a speech delivered from backstage, and set to the rising strains of his new entrance music, Code Orange’s “Shatter”, Bray started speaking in the same “real” voice he used last week. But before he was done with his confession, Wyatt reverted to the kind of oracular messages we’ve always associated with him.
“I apologize for last week. I didn’t get to finish what I was saying. But that’s okay. I will now.
”I used to say all the time that revenge is a confession of pain. And it is — I still believe that. I feel like confessing some things to you guys today. I feel like that can help, right? So here it goes.
“I confess that I have problems. I know I have problems. I’ve always had problems. It’s not hard for people to see. But there’s a few of ‘em, like anger, sometimes it can take me to places I don’t want to be. Last time, it took me some place that I shouldn’t have come back from. I really shouldn’t have. But for whatever reason, I get chances. Chances that most people won’t get.
“But I confess that this time, I was happy, I was content with just being left alone. I was okay with it being over. I wanted you to stop saying my name, I wanted you to leave me the hell alone. But I confess, that I’m really glad you didn’t.
“Because I needed you. I needed all of you. You pulled the spears out of my ribs, and yanked me up. You told me what I was supposed to do without even having to tell me, and I’m thankful for that.
“Because now, I can see. I know who you are. I know what you want, I know what you’re trying to do. But it won’t work. I confess that along this journey I’m going to do horrible, horrible things, but I will never feel sorry for them. I’m just a servant now. I go where the circle takes me.”
As the main man Geno Mrosko pointed out in his SmackDown review, it all sounds very cool even if (or because) we don’t know what he’s talking about. Me? I’m just excited he tied the circle business back into this.
The biggest mystery remains, just who is Wyatt talking to? I think at first it’s us. But from the point where he confesses he’s glad we didn’t leave him alone, he could be addressing the fans, his inner demons, or both.
It’s a question that became even more relevant when... someone answered Bray later in the show.
*SPEECHLESS*#SmackDown pic.twitter.com/u1NKuUlC2M
— WWE on FOX (@WWEonFOX) October 22, 2022
“Why would you lie to me? You should never lie to the ones you love... Howdy.”
The masked figure who says “Howdy” seems to be a different mask than the one seen earlier in the video, which is also the one who interrupted Bray last Friday and that we’ve seen elsewhere during the “White Rabbit” hunt. The obvious speculation is this new mask in “Uncle Howdy”, which we learned about when WWE filed for trademarks on that name and “Uncle Harper”.
Does that mean the first mask is “Uncle Harper”? Are either of these figures actually Wyatt? Manifestations of part of his personality? Internet sleuths have tied “Uncle Howdy” to another rumor, that former Ring of Honor & Impact wrestler Vinny Marseglia is signing with WWE as part of this storyline. I’ve even heard some people say it’s Marseglia’s voice, but I don’t have a good enough ear to judge. For comparison’s sake, here’s a Vinny promo:
I can tell you Marseglia — and his partner in The Righteous, Dutch (Bill Carr) — are friends with Wyatt. And there’s lots of stuff on their social media which seems to tie them to this storyline, including images that have the number 6 in them (as in Wyatt 6) and what looks like a right side up version of Bray’s moth logo.
We get another QR code in this video, which leads to this link, and this psych eval of Bray:
Which, like Bray’s promo, is a neat detail but doesn’t tell us much in the way of new information. The client ID is a phone number, though, and that gets you a voicemail of someone whispering lyrics from David Bowie’s “The Man Who Sold The World”: “Oh no, not me. I never lost control. Oh no, not me. We never lost control.”
Still with us? Let’s see where the circle takes us...
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