At the time, it was the culmination of the bizarre and intricate “white rabbit” story, the triumphant return of one of WWE’s darkest prodigal sons. Now, looking back, it’s a glimpse of potential that was ultimately wasted, a perfect and terrible reminder of everything we’ve now lost.

Rumors abounded heading into Extreme Rules 2022 that the event would feature Wyatt’s return, which was the culmination of the white rabbit hints that had been dropped across WWE programming for weeks leading up to the show. Still, it was one thing to hope for Wyatt’s return, and another thing to receive it. The PLE-closing segment contains all the seeds of the things we will never get to see: the rumored Wyatt 6 stable, personified by real-life versions of the Firefly Funhouse puppets that appeared in the crowd; the return of the classic Wyatt character, which didn’t exactly turn out the way we expected; the general excitement for a Wyatt storyline presided over by someone other than Vince McMahon, which turned out to be a slow-burning disappointment that went out with a whimper at the 2023 Royal Rumble — the notorious Mountain Dew Pitch Black match wasn’t the last one of Wyatt’s career, but it might as well have been.

That was Bray Wyatt, in a nutshell: Potential. An unending flow of passionate creative energy that never found the right story to channel it. It might be true that Windham Rotunda’s roads all eventually led to the same dark and tragic place, but tonight, in the wake of his passing, we choose to remember the hope rather than the despair, the beginnings and not the ends — the moments where, as he entreated us to do in his very first “NXT” promo, we believed in Bray Wyatt.