Lemme just say this; I cannot wait for your meta on The Festival. It's being called The Red Wedding of WWE, didja know?! Is Owens just too much of a monster, knows what a monster he is, that he can't accept that anyone would actually genuinely love him? I mean, I was one of many who thought it would be Chris doing the betraying, but...I'm an incoherent mess right now, honestly.
OH GOSH I don’t even know what to do with myself meta-wise! Things are very much in flux and I have no idea where events are going now, which is a fun but stressful place to be as Wrestlemania draws near! Here are some scattered thoughts on these tragic events:
I’ll be really curious to see if we find out what Hunter said to Kevin in that closed-door meeting. My suspicion is that Hunter told him he would help him in his match against Goldberg, OR threatened his job unless Kevin takes out Chris for SOME REASON, the only problem I cannot come up with a good reason! OK, Chris and Steph have some acrimonious history, but this seems rather a late payback for insults from 15 years ago. The only thing I can come up with is that he wants Chris beaten up so badly that he has to vacate the title, leaving it easy pickings for Joe as a reward for coming to work for the Authority (in this scenario, Sami would be the potential spoiler in those “easy pickings.”) Then Chris comes back in time for vengeance at Wrestlemania against Kevin, with or without a title on the line.
I like this scenario in part because it explains the List of KO. Look, I understand that it’s an AWESOME dramatic reveal, beautifully timed, perfect. At a Doylean level who could resist it? But it doesn’t seem like Kevin to me to be so planned and calculating about it, in general he’s a guy who reacts with passion and emotion, not a schemer. So I like to imagine that Hunter handed him the List himself to give to Jericho. Mostly I like this because then I can imagine a mirror-image scene where Kevin lifts the list and says, puzzled: “How come Chris’s name is on this?” Then turns it over, sees his name, looks at Hunter and realizes what he’s being asked to do.
In this read, Kevin comes out conflicted to the Festival. He’s reluctant, he doesn’t want to be there at all. But he knows he has to do it, for his title, for his kids (who I note he mentions in-canon for the first time since he got the title!). Being Kevin and the emotional monster that he is, he slowly manages through the Festival to talk himself up into it: “You know what? This is tacky. You always were tacky.” “This is too intimate and weird.” “Jesus, GILBERG? You were supposed to HELP me against Goldberg! How is this going to help? I NEED REAL HELP AND YOU’RE NOT HELPING, THAT’S IT.” He goes all-in on the beating because he’s Kevin and he can’t ever admit that he’s being a bad horrible person, so he’s basically worked himself into believing Chris totally deserves all of this. By next week he’s likely to 100% believe Chris always had it coming, maybe Chris was going to turn on him anyway, it was just a smart move on his part. I’d say get ready for lots and lots of Kevin being Absolutely and Insufferably Right About Everything, You Shut Up, He’s Right.
But my actual real-time responses were mostly “HHGGHHGJNOOOOOOO” *face-clawing* It was a pretty magnificent segment, it totally knocked the wind out of me and has forced me to come up with whole new pathways forward, which is painful but so fun, oh my goodness. Also, because I love Kevin Steen out of all proportion, I note that this could go a long way toward cementing Kevin Owens as the top heel on Raw for some time to come, which is something I earnestly desire (as the saying goes, “a hero is only as good as his villain,” and Kevin seems determined to be the villain the WWE’s heroes deserve…)
