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Every Episode of Doctor Who Series 5 (2010) Ranked

Out with the old and in with the new…well, new from 2010’s perspective anyway. It’s needless to say that Matt Smith had a monumental task ahead of him having to follow David Tennant as The Doctor, who was easily the most beloved actor to ever play the role. Smith’s time as The Doctor as a whole was quite interesting because the type of personality he portrays in series 5 is distinctly different from the rest of his series, but that’s something I’ll discuss as we get to them.

Series 5 was the first chance the show had gotten at a completely fresh start since 2005, with a new Doctor, new companion, new head writer and many new people filling major roles behind the scenes as well. it was time for a completely different style of writing and storytelling and, for series 5 at least, I’d say it was a success.

How much of a success? Well let’s take a look, shall we? As I rank every single episode from series 5.

10 – The Vampires of Venice

This episode ended up having a lot of elements to it that didn’t come together quite in the way I think the writers wanted it to, both from a single episode perspective and also a series-wide perspective.

Firstly, “Vampires, but aliens” is just a lazy premise. Of course, that doesn’t automatically make it bad (just look at what a thrill ride “Tooth and Claw” turned out to be) but the fact of it was that the idea of them being aliens didn’t add any extra layers to the story outside of allowing the writers to give them some more exotic technology, it felt more like a plot device than a story element. Not to mention the main plan of villains was a little bit goofy; “So we’re in Venice…I know, let’s flood it!” I mean, come on, try to think outside the box just a little.

The other main thread, which is more of a series-wide story, is Amy and Rory’s relationship. At this point in the series, it had become obvious that Rory was going to play more of a major role in the series than it first seemed, but it was also clear that Moffat wasn’t entirely sure where he wanted this particular thread to go. Probably down to the fact that he wasn’t sure how long the actors would be staying in the role for, there wasn’t a great deal of long-term planning when it came to telling the story of their relationship, so the conflict they go through in this episode feels like it’s rushing things a bit.

That said, I did like how the conflict was presented. Instead of making it a big melodramatic thing that takes up far too much of the time reserved for running away from monsters, it’s cleverly weaved into the rest of the plot as it goes along. The Doctor and Rory will have conversations about Amy while running away from the monsters which is great for making sure it doesn’t cloud too much of the episode’s story and adding a bit of levity into tense moments.

Ultimately, this isn’t necessarily a bad episode, but with a fairly weak villain and plot threads that seem odd compared to the direction they would eventually go in, this one ends up falling to the bottom of the pile as an episode I don’t particularly fancy rewatching.

9 – The Beast Below

This episode is brilliant at one thing but fairly mediocre at everything else.

What it’s brilliant at is allowing Amy (and by extension, the audience) to get a really good look into the new Doctor’s mindset when faced with tough situations. As great as The Eleventh Hour is (we’ll get to it), it never puts The Doctor on the back foot, he’s always in control of the situation and only suffers temporary roadblocks, so this episode makes sure to do the opposite and sticks The Doctor in a situation where he has no idea what’s going on and is faced with a horrible decision when he finally does figure it out.

Seeing any character at their lowest is always the best way to get a sense of who they truly are and that’s exactly what we see from The Doctor here, but because it’s mostly seen through Amy’s perspective, it means we also get a chance to see inside her head as she figures out exactly how The Doctor works and builds that unbreakable bond between the two of them that becomes so vital later down the line.

Unfortunately, that’s more or less the only thing I really like about the episode. There are plenty of versions of the “decent society with a horrible secret” story out there and this isn’t among the best. For one thing, we get straight up shown one of the main horrible things immediately, so it doesn’t create much of a mystery for the rest of the episode and it takes away a lot of the tension. Also, the elements of this society don’t make a great deal of sense. I can buy the idea that they take children who don’t achieve and put them to work, but the method seems incredibly stupid. So they ban them from taking the elevator? That just seems more inconvenient for everyone involved than anything else, they only get to kidnap them when they don’t do as they’re told anyway, it just seems so weird.

I’m also not a big fan of Liz 10’s character either. It reeks of trying-too-hard if you ask me. Yeah, we get it, she’s a queen who doesn’t act like a queen is supposed to, but the episode is insistent on continuously rubbing that fact in our face and I find her more of an irritant than an impactful character.

Like I said, there’s an absolutely masterful thread buried in this episode, which is why I ranked it so high, but unfortunately, it’s covered by a lot of stuff that I don’t particularly enjoy watching.

8 – Victory of the Daleks

This is perhaps the definition of a 50/50 episode. There’s so much like, but just as much to dislike.

Let’s address the elephant in the room first, The Paradigm Daleks. I’ve always thought the designs were a bit much, gaudy for the sake of gaudy if you will. If they weren’t immediately scrapped as an idea then I could’ve perhaps looked passed the visual design if they became much more interesting as a concept; the idea of Daleks with assigned roles is very intriguing to me. At the end of the day, these designs were immediately shouted down and any plans that may have existed for them were scrapped and they’ve existed as mere background scenery ever since and I can’t say I blame them, the golden Dalek design that had been used up until this point was just so perfect that a change was never going to go over well.

While we’re on the negatives, I’ve never really bought into the idea that Bracewell could be disarmed purely by proving he has human memories and emotions, especially since the Daleks aren’t supposed to even understand any emotions other than hate. It also takes the sting out of the fact that the Daleks outfoxed The Doctor because that should’ve been a big deal for him but immediately gets swept under the rug when Bracewell lives.

Onto the positives now, and straight away a massive thumbs up goes to making the Daleks seem actually intelligent and threatening again. It’s been far too long since we saw Daleks scheming and coming up with a plan outside “bring a massive army to murder everyone”. The way it subverts everything we know about the Daleks to see them acting like helpful robots and the reveal that it was all a ploy to trick The Doctor into identifying them as Daleks was an absolutely genius twist. Not to mention they do it again when they reveal Bracewell was a bomb, forcing The Doctor to stop his attack on the ship so that he can save the Earth instead. As much as that moment does get quickly brushed over, it’s still great when it happens.

I think the main reason this episode gets overlooked is that it ended up making no impact on the Daleks in any way since the only change was negatively received and was promptly never featured again. Innovating with the Daleks is a dangerous game, so much so that the only time I think it’s ever worked in Modern Who was in this year’s Resolution episode, but we’ll get to that later.

7 – The Hungry Earth/Cold Blood

There are many episodes of this show that I would say needed more time in order to fully flesh out their story, this is one of those rare cases where I actually think splitting this episode into two parts was a bit too much.

The pacing of this episode is a bit start-stop. The episode starts out with a very harsh sense of urgency and almost immediately after The Doctor & Co discover what’s going on, Amy gets kidnapped. This is an event that should’ve taken place towards the end of the second act in order to rev the action up towards the climax, but instead, we have to go through a whole bunch of different stages where the pace dies off completely, before suddenly putting the pedal to the metal again in order to give us a decent cliffhanger.

The second part has a great deal of padding to it as well, with people wandering around the Silurian base, getting captured, freeing themselves, getting captured again, escaping again and so on. There are some good elements in there, such as taking a look at what people will do when their family is at stake and how people snap under pressure. The problem with having it here is that we already saw it in the previous series with Midnight, which played that string MUCH better than it’s done here.

I think a huge chunk of the middle could’ve been cut out of this episode, most notably the section where the Silurian’s come to the surface and The Doctor captures one. The only real purpose it serves is to give information to the audience and that could’ve been done some other way when The Doctor got down into the Silurian’s base anyway. If this episode had been a bit more focused, then I think it could’ve been really fun, but it was unnecessarily made into a two-part story which greatly hindered its ability to tell the story it wanted to tell.

6 – The Lodger

I find this episode extremely weird to go back and look at because all of the elements in it are stuff I wouldn’t expect to like very much, but it ends up coming together quite nicely.

I’ve never been the biggest fan of James Corden as a comedian, he fits into much more of the American style of comedian which is a style I’m not overly fond of so I generally don’t find much of his stuff funny. That said, I think he did a great job in this episode and I really like Craig as a character. Being an episode that almost entirely focused on comedy, there was always going to be a handful of jokes that didn’t land, but for the most part, I always find myself laughing when watching this one back.

The way the dynamic evolves between The Doctor and Craig is very well done, although it perhaps goes a bit over the top with The Doctor being better than Craig at everything, I don’t think we needed to watch The Doctor slaughter everyone at football for example. Regardless, the way Craig responds to The Doctor unintentionally wrecking his life and the awkward, apprehensive way that Craig deals with it all is hilariously British.

Where the episode falls a bit flat is in its main mystery, because unlike most episodes where we get drip fed little hints and clues before the big reveal of what’s actually going on, but this episode doesn’t give us anything the whole way through until everything suddenly gets revealed right at the end and it all feels a bit underwhelming, not to mention it’s slightly odd that there’s just this bungalow in the middle of a street of terrace houses, but whatever.

This was an episode that decided it wanted to focus more on its characters than its plot and although that leaves a glaring weak point in the episode, it’s still a fun one to watch.

5 – Amy’s Choice

Amy’s relationships with both The Doctor and Rory were a constant theme during her time in the TARDIS and it eventually became a little bit of a crutch to lean on when it came to creating conflict between the trio, however, this episode was a great example of how that conflict looks when it’s done right.

It’s a classic example of how everything seems so much more dramatic and important when you show instead of tell. So many of these arguments lie on what *might* happen if Amy and Rory live their normal lives together and what *might* become of Amy if she spends too long travelling with The Doctor. Instead, this one drops us right in the middle of both of those potential futures in order to give us a better understanding of how giving one up would affect Amy emotionally.

The Dream Lord is also a great villain, being able to show The Doctor his darker sides without going down the route of lunacy and jealousy that a villain like The Mater gives us. Toby Jones put on a brilliant performance in this episode as being with almost deity-like control of the dream worlds and the way the character was written feels to me like an accurate representation of what The Doctor would be like if he decided to turn to a life of villainy.

While it’s true that both of the worlds the trio were forced to chose between being dreams did retroactively take a lot of the tension out of the episode, the emotional impact and decisions the characters had to make were still very real and that’s what has a lasting impact on them going forward.

Not only did this episode give us a compelling take on Amy’s inner conflict, but it did it through the medium of an intriguing mystery and wonderfully performed & written villain. Very nice indeed.

4 – The Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone

Many fans of modern Doctor Who would be quick to tell you that Blink is the only good story that features the Weeping Angels, those people are wrong because this one is brilliant.

Part 1 has mastery over its sense of tension and mystery. Not only do we get the second-ever appearance of River Song, leading us to revisit all of the mystery surrounding her and then we start to dive into an expanded knowledge of the Angels’ powers. The scene early on in the episode where Amy has a close encounter with an image of an Angel that became an Angel – which incidentally, is a brilliant idea – served to ramp up the tension early on and helped to keep us on edge throughout the whole episode.

Having such a large group of people investigating the ruins with The Doctor could’ve been a recipe for disaster, but they’re very quickly killed off one-by-one in off-screen attacks, keeping all of that tension boiling over nicely until the conclusion. The mystery of the first part is brilliantly written because all of the elements we need to solve it are right there from the beginning; we’re told very expressly that the Aplans had two heads and we can clearly see that the statues only have one, but it stares us in the face so obviously that we just can’t see it until The Doctor joins the dots, leading to a rather epic – if a bit cheesy – cliffhanger

The second part of the story moves away from the mystery and instead focuses in on the action. You wouldn’t think there’d be many exciting ways to have a chase scene when the creatures doing the chasing are statues, but this episode manages it and the first half of the episode is very exciting as the crew make their way through the Byzantium. When things slow down again, we get a real look into the mystery box for Series 5 with the crack in the skin of the universe, doing something we never saw during Davies’ era and getting an understanding of exactly what this treat is and what it means before we fully address it in the series finale.

The episode isn’t flawless though. While I’ll admit that the sequence where Amy has to blindly make her way through the forest, with the angels potentially attacking any moment was very tense to watch, when you think about it for any more than a few seconds, you realise that it makes absolutely no sense. I thought the whole point of the angels was that it was physically impossible for them to move when someone was looking, but this concept makes it seem like they don’t actually know when someone’s looking, so they actually could move if they really wanted to? I know The Doctor said the angels were scared, so their instincts would be off, but that doesn’t quite feel like enough to satisfy the problems I have with it.

Ultimately, that is a rather minor complaint when compared to the rest of the episode though, because as a whole this story manages to have a dose of everything that makes Doctor Who exciting. There is a well-written mystery, exciting action and an iconic villain, alongside a little bit of timey-wimeyness to whet our appetites for the season finale. As a sequel to Blink, I think it does a great job of expanding on the lore of the Weeping Angels and shows the full potential how truely exciting they can be when written properly.

3 – Vincent and The Doctor

Quite simply, this is the kind of episode that every “historical figure” episode should aspire to be.

In previous episodes like this, the episode spends so much time with The Doctor fawning over whoever it is they happen to meet, and there is an aspect of that here, but it’s in a very different way. Van Gogh in this episode is written as a character first and Vincent Van Gogh second, which is exactly how these episodes should be done, because it’s all well and good spending time with a famous person, but why should I care about anything that happens to them if I don’t get a good sense of their character.

This episode has a nice helping of mystery to it, with an invisible monster that made for some weird action scenes and was a clever way to save on the CGI budget, but it’s mostly there as a tool to help tell Van Gogh’s story. There are the more obvious parallels of Van Gogh being able to see things that no-one else can, but more than that there’s the sense of him being an outcast from society and feeling like he just doesn’t understand how he fits into the world around him.

All of this leads to the touching ending to the episode, where The Doctor brings Van Gogh to the modern-day, in order to see his paintings, the things he – and everyone from his time period – thinks are utterly worthless, being adored by hundreds, if not thousands of people, as an art expert explains what a brilliant genius he thinks Van Gogh was, showing him how truely appreciated he will become. Only to rip it away from you with the reveal that despite this, he never overcame his demons, but it still doesn’t feel like heartbreak, as The Doctor’s speech reassures us that, just giving him that moment of knowing how loved he will become was enough to change his life in a deep, but unobservable way.

This is an episode that doesn’t rely on the historical figure to carry the episode, but instead tailor-makes the entire episode for that historical figure. It gives us an honest look into the mind of Van-Gogh and takes us on an emotional journey that gives us a slightly bittersweet but still ultimately happy ending.

2 – The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang

While it’s true that I do love a series finale that focuses in on the characters and their internal conflicts, sometimes a massive scale thrill-ride to decide the fate of the universe can be just as fun to watch.

The first part of this story is absolutely one of my favourite episodes of modern Doctor Who ever. The way it sets up its mystery is marvellous, quickly and concisely showing us how Van Gogh’s painting came to be in River’s possession, while simultaneously giving us a whirlwind tour of some of the places The Doctor has been throughout the series. The rest of the episode is a tense walkthrough of what the Pandorica is and what could possibly be inside of it.

Although there’s very little in the way of action, there are enough big moments sprinkled throughout to make things extremely exciting as each little bit of the mystery unravels; including one of the best speeches The Doctor has ever given, as he gets all of the armies above his head to argue to each other (even if it turns out that was never the case by the end). The speed at which we get new mysteries, while ongoing ones get answers are paced almost to perfection, as we get little pieces of information bit by bit, keeping just one step ahead of us so that we don’t quite work out what’s going on until it’s time for the reveal. A reveal which gives us an absolutely amazing cliffhanger, by the way.

The Big Bang shifts the focus of the episode from solving the mystery, to fixing the problem. As an episode, it’s much faster and louder, keeping us on the edge of our seat with lots of chase scenes and a healthy dash of comedy. The only time the episode would ever stop to breathe is when it had a big moment or reveal to give us, like The Doctor appearing from the future and “dying” in front of everyone or that really cool moment where River stopped fucking around and straight-up murdered the Dalek.

Normally, I’d call something like “rebooting the universe” a pretty rubbish way of solving everything, but the elements where set up so well throughout both this story and the series as a whole that I think it works really well. The solid character moments come in towards the end of the episode and it ties everything up in a neat little bow, tying in that really confusing scene from Flesh and Stone and cleverly implanting the memory in Amy’s head of how to bring The Doctor back (although I’m not sure how River knew she needed to give Amy the diary).

This story consists of two very different styles of episodes that are both brilliant in their own way – one a slow & tense mystery, the other and fast & frantic action-adventure – but both fulfilled their purpose almost perfectly and created a series finale that not only tied together the main mysteries from the current series but set up some new mysteries for the next.

1 – The Eleventh Hour

Easily the best introduction to a new Doctor we’ve ever had.

While The Christmas Invasion before this did a great job of establishing the new Doctor, it suffered somewhat from being rather lite on The Doctor himself, spending most of the episode in a post-regeneration daze. The Eleventh Hour had that task, only bigger, because not only was this the first episode in 4 years not to feature the beloved David Tennant, but they also had to introduce a brand-new companion to boot.

The episode manages to get everything you could possibly want from such an episode. Giving us the comedy of The Doctor being a bit loopy post-regeneration, but keeping it confined to Act 1 so once the episode really kicks into gear, we can just watch The Doctor be The Doctor and get a real good sense of who this new incarnation really is. It also does a great job with the new companion, introducing us to young Amelia Pond and seeing The Doctor bond with her, only for the rug to be taken out from under us as The Doctor overshoots his timing and re-encounters a fully-grown Amy instead.

As the episode pans out, we get to see these two characters build on that bond with young Amelia, with a character who feels very different, but is still clearly the same person; a lot of credit has to go to both actresses for pulling that off. We don’t have to go through that period of Amy not believing a word The Doctor’s saying because she already went through it as a child, instead, it’s more about Amy learning to trust The Doctor, after he abandoned her and cursed her to a life of seeing therapists because everyone else was convinced he wasn’t real.

While the main threat in this episode – both Prisoner Zero & The Atraxi – isn’t anything special, it’s exactly what it needs to be, because it puts an extreme amount of pressure on The Doctor to solve the problem in a very limited amount of time, which is arguably when The Doctor as a character is at his most awe-inspiring, thus bringing out the best performance in the person playing him. If anything it was actually quite a huge risk to have such a huge task in Matt Smith’s very first episode, it was a real sink or swim moment.

Thankfully, Matt Smith absolutely nailed every moment of it. Later on in his run, I had a lot of problems with this incarnation of The Doctor, but in this episode (and in fact, this whole series) those problems are virtually non-existent. Even watching this as a 10-year-old, I instantly fell in love with Smith as The Doctor and accepted him as a worthy successor to Tennant’s throne, culminating in that epic moment where Smith stepped through the image of his predecessors and declaring that he is The Doctor, a statement I absolutely believed.

This was an episode that managed to perfectly establish a new Doctor, Companion and Head Writer all in one, while still managing to be an exciting adventure that kept me on the edge of my seat the entire time.

So there you have it! Thank you very much for taking the time to read this, please let me know what you thought of this series of Doctor Who, either in the comments below or on Twitter @10ryawoo. Finally, make sure you come back this time next week, where I’ll be running down my favourite music from the Pokemon franchise!

WWE Royal Rumble 2020: Every Match Ranked

The Road to Wrestlemania is officially underway and if it’s going to be anything like this show last night, it’s a road I’m very excited to be going down!

Everyone who’s ever used the internet has said it at some point over the past week, but Royal Rumbles are always so much fun to watch and this year was no exceptions, with two Rumble matches that were among the better ones as far as I’m concerned. Even better than that is that the Rumbles weren’t the only thing to write home about, as many of the other matches on the show were quality watches too.

Let’s not waste any more time getting into it and breakdown Royal Rumble 2020 match-by-match!

8 – Roman Reigns def. King Corbin
(Falls Count Anywhere)

No prizes for guessing this one would be last.

Quite simply, this match had everything that I hate about Falls Count Anywhere matches all rolled into one. The action was extremely samey the whole way through (the portaloo spot notwithstanding) as almost the whole thing consisted of Reigns & Corbin wandering around, occasionally hitting each other and throwing each other into the nearest, vaguely solid object.

Even when Roode, Ziggler & The Usos showed up, I still didn’t find myself getting excited, the spot where one of The Usos launched themselves from one of the stands was cool looking, but given that none of the four men involved in that spot were actually a part of the match, I just couldn’t find a reason to care. Also, the camerawork was just plain awful, I don’t know whether the cameramen were being told to shake the camera vigorously throughout all the action, or whether they were just bad at their jobs, but I almost got motion sickness from watching the action at one point.

It certainly wasn’t the most boring match ever and I’d rank it above the match that these two had at TLC, but that’s not exactly saying much. At least the right man won

7 – Sheamus def. Shorty G
(Kickoff Show)

Not much to say on this one, other than it was a lot more competitive than I was expecting it to be. I have no idea where creative are going with this storyline for Sheamus, but I’m happy to wait and see where it goes and that included not having much worth saying about this match. It’s nice that Shorty G wasn’t just annihilated like I thought he would be, but I honestly think watching him get slaughtered by Sheamus might’ve been a bit more fun to watch.

Like almost any pre-show match, it was perfectly acceptable, but not something I’m going to be talking about for very long after the fact.

6 – Andrade(c) def. Humberto Carrillo
(United States Championship)
(Kickoff Show)

Much like Sheamus vs Shorty G, this match was perfectly fine and the only reason this one goes above that match in my rankings is because it lasted slightly longer.

The dynamic between the two was quite different to Sheamus & Shorty G’s though, as these two men have very similar in-ring styles and it felt much more like the new kid on the block trying to get a feel for one of the older fighters, in order to find a weakness. Unfortunately for Carrillo, that weakness never presented itself and while I wouldn’t say Andrade dominated him in this match, he certainly seemed to get a lot more offence in than Carrillo did.

This match wasn’t as exciting as the match these two had at TLC last month, but I still thought it was a decent showing for a pre-show match where, ultimately, everyone knew the outcome going in.

5 – Bayley(c) def. Lacey Evans
(Smackdown Women’s Championship)

I think this is the match that I was the most pleasantly surprised by because, if I’m being honest, I wasn’t expecting much going in.

Bayley’s Pay-Per-View matches this past year have, for the most part, been rather underwhelming and I’m still not much of a Lacey Evans fan, but I think the two did a great job at putting on a well-paced and enjoyable match. For one thing, Lacey’s daughter is ADORABLE and her smile just seemed to instantly brighten my mood, but I also thought there was a lot of good action between the two.

I wouldn’t have thought Lacey could work that well as a face, but I found myself getting behind her as the match went on, thanks in large part to Bayley’s great ability to work as a heel. Watching this match it’s clear just how much Evans has come on as a wrestler, especially when you compare it to something like her matches against Becky Lynch from last May.

Admittedly, this wasn’t some super exciting match to set the world on fire, but I think these two women did an admirable job and made me finally see the potential in Lacey Evans’ new character direction, and more generally as a performer, so I’d rate that a success.

4 – Charlotte Flair won the 30 Woman Royal Rumble Match

With each year that goes by, I think the women’s Royal Rumble match keeps getting better and better. As WWE hires more and more credible female competitors, it no longer feels like the match is relying on the nostalgia pops and thread-bare action in order to get the crowd interested, finally putting it on par with the booking philosophies of the men’s incarnation of the match.

For the past two years, the downfall of the women’s Royal Rumble has been the first half but that wasn’t a problem here because I thought the first half of this match was the best portion of the whole thing. I wouldn’t have thought that Bianca Belair would be the one to get the rub of dominating the early portions but I absolutely loved how it played out. There was a good mix of everything in there, from the serious to the comical and it kept the action flowing at a good pace.

From when Charlotte entered through until Shayna Baszler showed up wasn’t all that interesting, but I still had a good time seeing people like Beth Pheonix & Shotzi Blackheart showing up and briefly kicking arse, even if blood somehow started POURING out of the back of Beth’s head.

While I’m a bit disappointed Shayna Baszler didn’t win the match, I’m not mad about it. While she is absolutely a ready-made star, I can understand why people think it might be a bit too early to give her a rub like winning the Royal Rumble and, let’s be honest, Charlotte was always going to have to win one of these eventually. Not to mention that sequence towards the end where Baszler just decided she’d had enough of this shit and eliminated EVERYONE still in the ring in space of about a minute was great to watch.

While it wasn’t perfect, it was undoubtedly the best of the women’s Royal Rumble matches we’ve had so far and I can honestly say I’d happily watch it again and have a good time doing so.

3 – Becky Lynch(c) def. Asuka
(Raw Women’s Championship)

This is one of those situations where I think a disinterested crowd took away from a match that was a lot better than the reactions it was getting. I don’t blame the crowd, however, if I had already gone through 3 hours of action and knew there was a Royal Rumble match immediately after this one, I’d try and conserve my energy too, but it doesn’t stop it taking away from the match somewhat.

Still, there was a lot of solid wrestling to this match and I don’t think we should let a muted crowd take away too much from that fact. These two have clear chemistry in the ring together and if I’m being entirely honest, I wouldn’t mind seeing another clash between them in front of a more lively crowd. Asuka did a good job of striking a balance between heelishly slowing down the action but keeping things relatively exciting and tense as she worked her magic.

Meanwhile, Becky did was Becky does and it was as much fun to watch as it always is. She’s so good at making herself look just about beatable, before striking out with the comebacks and sneaking away with the win. I especially liked the finishing sequence where both women were escaping each other’s submission manoeuvres and I’m happy that Becky finally got her win back.

2 – The Fiend Bray Wyatt(c) def. Daniel Bryan
(Universal Championship)
(Strap Match)

Told you they’d make it work.

If I’m being honest, I was starting to lose faith that we’d ever see a really great Fiend match, his character didn’t seem to leave much room for competitive matches, however, I was thankfully proved wrong last night as I thought this was a great way to go about it.

Strap matches usually tend to restrict the performers in the ring, but that wasn’t the case here as they were able to get some really impressive action in and still feature the strap heavily in most of their spots. Throughout the match, I really got the feeling that Daniel Bryan was finally able to get a feel of The Fiend and had plenty of counters prepared for the erratic offence The Fiend threw his way.

It was a little slow to start, but that was necessary to get the damage in on Bryan and lend a lot more drama to his comeback, which definitely worked. Every now and then Bryan would get a little advantage over The Fiend and each time he managed it, he kept the momentum going for just a little bit longer. Unfortunately, the fact that it was extremely obvious going in that Bryan wasn’t going to win sapped a bit of the drama out of the final LeBell Lock, but I still came away from the match having had a great time watching some great wrestling, so I can’t complain.

1 – Drew McIntyre won the 30 Man Royal Rumble Match

Well, I sure didn’t see that one coming.

This was very clearly a Rumble of two halves and I think that both halves were as entertaining as each other, but in different ways. The first half where Brock was eliminating everyone was so fun to watch, it could’ve lost its novelty pretty quickly, but there was enough variation in both the entrants and the method by which they fought that kept it entertaining and it was clear from his face that Brock was having a great time, which helps LOADS.

My personal favourite moment in that first half was when Shelton Benjamin came out and Brock greeted him as an old friend because we knew that turn was coming, but Brock was so uncharacteristically cheery that I couldn’t help but chuckle. The drama was there too, with Kofi, Big E and Rey did their best to take on the Beast, it’s a bit disappointing that Kofi didn’t get his moment, but when the three of them prepared an attack on the outside, I felt the drama of it. Also, honourable mention to Brock bopping to MVP’s music.

Eventually, Drew came out at 17 and things went off the chain. Ricochet giving Brock the low-blow was a nice bit of poetry and the Claymore Drew hit to eliminate Brock was brilliant and Brock sold it like death to boot. As the ring filled up with people we got the more standard Rumble action and thanks to the calibre of the guys involved it was all great stuff.

Edge’s return was brilliant, even if a lot of us sort of knew it was probably going to happen. I became a wrestling fan not too long after Edge retired, but I’ve seen so much of his stuff since then and that look on his face as he walked out – pumped and ready to fight, but also on the brink of crying tears of joy – that hit me right in the feels and it was a wonderful moment. On top of that, he got a great showing, Spearing everyone in sight and giving us a cheeky little Rated RKO reunion for our troubles.

As I mentioned in my predictions, while Roman wasn’t the person I necessarily wanted to win, I would’ve been happy if he did and I’d come to accept the fact that it was just how it was going to happen. So when Drew threw Roman over the top and won I was genuinely shocked and overjoyed. I never would’ve picked Drew to win, but now the prospect of Drew vs Brock is in front of me I am GAGGING for it, make that man the first-ever UK-Born WWE Champion, I need that in my life.

As far as a Royal Rumble match goes, this was a resounding success on all fronts and it easily up there with many of the better Rumble matches to ever take place.

And that’s it! Those are my thoughts of Royal Rumble 2020! Thank you very much for taking the time to read this, let me know what you thought of the show, either in the comments below or on Twitter @10ryawoo. Finally, make sure to come back on Saturday where I’ll be running down Doctor Who Series 5!

WWE Royal Rumble 2020: Predictions & Analysis

Rejoice one and all! It’s Royal Rumble time again!

I don’t think it would be surprising for me to say that the Royal Rumble is perhaps my favourite Pay-Per-View of the year. The nature of the stipulation means that it’s always a really fun match to watch, even when it’s not actually all that good in terms of quality. It also means we’re going to finally start to get an idea of where the company is headed for Wrestlemania this year, as it seems management is leaving their decisions a lot later than usual this year.

As it stands, I’ve not been following the world of wrestling as closely as I normally do this past month; and that goes double for Raw & Smackdown. I don’t know whether it’s just the hecticness that comes with restarting everything following the holiday season, but either way, I’ve done my best to catch myself up so I can get predicting!

Shorty G vs Sheamus

It’s been a little while since his return now and I still can’t work out if I’m excited to see Sheamus or not.

I thought he was absolutely fantastic with Cesaro as one half of The Bar and absence does make the heart grow fonder, but I’ve never really cared for him as a singles star, especially when he’s running through guys I enjoy watching more, which is unfortunately where I think this one is going.

I think this match has the potential to be a fun one though, Gable tends to have great chemistry with bigger guys and as long as he’s not booked to be totally annihilated by Sheamus here, he should look pretty impressive in defeat. I think I’ve made it pretty clear already, but I’m picking Sheamus to win here. Sheamus has just returned and looks to be starting out a tear, it’s possible that Shorty G could sneak a rollup win and enrage Sheamus, but that just seems like taking the long way round to the same destination.

Andrade(c) vs Humberto Carrillo
(United States Championship)

As was expected when Lesnar moved over to Raw, the United States title has suddenly become a much more heavily featured title on the red brand, however, I can’t say I’m thrilled by this being the match that makes it onto Pay-Per-View.

Don’t get me wrong, I like Humberto Carrillo, but we saw him unsuccessfully fight Styles for the title so recently that I don’t feel like he’s built up enough credibility in order to be challenging for the title again and I highly doubt he’ll be winning it. I’m confident it’ll be a fairly enjoyable watch, since these are two guys that have similar styles, unfortunately, I think it’s probably going to land on the pre-show, meaning it likely won’t get the time it needs to be properly special.

Either way, Andrade is leaving with the title in tow, he just had a big (but rather condensed) feud for it with Mysterio and I think doing a quick switch over to Carrillo would squander this new-found credibility Andrade has built up for himself; and ultimately, I value Andrade’s credibility more than I do Carrillo’s at this point.

Roman Reigns vs King Corbin
(Falls Count Anywhere)

Oh yeah, this feud.

After TLC gave us exactly the crap we expected, I can’t say I’m all that optimistic about this match’s prospects. With The Usos recent return and Reigns & Corbin’s entries in the Royal Rumble match later in the night, I would’ve preferred to see some sort of 6-man tag match instead of another one on one affair. That said, if TV this month is anything to go by, it’s likely this will devolve into another clusterfuck anyway.

After Corbin got the win last month, I’d like to say picking Reigns to win here was an easy decision, but given that Reigns is one of the top contenders to win the Rumble this year, WWE might want to cast doubt on his ability to compete before appearing in the match; not to mention, if anyone’s going to inexplicably win for no real reason, it’s King Corbin. I’m sticking to my guns though and saying Roman Reigns picks up the win here, perhaps with a post-match beatdown in order to cast that doubt I was talking about.

Bayley(c) vs Lacey Evans
(Smackdown Women’s Championship)

Wait really? A heel vs heel ma- wait, what do you mean Lacey Evans is a face now, that can’t be right…*furiously checks notes* Well I’ll be…

Having watched a lot of Lacey’s efforts as a face, I can’t say I’m all that convinced and neither are the crowds. Bayley & Sasha have done as good a job as they can to get heat by going after Lacey’s daughter, but I just don’t have any motivation to care about Lacey after spending most of the year as a heel who always loses and turning face without anyone even realising it for a couple of weeks.

Lacey’s definitely improved as a performer since her matches with Becky earlier in the year, but I’m still not overly confident this match is going to be all that great. Bayley’s title matches always tend to be the ones that get cut short and on a PPV like the Rumble, where we’ve got to squeeze in two separate hour-long matches, I don’t think this one is going to get the time it really needs to be more than mediocre.

As for a winner, it’s gonna be Bayley, I’d say this was an easy pick regardless because I don’t see Lacey Evans picking up a title this close to Wrestlemania. Additionally, there’s the fact to consider that Lacey beat Bayley clean on Smackdown in a non-title match and wrestling logic dictates there’s absolutely no way she’s winning on Sunday.

Becky Lynch(c) vs Asuka
(Raw Women’s Championship)

Ok, so apparently Royal Rumble 2020, just copied Royal Rumble 2019’s homework.

Not that I’m complaining though, this match was brilliant last year and I expect it to be brilliant this year too. I also think there’s a much better story going into the match this year, the whole thread of Asuka being the one person Becky’s never beat is something I wasn’t expecting to come up but they’ve used it to good effect and manages to make Becky seem like an underdog, which is something I haven’t felt about her since this time last year.

Unfortunately, the outcome of this match is a lot more predictable than last year, since it’s pretty clear that whatever the planned match is for Wrestlemania, it involved Becky Lynch going in as champion. As I said, I’m sure this match will be great and give us that reminder of why we all route so hard for Asuka to succeed, but I would be very surprised if Lynch didn’t get her win back in this one.

The Fiend Bray Wyatt(c) vs Daniel Bryan
(Universal Championship)
(Strap Match)

Oh, so Royal Rumble 2020 also copied Royal Rumble 2014’s homework? I guess there are worse events to copy.

While I enjoyed the storytelling aspect of their Survivor Series match, I found the action itself to be a bit disappointing. I know now that it was necessary to tell this story to its full potential, but it felt quite one-sided and boring until The Fiend suddenly won out of nowhere. However, now that the story has been told, I’m confident this match will be different from the previous one.

In the past month, Daniel Bryan has once again been able to evolve his character even further than he did in 2018 and despite being the underdog babyface again, he feels like a very different person to the one that faced off against Wyatt before, both in 2014 and from a couple of months ago. As such, I’m hoping that this match will be a lot more competitive, creating a feeling of two equals competing, instead of one man kicking ass until he suddenly gets murdered.

A strap match is a bit of a weird wrinkle to add to the feud. I get why thematically it makes sense, but it still feels a bit out of nowhere and I can’t help but feel like it will hamper both men’s ability to person at their best. I know there’s plenty that can still be done with the formula, but it’s one of those matches where pretty much every spot needs to involve the strap in some way because WWE thinks we’re idiots.

That said, I don’t think the outcome is going to be any different from the previous two times we saw this match. The Fiend is still easily the most popular male wrestler in WWE right now and for him to be defeated here would feel like a huge anti-climax to its story. The match might be a lot closer than last time, but the outcome will be the same, with The Fiend Bray Wyatt holding the Universal Championship aloft.

Women’s Royal Rumble

This is the first women’s Rumble without a clear cut story going into it. With Asuka’s win, it was pretty obvious to most people that she was going to win and last year, although we weren’t sure whether it would actually BE Becky, we knew that story would be a huge factor in the winner of the match. This year though, there’s no such speculation to be found and it’s a bit of an open field in regards to who could win.

Since it would be a waste of everyone’s time for me to rundown all 30 entrants, I’m going to cover the 4 or 5 names that are currently being thrown around the IWC as potential winners and comment on what I think of their chances.

Sasha Banks – One of the longest standing rumours for Wrestlemania matches this year has been a 4-way match between all of the 4 horsewomen, which is something I definitely want to soo and Sasha winning the Rumble would certainly get us on that road. However, given how Sasha has been booked since her return, I’m not sure it would work, Sasha could easily go after Becky, with Bayley backing her up, but given that Charlotte is currently a face, I can’t see how she’d force her way into the match, so I’m saying no to Sasha winning.

Ronda Rousey – This one is pretty unlikely, but more unlikely things have happened in Royal Rumbles before. Ever since she left last April, people have been trying to anticipate when Rousey will return to get her rematch with Becky and this seems as good of a place as any. Given what Rousey has been saying in recent interviews about trying to organise a work/family balance it seems like she’s still in a stage of working out what she wants to do, so I think it’s going to be at least another 6 months or so before we see her back in WWE, but you never know…

Becky Lynch OR Bayley – Ok, this one is actually just me throwing my own theory out there, but hey, why not? Becky has all the motivation in the world to want to go after Bayley’s Smackdown women’s title, since Becky never got her rematch when Charlotte took the title from her in May, not to mention Bayley attacked Becky a few months ago when she officially turned heel. As for Bayley, it makes all the sense in the world for her to try and go for the double gold in order to prove she’s just as good of a champion as Becky, that was the whole theme of their Survivor Series feud.

Out of all of the candidates I’m discussing, this is the one I think is the least likely, but I’d certainly be excited if it happened.

Shayna Baszler – This is the most popular theory currently going around and if we’re speaking purely in terms of what I want to happen, I’m fully behind it. Baszler proved that she’s a big deal at Survivor Series and it’s clear that she and Becky still have unfinished business from that match. In addition to this, Baszler is a ready-made star from her run in NXT and this would launch her right into the main event scene.

Charlotte Flair –It’s going to be this one isn’t it? I don’t think many people will disagree with me that Charlotte Flair is bound to win a Royal Rumble at some point in her career, so why not this year? If the horsewomen 4 way is going to be the Mania match, then I think Charlotte winning the Rumble is the best way to go about setting it up. Have Charlotte go after Becky, only for Bayley and Sasha to heelishly get themselves involved, or something along those lines.

I really hope that Shayna is the one to win, but I don’t have the confidence to pick her, so I’m choosing the safe option and picking Charlotte Flair to win her first Royal Rumble.

Men’s Royal Rumble

My view on this match is much the opposite to the women’s Rumble because as much as there are a couple of people with an outside chance, I honestly think there’s only one real candidate to win this match, still, let’s discuss some others anyway.

Kevin Owens – While I think the chances of Owens winning this match are basically zero, I think it would be the most interesting person to win. Lesnar vs Owens is a money match and you’ve already got a match with Rollins lined up so that he doesn’t have to sit around a twiddle his thumbs because Lesnar refuses to do the February Pay-Per-View. It’s a massive shot in the dark, but if I had to pick who I wanted to win, Owens is my guy.

Seth Rollins – Pretty much just the flipside of the Owens argument, things going into Mania would look pretty similar, only with Rollins coming out victorious instead of Owens. I know we’ve already seen Lesnar vs Rollins twice, with Rollins winning both times, but if the dirt sheets are to be believed, WWE still doesn’t have much of an idea as who Lesnar’s opponent is going to be, so it’s all still up in the air as far as I’m concerned.

Cain Velasquez – Unfortunately, I think his match against Lesnar at Crown Jewel did some irreversible damage to Velasquez, at least in the short term, because I honestly don’t see him as any kind of threat. However, this is WWE and it wouldn’t surprise me if a full-length Lesnar vs Velasquez match ended up being the Wrestlemania plan and having a cross-over star, like Velasquez winning the Royal Rumble, would certainly make some headlines.

Brock Lesnar – Yeah, like Lesnar’s going to work a full hour. As he’s the WWE Champion, it would be just a tad counterproductive for him to win the Rumble, unless of course Lesnar vs The Fiend is what they have in mind, which I don’t think would be all that good of an idea. The general consensus from the IWC is that Lesnar is just in this match to set up a potential Mania match via whoever eliminates him from the match, which is a consensus that I agree with, there’s just no rationale for him winning.

Roman Reigns – It’s gotta be Reigns, right? What else is there for him to at Mania? The Fiend vs Reigns is a match that’s been rumoured since about September and it makes the most sense from a story perspective. Reigns is really the only face on Smackdown that’s higher up the totem pole that Daniel Bryan, so having The Fiend face anyone else would seem like an anti-climax. Not to mention, Reigns hasn’t even sniffed the world title scene since his triumphant return from his leukaemia in February, so I think it would be a great story to tell.

As for how the fans will react, it’s honestly hard to tell. Personally, I’ll be cheering if he wins, but the wrestling fan-base is a fickle one, so even if they’ve been pretty consistently cheering Roman Reigns since his return, they may suddenly turn on him if he’s going for a world title. I hope that doesn’t happen though because I think Reigns winning is the right move in the long-term.

So there you have it, those are my predictions for WWE’s Royal Rumble 2020! Thank you very much for taking the time to read this, please feel free to let me know what you think is going to happen on Sunday, either in the comments below or on Twitter @10ryawoo. Finally, make sure to come back this time next week, where I’ll be running down my rankings of Doctor Who Series 5! (For real this time, I promise).

Every Fire Emblem: Three Houses Student Ranked

2021 UPDATE: Since I’ve got nothing better to do, I’ve decided to start streaming over on twitch.tv/strongstylesmark. At 2PM GMT Tuesdays & Thursdays I’ll be trying out indie games I’ve never played before, and at 6PM GMT on Saturdays, I’ll be playing games I love. I’ll be starting Saturday 16th January, so please come over and give me a follow to be notified when I go live!

If you want to see more amazing art like the awesome piece above, check out @Natalichoco on Twitter or @nataliachoco.bear on Instagram!

As I mentioned in my Game of the Year post a few weeks ago, I’ve played through Fire Emblem: Three Houses a total of 4 times, covering all 4 possible routes for the game. Naturally, throughout all of this time, I’ve had plenty of opportunities to spend an extended period of time getting to know all of the students that are enrolled in the Officer’s Academy.

In a game with such a huge variety of bright and colourful personalities, it was inevitable that I was going to end up liking some a lot more than others, so I thought it’d be a fun idea to rank each of the students from my least to most favourite while taking the opportunity to discuss their characters and development arcs over the course of the game.

Just to be clear, I am only including the students enrolled in one of the three major houses at the start of the game. I’m not including the members of the church because this list is going to be long enough as it is.

SPOILER WARNING

As I’m discussing the characters, I will be referring to major events in all four story routes to give context, as well as each character’s personal developments in things like support scenes and endings so there will be full story spoilers for both the base game and some DLC elements throughout this list. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

24 – Leonie Pinelli

The simple fact of the matter is, Leonie and I just don’t get on.

For one thing, she’s rather obnoxious about the fact that she’s Captain Jeralt’s greatest apprentice and seems to take every opportunity to rub everything in my face. On top of that, she seems to be trying to force a rivalry between her and I that I honestly don’t give even the slightest of shits about. She’s so single-minded when it comes to her training that whenever people do something fun, like have a fishing tournament just to take a break from the horrors of war, she goes off on one about how she’s the only one taking this seriously.

What really ticked me off about her though, was her support scenes with Byleth. Her having a go at me for “not appreciating” having Jeralt as my father would be bad enough at the best of times but I happened to get that scene RIGHT AFTER HE DIED which made her seem like less of an obnoxious brat and more of a total arsehole.

Even though she does eventually chill out and become a more tolerable person, the damage was done and my hatred of her was already set in stone.

23 – Lorenz Hellman Gloucester

Lorenz is a slightly odd one because although he does have many moments in his support scenes that make me smile or laugh, it’s mostly when he’s the butt of the joke, and I can’t say I can blame the people making them.

At the start of the game, he seems downright hostile to just about everyone. Even though it’s not his intention, the way he talks about the duties of the nobility and how they treat commoners is something that inherently rubs people the wrong way, myself included. Even when he’s being someone more pleasant, for example in his scenes with Ferdinand, he’s still not someone I’d ever want to spend much time with.

As he develops, his position does soften and he actually becomes a very admirable person in the end. That said, during the Verdant Wind story, he remains very resistant to many of the changes that someone like Claude looks to bring to Fodlan, even when everyone else is against him. He seemed to be treated a lot like someone who was there to bring a negative viewpoint to whatever plan Claude or Byleth came up with.

He never actively pissed me off like Leonie did, but he’s still someone I’d rather not hang out with.

22 – Hubert von Vestra

Given that pretty much the first encounter I had with him, he threatened to kill me, there was only so far our relationship could go.

I wasn’t entirely sure he could be all that interesting of a character when his one and only motivation seemed to be “Lady Eledgard”, but watching him interact with all of the other Black Eagle members, he actually ends up having a nice level of depth. What drags him down is the fact that the depth he has very rarely gets to show, as he generally only seems to stand around and backup whatever plan Byleth or Edelgard come up with.

While his motivations for doing so might be paper-thin, I like the way in which he tries to bring out the best in all of his allies. Although he’s someone I might not enjoy spending time with, it’s hard to deny that he’s an absolutely invaluable asset and master strategist for the Adrestian Empire, so he can’t be all that bad, can he?

21 – Caspar von Bergliez

I go back and forth on Caspar a lot.

His sense of justice is undeniable and the energy with which he denounces those who do wrong by him is almost inspiring. However, he has an annoying combination of both naivete and hotheadedness that ends up annoying me a lot of time when I really just want him to listen to what people are telling him.

I know some people will likely find it endearing, but his constant obsession with competition and fighting gets on my nerves more than anything else and it usually causes pain or annoyance for those around him (except Hilda, who can’t seem to get enough of his shit). That said, I can’t fault him in terms of his morality or outlook on life, even when he causes trouble, his heart is always in the right place and that can’t be understated.

20 – Annette Fantine Dominic

Annette seems to me like she’d be the type of friend that I’d like to hang out with in a big group, but I wouldn’t want to spend much one-on-one time with her.

The way she overworks herself is admittedly endearing, but given how little she listens to anyone else when they tell her she’s overworking herself, I imagine it’d get rather frustrating to constantly be watching over her. Speaking of, she’s unbelievably clumsy and, again, even though the way in which she deals with it is undeniably charming, it’d still be quite the hassle to deal with.

She’s not without her good qualities though, as her cheerful demeanour is sure to brighten anyone’s day and it’s admirable how staunchly loyal she is to her friends. It’s also occurred to me that she’s a hardworking student of the school of sorcery, which makes her Hermione Granger, which is a plus.

19 – Sylvain Jose Gautier

Sylvain is one of those people that’s quite hard to like when you first meet him, but he grows on you the more time you spend with him.

Much like Lorenz, he finds himself the butt of the joke more often than not as his constant womanizing rarely yields success. Outside of that particular past-time of his, I always get the sense that he holds extremely strong friendships and always looks to do right by them. Probably one of my favourite backstories is the childhood friendship between Felix, Ingrid, Sylvain & Dimitri and whenever Sylvain is interacting with any of those characters the “big brother” role he’s said to take shines through.

As nice as that is, it doesn’t entirely take away from some of his more negative traits as he can often be quite rash and stupid in his attempts to woo women, it’s hard to not let that grate after seeing it happen so many times. Sylvain is someone that I grew to like, but things didn’t start out too well for him.

18 – Raphael Kirsten

Raphael is absolutely one of the biggest sweethearts in the whole game. He’s always bright and cheerful, never letting anything that anyone says get to him, unfortunately, that’s somewhat of the problem that I have with him.

I absolutely love the positive vibes he gives off wherever he goes, always happy to help people out and never thinking twice about grudges or things that could get him down. The problem is, this means there’s not a great deal of depth to him as a character. If he’s not talking about eating or training, then he’s talking about his little sister and that’s more or less it, I know a lot of these characters don’t have tonnes of depth, simply by virtue of how many there are, but Raphael seems especially underdeveloped.

The reason he’s not lower down the list though, is because the few personality notes he does have are a joy to be around. Maybe listening to him talk about his sister all the time would get a bit irritating after a while, but if I was feeling down and wanted a pick-me-up, Raphael would most certainly be the person I’d go to.

17 – Ferdinand von Aegir

Ferdinand is perhaps the definition of a “middle of the road” character to me.

He’s nice…but that’s about it. His competition with Edelgard and his self-esteem surrounding it had the potential to be a very interesting thread, but it wasn’t pushed on nearly enough to become a real point of interest to his character. The way he treats his nobility is very different from most other noble students and I like the attitude he takes when people like Dorothea dislike him because of his status.

Like I said though, the problem is that those aspects aren’t developed in an interesting way to make him interesting as a character. I like Ferdinand, he’s got a positive attitude and is friendly to almost everyone, but that’s all there is to him.

16 – Ignatz Victor

He just wants to paint and I say let him.

Ignatz’s timid nature is something that’s inherently endearing to me and watching him interact with the other members of the academy, and those of Golden Deer in particular always brings a sweet smile to my face. He’s got a real conflict going on inside of himself about what to do with his future, not wanting to let his family down, but also knowing that the life of a knight isn’t really for him.

The way he does his best to avoid upsetting anyone makes it all the more heartwarming when just about everyone he meets responds with only kindness and positivity, especially considering he doesn’t entirely know how to process it. When he’s allowed to express his true passions, the energy that flows out of him is so joyous that I couldn’t be happier he became a painter in the end.

15 – Mercedes von Martritz

Much like Ferdinand, I think Mercedes is pretty middling in terms of how I feel about them, the difference between the two is that Mercedes got herself a little bit of extra story thanks to the game’s DLC.

I find Mercedes’ general demeanour and attitude to be quite charming most of the time. She always endeavours to be as nice as possible but also isn’t afraid to stick up for herself from time to time. Her friendship with Annette is an interesting case because while it’s nice to see characters actually have a tangible arc in their support scenes together, it does strike as a bit odd that they didn’t make up for five years after what was – let’s be honest – a very minor falling out.

The game’s DLC is where she really comes to her own though, as it adds her relationship with Emile/Jeritza/The Death Knight into the stories and added a layer of interest to her character. She always had this vague sense of motherliness to her, but seeing her get to either care for or fight against her little brother is where she finally breaks from her “will of the Goddess” motif and looks to make her own decisions. If you take any route other than Crimson Flower, then it doesn’t come up all that much but it’s still a huge aspect to her character that fundamentally challenges her beliefs, which is something a lot of the other characters don’t have to go through.

14 – Dorothea Arnault

Dorothea has always stuck out to me in Black Eagles house, being the only one not of Noble/Royal descent in the house makes her position quite strange and this shows when she’s interacting with the other students. Her deep-rooted hatred of the nobility sometimes lets her get in her own way, shutting out people like Ferdinand who just want to be her friend and she seems to almost always be on her guard around her other house members.

All the while, she has to deal with an inferiority complex that pushes her to be constantly putting on a performance to the world around her just so she can find someone who will accept her. It’s really quite a tragic story when you think about it and yet, aside from the occasional moment of weakness, Dorothea doesn’t let it drag on her, she is still able to largely be herself and make friends and seems to be having a nice time of it in the Academy.

She’s someone who pushes forward and succeeds in spite of herself to a certain degree and it gives her that nice layer of complexity that draws me in.

13 – Linhardt von Hevring

Linhardt’s an odd case because he has many traits that you’d expect would lead him down a road of uselessness, but somehow, someway he makes it work for himself.

When I first interacted with him, he seemed like an arrogant prick, to put it plainly, but having seen all of his support scenes, it’s clear that he has a strange sense of humility to him that only very rarely comes out in his interactions with others. He’s someone who always puts his research first and has a clear attitude of only doing things that he gets enjoyment from.

Even though these principals can lead him to be rather callous when it comes to interacting with other people, on the occasions where he puts it all aside, we’re left with someone who’s a very nice person who clearly enjoys being around certain people, even if he can’t quite express it. He’s also someone who always pushes his friends to be better, even if his method does involve heavily criticising their abilities.

All of this is encapsulated by how clearly he dispises battling. There’s only so deep you can go with that thread as he has to battle for story reasons, but I think it’s a neat twist to have on a character and it fits in perfectly with Linhardt’s academic nature.

12 – Ashe Ubert

On the surface, Ashe is just your typical kind person, who’s just happy to help and fights for justice, but it wasn’t until much later that I realised he’s got much deeper layers than just that.

Ashe has the unique position of having experienced a life living in poverty and in a Noble household, being taken in by Lord Lonato at the age of 10. It’s given him a sense of humility that never breaks no matter what he’s faced with and he does his best to pass on all the kindness that was shown to him. In a game that treats thieves and bandits as faceless good-for-nothings that you just cut your way through, Ashe provides that desperately needed perspective of thinking about how they got to that position in the first place.

In a world where so many crimes are instantly punished with force, Ashe pushes the perspective of trying to help and reform these people so that they don’t do it again, often putting him at odds with his classmates. He’s got a sense of purity and innocence through the way he dreams of being a valiant knight that fights for justice, but he also isn’t clouded by naivete, he knows the horrible reality of war and how no knight is truly valiant, but he doesn’t care and he strives for it anyway because he believes he can do it.

Ashe goes so much deeper than just a kind person because he’s remained a kind person despite having suffered tragedy and trauma that would turn lesser men into spiteful shells of themselves, which is what makes him a true hero.

11 – Lysithea von Ordelia

For my money, Lysithea is undoubtedly the most tragic person at the academy.

From a personality perspective, she works as hard as she possibly can in order to prove herself. The way in which she gets annoyed at anyone who claims she has a “natural talent” just goes to show how deeply she values her work and desires to prove herself to everyone around her.

What really draws me to Lysithea though is the inherent tragedy within her and the potential it has to create some truly heartwarming moments. Her shortened lifespan is something that clearly weighs heavy on her and I always have a deep feeling of sorrow when I think about the kind of life she’s led up until coming to the Academy. Her endings always enhance this feeling, her endings where she lives out a happy, but short life are always touchingly bittersweet and the ones where she is cured and lives out a long and fruitful life bring a warmth to my heart.

In every interaction, it’s clear she still tries her best to get enjoyment out of the time she has, even if it does sometimes lead to her coming across as short-tempered or dismissive of people. Her serious nature only makes the moments when she lets the facade drop and indulges herself in sweets or fun in general, all the more adorable.

10 – Ingrid Brandl Galatea

I find Ingrid to be a very interesting character, she’s got one of the better backstories and it’s utilized to great potential throughout all of her support scenes.

She provides a different perspective on the nobility, making us realise that just because someone is of a noble family, it doesn’t mean they’re set for life from the moment of their birth. Coming from a poor noble family, it adds an extra layer of depth to the story of deliberating between marriage and her desire to become a knight.

Normally, in a story like that, it always seems to easy to turn around and say “you don’t need no man” and that’s it, but in the world of Three Houses, I can actually fully understand why this would be such a tough decision for her. Being a knight is what she wants to do with her life, not only for herself but to honour her late fiance, though at the same time, marrying into a richer family means that her father will have a much more secure life and her potential children would never have to go through what she’s had to. Her support scenes with Seteth in particular, see her explore both sides of this debate in detail and her attitude in the way she goes about it is so interesting to see.

Outside of that aspect to her character, she’s your typical no-nonsense, empowered female character, which is something that I normally don’t care much for, but it works when put in contrast to the other aspects of her character. I’m not entirely sure if I’d like to actually spend much time with her – which is why she’s not higher – but as a character with a story, she’s very well-written.

9 – Felix Hugo Fraldarius

To put it simply, Felix is a dick, so why’s he so high up the list?

Well, partly because I’m a sucker for the cold-hearted lone-wolf type, but also because he’s not horrible to anyone without reason. Like so many of the other students, he has suffered his fair share of tragedy, with his brother dying in the tragedy of Duscur and his father’s subsequent response to hearing this news. It sounds odd, but I honestly think I’d feel the same way if my brother was needlessly massacred and someone turned around and told me he died in “glorious service to his king”.

Felix isn’t afraid to make his feelings on anything known and has the resolve to stand up and argue for those beliefs as well. I’ll get more into Dimitri’s story later, but Felix is a huge part of it, not just because of their childhood friendship, but because Felix was the first person to see the darker, monstrous side to Dimitri and refuses to let Dimitri forget it.

That’s not all there is to Felix though, he as that small aspect of being absolutely adorable from time to time when he’s talking to someone like Bernadetta or Sylvain, letting that cold-hearted demeanour slip for just a moment and show how much he truly cares for his friends, even if he has a funny way of showing it.

8 – Marianne von Edmund

I just want to hug her and tell her it’ll be ok.

When I first met Marianne, I was sure she’d be the one I’d end up falling for over the course of the game and while that didn’t happen, I’m certainly very fond of her. While the tragedies of her past aren’t necessarily the worst out of everyone in the Officer’s Academy, she’s definitely been more deeply affected on an emotional level than anyone else.

Convinced her meer existence is a curse on everyone in her life, she’s someone who can be quite hard to really get to know. With many of the other more timid characters, they tend to find an immediate comfort with Byleth, but that isn’t the case with Marianne. Everything about how she’s presented screams that there’s something much greater behind her pessimistic demeanour, but getting to it requires some work.

That only serves to make it all the more gratifying when she is finally able to let go of her worries for a moment and properly connect with someone like Ferdinand or Dimitri. Although she doesn’t smile very often, when she does, the complete transformation in her personality to someone flowing with joy and contentedness is something that is sure to lighten anyone’s mood.

Although her journey as a character isn’t as clear cut as many of the other students, it’s obvious how huge of a deal the steps she takes are to her. After holding onto the burden of a curse for so long, it becomes so clear how deeply she changes when she finally lets it go and can just learn to enjoy the life she’s been given.

7 – Edelgard von Hresvelg

Those Who Slither In The Dark notwithstanding, in Three Houses there are no real “bad guys”, all of the leader characters are shades of grey from a moral perspective (except Claude, who’s pure as pure can be) but Edelgard is definitely the one that I find myself aligning with the least.

Looking at the land of Fodlan, it’s clear that her ultimate goal of abolishing the idea of the nobility & crests and putting everyone on a level footing, regardless of their surname, is a good one and an ideal that I fully support. What I don’t support, are her methods. Declaring a war, aligning herself with Those Who Slither In The Dark and causing five years of bloodshed just to achieve this goal was absolutely not the way to go about it.

However, that’s not to say I don’t understand why she felt it was the only way. Going through the experiments that she did as a child and watching all of her siblings being slaughtered in the process instilled this deep hatred within her, to the point that she’s clearly been blinded by that hatred and she wasn’t helped by surrounding herself with people who don’t dare disagree with her. She’s not just a conquering warlord though, it’s clear that so many of her beliefs and tendencies – such as always staying as formal as possible, or her sheer ambition – come from a place of deep insecurity, which is clear as day whenever she lets her facade drop and speaks honestly to people.

When I look at Edelgard it makes me feel sad, she seems to me like someone who could’ve been the kindest and most respected person in the world if things had gone just a little bit differently, but the circumstances of her upbringing drew her down a path that forced her into a position where some of the more negative qualities dictated her decision making.

I don’t hate Edelgard, I just wish things had gone differently.

6 – Dedue Molinaro

Dedue is a victim of circumstance, but you wouldn’t know it from talking to him.

After the people of Duscur – his people – were blamed for the death of the King of Faerghus, Dedue has had to live with blatant racism to his face every day. Even those in the Officer’s Academy who I think are fundamentally good people, like Ingrid, can’t help but let their hatred for Dedue and his people show at almost all times. What makes Dedue such a wonderful person, is that he doesn’t let any of it phase him for even a second.

Dedue has resigned himself to a life as an outcast until one man, Dimitri, put their faith in him and he’s made sure to dedicate his life to doing whatever’s best for them at all times. He understands what his lot in life is likely to end up being and he doesn’t mind, he lets people show him hatred and shows them nothing but kindness in return. He doesn’t care what kind of horrible names they’re calling him, they’re his allies and Dimitri’s allies, so he’s going to show them kindness and do what’s best for them no matter what.

That’s what I admire most about Dedue, in his situation, it would’ve been easy for him to become a person driven by hatred, getting worked up by Faerghus’ disdain for him and his people until he has no choice but to either lash out or shut himself away, but he didn’t let that happen. Instead, he dedicated his life to his friends and allies regardless of what they think of him and do his best to make everyone else’s lives better; and that makes him perhaps the most admirable person of all.

5 – Hilda Valentine Goneril

If I actually met someone like Hilda and had to work with them in real life, I’d almost certainly find them immensely annoying, but watching her go about her business in the Academy is so endearing to me that I can’t help but love interacting with her.

I’m always entertained by watching the clever and sneaky ways in which she is able to sneak her way out of doing work, especially when it’s at Ferdinand’s expense; like I said, if I actually had to work with her, it’d be horrible, but at the same time, I wish I had her ability for shirking responsibility. She can come across as spoiled at times, but when you break past her outward demeanour, it becomes clear that it’s something deeper than that. It may not be identified as such, but the way in which she admires her brother and everything he’s accomplished, it’s clear she has some form of Imposter Syndrome, where she feels she can never live up to her brother’s achievements, so doesn’t try for fear of disappointment.

What she exceeds at though, is getting people to rally behind her. Whether it’s raising an army’s morale or getting someone to make her some tea, she’s got unparalleled charisma that easily charms anyone she talks to, myself included. On top of that, when she really needs to she’ll happily put the effort in to help others, even if she spends the next week moaning about it.

4 – Petra Macneary

Alright, I’ll admit, Petra being this far up the list is the absolute peak of personal preference, but my list, my rules.

Petra holds that role of the strong female character, without conforming too much to the generic stereotype associated it. She’s a victim of circumstance, being moved to the Empire as a hostage in order to keep her homeland of Brigid in line. Much like Dedue, she could’ve let this ingrain a fierce hatred in her but doesn’t let it, however, instead of accepting her lot in life like Dedue, she uses it as motivation to work hard, become stronger and find a way to change the status quo, be that through diplomacy or war. It’s no mere coincidence that in literally all of her endings, she succeeds in improving the diplomatic ties between Fodlan & Brigid (and sometimes, even Dagda).

Petra is able to have pride for her homeland and wear those aspects of herself on her sleeve, without feeling the need to be constantly in your face about it. She doesn’t constantly try and hold it over her classmates with some aura of superiority and is instead very accepting of all in the hope that they will treat her the same. From the clothes she wears to the marks on her skin and the way she talks it’s clear that she values her heritage and uses them to serve as people’s reminders of that fact, instead of constantly reminding them and shoving it down their throats, as she mostly only talks about Brigid when asked.

Aside from that, she’s an exceedingly kind person. She does her best to greet everyone as an ally and trusts them until they give her reason not to, even with a situation like Caspar where his family is directly responsible for her father’s death. Her determination to study and increase her strength extends to everyone around her, creating this extremely positive atmosphere that makes every conversation a more pleasant one.

3 – Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd

While the Blue Lion’s route isn’t my favourite in the game, I think it’s definitely the most well-written and a huge part of that is Dimitri as a character.

When it comes to first impressions, I didn’t think much of Dimitri, he seemed to be your typical “honourable king” that always dresses proper and says the right thing as his head goes further and further up his own arse. After playing through the Blue Lions route, I realised this is very much NOT the case. One of the biggest unexplored events in the backstory of Three Houses is the tragedy of Duscur as the consequences of it ripple throughout pretty much every aspect of the game and Dimitri is the personification of almost all of those consequences.

Looking back at how Dimitri acts throughout the bulk of the academy phase, it’s clear that he’s someone who tries desperately every day to suppress the rage and madness that lives within him because the weight of his losses would be too much to bear. Then the war phase begins and we get to see what all of that suppressed emotion looks like when it comes out. The way Dimitri goes from a kind and conservative prince to a truly broken man who’s only desire is to kill endlessly until he is killed is one of the saddest things to watch in the whole game.

The story didn’t end there though, as Rodrigue’s death eventually snaps him out of this state as he realises that pointlessly murdering and gunning for revenge isn’t going to do him any good. Not only that but it shows how much he’s grown since the tragedy of Duscur because instead of using the death of a loved one to lash out at others, he uses Rodrigue’s death as an opportunity to look inwards and realise that despite what he’s convinced himself, there might be some other way to redeem himself that isn’t dying in battle. A thread that is capped off perfectly when he finally has Edelgard – the one person he’s sworn to kill time and time again – kneeling before him and he lowers his weapon and outstretches his hand.

Dimitri is a tortured soul who could’ve easily turned into a heartless monster and become a true villain in the game, but instead, he was able to take just one moment to look inwards and started a really heartwarming redemption story that puts a true reflection on the “shades of grey” aspect to all of the main character’s morality, focusing in on the personal conflict between the characters, instead of the wider conflict between ideologies that the other routes do.

2 – Claude von Riegan

Claude is just pure and good and everything that’s right with the world.

I alluded to it in the previous entry, but here I can say that the Golden Deer route was absolutely my favourite and that’s largely thanks to Claude. Unlike the other two house leaders, whom I grew to like once getting to know them better, I instantly took a liking to Claude. Not only does his attitude stand in stark contrast to the formalities and nobility of the other two, but it was clear from the start he had an extremely keen mind; plus he uses a bow, which makes him cooler by default.

What really makes me love Claude so much is his drive to always do good by as many people as he can, but he doesn’t do it because “it’s a noble’s duty” or “for the good of the world” he does it because he believes that it is truly the right thing to do and he will stand by his convictions to the death. Despite having the tactical genius to wipe out armies with barely any effort, he instead focuses his tactics on extinguishing as few lives as possible. On top of that, I align with his idealistic goal of tearing down the borders and unifying the world more than I do any of the other leader’s goals.

His attitude is always upbeat and cheery, but he also doesn’t let anything get by him and while he may seem like he trusts easily, it becomes clear that it isn’t the case the more time you spend with him. He clocks onto the fact that The Church of Seiros is hiding something a lot quicker than anyone else and is even able to deduce Flayn & Seteth’s true identity, something that no-one else is able to figure out.

When he’s not fighting a war, Claude is an absolute joy to be around, doing everything in his power to keep spirits up, but when it’s time for business, his tactical ability and dedication to his cause is unmatched, making him – in my view at least – the most capable leader in the whole game and one truely deserving of achieving his ideals.

1 – Bernadetta von Varley

Look, sometimes you fall in love with the weirdo, that’s just how it goes.

Sure, Bernadetta doesn’t have some big sweeping story arc or any major role to play in Fodlan, but when it comes to “ticking all my boxes”, no-one comes as close as this timid, nerdy recluse. She’s not nerdy in the modern sense, but she spends so much of her time by herself writing stories and doing drawings for those stories along with many other activities of that nature; which are the kind of things that I imagine would constitute “nerdiness” in that kind of world.

While her extremely timid nature invokes the instinct to protect and nurture, it becomes clear pretty quickly that’s actually not the case and she’s absolutely capable of protecting herself both on and off the battlefield. That said, I still find it totally adorable when she goes off on one about the joys of solitude and how she’d love to just stay in her room all the time (or slightly less adorable, her love for carnivorous plants). Her creative spark is something inspires me and I find it difficult to contain myself when she grows the confidence to let that creativity shine in front of people like Seteth and Linhardt because it’s so clear how much she cares about her creations and is overjoyed that – despite her expectations – people love them. I think you’re starting to see why I relate to her so much now, aren’t you?

It’s not all cuteness and hugs though and she just wouldn’t be a Three Houses character without a whole heap of tragedy in her past. I’ve talked a bit before about how emotional some of the other character’s backstories made me, but the only one that ever actually got a tear rolling down my cheek was when Bernie opened up and talked about her abusive father, which it lends all the more heartbreak to the moments where she clearly wants to be different, but can’t make herself do it.

Bernadetta just has a bit of everything that I like, her sensitive personality, her overwhelming joy (on the occasions she allows it to flourish), her major creative streak and even the fact she has purple hair all drew me in instantly, to the point where I just couldn’t help but fall for her as a character, because she embodies the best of what Fire Emblem: Three Houses has to offer.

So there’s my list! Thank you very much for taking the time to read this, please let me know what your thoughts are, either in the comments below or on Twitter @10ryawoo! Once again, a massive thank you to Nat (@Natalichoco on Twitter, @nataliachoco.bear on Instagram) for the wonderful header art to this post.

Finally, make sure you come back next week, where it’s Royal Rumble time!

Best Talkers in WWE Today

As anyone who knows anything about pro-wrestling will likely tell you, knowing how to do wrestling moves is only half of what makes a great wrestler. The other half, of course, is your talking ability. It’s all well and good being able to wow crowds with the moves you can perform, but it’s your words that will put the crowd in the arena to begin with.

It’s hard to deny that almost every wrestler in WWE right now has a decent level of promo ability, you don’t get to work for the biggest wrestling promotion in the world without being good at what you do after all. However, there are a select few among the current crop of WWE wrestlers who are able to go above and beyond when it comes to the stories they weave outside of the ring. Be it hype and excitement or a deep level of intensity, there’s something about the way these wrestlers talk their way through situations that instil a much higher level of investment in their audience.

Quick note, I’m only counting wrestlers that currently active in WWE, so that means no managers and no part-timers.

9 – The Usos

The Usos are a very interesting case study in WWE because they’ve been in the WWE for almost ten years now and if you look through their career, it’s extremely obvious that they’ve grown a huge amount as performers. People first got behind them around 2014, but as pure babyfaces, their popularity didn’t last long and they quickly grew stale.

After floating around not doing much of note for about a year, they came back in full force with this brand new energy that got behind everything they did, most of all their promos. Their run as heels was a brilliant move for them because they got to take that over-hyped style of their promos and add an edge to them that made them seem intense instead of cheesy. Now their constant trading lines and random yelling instead added to the fact that these guys were always ready to throw down with anyone and could usually back up their words with actions.

Naturally, the crowd got behind them again after this and it wasn’t long before they were forced to return to their role as faces, but instead of going back to the cheesy, super happy style of promos, they kept their edge but added an extra dash of hype which meant that they were actually successful at getting the crowd behind them in whatever fight they were going for. The Usos would be classified as great talkers regardless of their history, but seeing them develop so much over the years really adds to the effect of what they’re able to do with their words now.

8 – Alexa Bliss

When Alexa Bliss first made her way to the main roster from NXT, I wasn’t sure if she was going to make much of splash. As much as I personally thought she was great, I could easily see her sliding down the path that someone like Mandy Rose has, where she’s always around, but very rarely the focus. Sitting here in 2019 it’s very obvious that those fears weren’t realistic in the least because she’s arguably second only to Charlotte Flair in terms of her longevity at the forefront of WWE’s women’s division and the biggest factor in that rise is inarguably her promo skills.

Bliss is able to inject this unrivalled level of bitchy attitude in absolutely everything she says that makes her so much fun to hate. Whether she’s being passive-aggressive or straight-up insulting she’s able to produce the exact right inflictions and attitudes in her voice that bring that level of pure hate out of you. To a certain extent, it doesn’t even matter what it is she’s actually saying because the way she said it is perfect for making you want to see someone kick the crap out of her.

Over the past 6 months or so, she’s been doing surprisingly well adjusting that attitude to a more face style of promo by virtue of her association with Nikki Cross. Although she’s not the best at getting the crowd behind her, what she is great at is using her attitude in defence of herself and Nikki to create some really good insults when she gets a chance to fire back at someone. I wouldn’t have expected her style of promo to adapt to a babyface as well as it has in all honesty, but that should speak to Alexa’s skill as a talker.

7 – Samoa Joe

Joe is one of those guys that’s seemingly able to flip a switch when he’s talking and instantly transition from calm and threatening to unbridled wrath and back again in such a seamless manner you barely notice what he’s done, all you know is that you’re terrified by whatever he just said.

His physique as always given him this intimidating presence and he can warp his face to be extremely threatening when he wants to, but it’s his words that make you feel like he’s slowly sliding a knife into your chest. There’s something about the way he’ll calmly explain exactly what it is he’s going to do to his opponents that makes him so terrifying to listen to because you honestly believe that he’s going to do whatever it is he says he will, one of my favourite promos of his was one he cut on Paul Heyman in the build to his match against Brock Lesnar, when he just cornered Heyman and spoke in that “nice, but actually threatening” way as he explained what he was about to do to Heyman.

Then there’s the other side of his promos where he’ll suddenly flip that switch and go ballistic. The eerie calmness serves to make the moments where he totally loses it and bellows his lines right in his opponent’s face all the more shocking and intense. Everything Samoa Joe says serves to make him feel like an absolute unstoppable monster, now if only we could get his booking to match…

6 – Elias

Elias undeniably has the most unique style on this list and it puts it to extremely effective use.

The singing thing seemed like it would get old fast when I first encountered it, but I didn’t count on Elias’ creativity when it came to making the gimmick last. He has the standard catchphrases that we all love, but every time he comes out to the ring to sing a song, there’s always going to be something new to it. He takes the classic heel trope of running down the town they’re doing the show in and turns it into an art form with the way he crafts the lyrics and picks some genuinely funny insults.

It never fails to get a reaction out of the crowd and it’s always a loud reaction too, I’ll never forget late 2018 when he and Kevin Owens got booed for literally 5 minutes solid after taking a dig at…well some American sports thing, as a Brit I didn’t really know what it meant, but the people in attendance that night certainly did. Even though this style is undoubtedly more suited towards a heel, he was still able to get some good mileage out of it as a face too, picking some particularly funny insults to sing at whatever heel he happened to be against that night.

The key thing about Elias is that no promo of his is ever boring, which is something that can’t be said for almost anyone else on this list. He has such a deep understanding of the attitude and demeanour he needs to convey at all times in order to make his songs and performances stick in the memory long after the show has ended.

5 – Kevin Owens

Kevin Owens’ promo style isn’t polished, it isn’t revolutionary and it lacks a lot of what we as fans would traditionally label as traits required for good promos. However, what Kevin Owens’ promos do have, are heaps of authenticity.

The slightly broken flow with which he speaks gives this feeling of someone who genuinely is coming up with his words on the spot (which he may very well be, for all I know) and the way he is able to control the intensity of his voice and turn it up and down almost by the word fills everything he says with emotion and meaning.

He’s always done great as an entitled, whiney heel with this style, but it wasn’t until he started cutting promos as a face that I realised what really made the way in which he talks so encapsulating. The way in which he rallied against Shane McMahon’s tyrannical reign or the way he’s currently leading the charge against Seth Rollins & AOP all give me this impression of a natural-born leader who fights for what he thinks is right and doesn’t give a damn who hates him for it. People aren’t just comparing him to Stone Cold because he started using the Stunner you know.

4 – The New Day

I’ve put The New Day in here as a group because although they are all brilliant talkers in their own right, it’s the way they talk as a group that makes them one of the best.

When The New Day first formed in WWE, no-one cared and no-one thought they were going to be anything more than another throwaway tag team that would be broken up by the end of the year. So what changed? What was it that made them one of the most popular WWE acts of the decade? While they’re wrestling ability undoubtedly had something to do with it, it was the way they talked that really turned heads.

It’s almost impossible to imagine The New Day as heels now but it was the absolutely hilarious way in which they would run down anyone and everyone around them that got them to a position where people just couldn’t boo them anymore. They are masters of playing off of the crowd. Be it to draw heat or garner support, The New Day have the kind of chemistry that can only come naturally in a team, allowing each of them to run with what the others are saying to the effect of both comedy and drama, making them arguably the best all-round tag team ever to form in WWE.

3 – The Miz

Given that The Miz’s first TV appearance for WWE featured him horrifically butchering a promo, it probably came as a surprise that he turned into one of the best talkers in the business today.

The Miz’s words are sharp and forceful in the way they’re delivered, he always knows exactly the right amount to labour a point and never trails off onto tangents about whatever the writer happened to be thinking about at the time. When he’s a heel (which is inarguably when he’s at his best) he has this amazing ability to layout an extremely well-structured and meaningful argument, but he says it in such a dickish way that you automatically find yourself disagreeing and booing out of hand.

We can’t talk about The Miz’s talking ability without bringing up his now, infamous promo on Talking Smack, where he ran down a then-retired Daniel Bryan and let so much genuine emotion bubble to the surface as he absolutely tore his detractors to shreds. That may have been the moment that The Miz started to turn heads with his promos, but the fact is, he’d been great years before that too. When he was partnered with John Morrison, he was able to bounce off of his partner and create some really funny, yet heelish stuff and as WWE Champion he garnered some real heat, which wasn’t as much “go away heat” as everyone says it was.

Although he was quite good in his recent feud with Bray Wyatt, for the most part, Miz has never been all that great as a face. Everything about his character screams “I deserve to be punched” and he knows exactly how to play up to it with extremely harsh words.

2 – Daniel Bryan

The guy more-or-less talked himself into the main event of Wrestlemania, I think that justifies this place on the list.

No-one in WWE for over a decade has been more popular with the fans than Daniel Bryan and although it would be dismissive of me to say it was entirely due to his abilities on the mic, it is certainly one of the most important factors. The way in which Daniel Bryan carefully creates these long and enthralling promos is absolutely inspirational to watch. No matter what it is he’s trying to say, he can find a way to get the crowd behind him on it and I honestly don’t think there’s anyone in WWE right now that can get a crowd so worked up with words alone.

Then 2018 rolled around and he turned heel, proving that not only could he get any crowd to cheer anything he said, he could also get all of them to boo just as hard. The vitriol with which he ran down every fan in existence was an absolute joy to watch, he was able to let his anger consume his entire building as he stared down the camera and called up all fickle. He was able to get crowds around the US to cheer about being wasteful and boo being ecologically friendly just because it was the opposite of what Bryan was preaching. That was what made it truly amazing is that he took an idea that the majority of fans agree with – recycling and protecting the planet – and presented it in such a way that we couldn’t help but boo and disagree with everything he said.

I’ve long said that Daniel Bryan is the best all-round wrestler in the world today and taking a critical look at his talking ability only furthers that claim. On any given day he can go out in front of any given crowd and get exactly the reaction he wants while being so immensely entertaining to watch, a skill that is arguably unmatched in the entire industry right now.

1 – Bray Wyatt

When it comes to sheer creativity, Wyatt is unmatched in this era and maybe all eras.

When Bray Wyatt first turned up in WWE it was like a breath of fresh air. WWE had tried plenty of “Undertaker-esque” gimmicks over the years, but they all fell flat on their face until Bray Wyatt came along. For one thing, the character didn’t just feel like an Undertaker rip-off, but something new, however, most importantly was Bray Wyatts ability to talk for ages about absolutely nothing while keeping his audience enthralled in his words.

Even when Wyatt’s shine had faded thanks to horrible booking, I still enjoyed listening to him craft his tales because the mannerisms and quirks in the speech patterns made it impossible to ignore. By all rights, the Bray Wyatt character should’ve been dead and buried after it’s treatment throughout 2017 and yet Wyatt turned it all around. He took those speech patterns and mannerisms and turned them into something genuinely unique, – which is such a rarity in modern WWE – in the form of the Firefly Fun House.

He can pull off the “jolly kids presenter” vibe so amazingly well with his over the top expressions, while still managing to throw in the hints of something being slightly…wrong. This makes it all the more terrifying when the facade fades away, as his face drops to a look of anger and his voice gets low and gravelly, even though I know it’s coming, it still gives me chills.

Even when all seemed lost for Bray Wyatt, he turned it around and used his sheer creative talent, alongside acting abilities that wouldn’t be out of place in Hollywood, to create a whole world that brought him back up to the very top of the mountain in WWE.

And that’s the list! Thank you very much for taking the time to read this, please let me know who you think are the best talkers in WWE right now, either in the comments below or on Twitter @10ryawoo. Finally, make sure you come back the same time next week where I’ll be ranking every student from Fire Emblem: Three Houses!