WWE: Unreal Season 1 Review

When WWE came to Netflix connected January 6, 2025, “sports entertainment” gained its widest scope to date. The woody that brought Monday Night Raw (and, extracurricular the U.S., each WWE production) to streaming was a handshake betwixt 2 PR-savvy pop-culture juggernauts, and Netflix’s caller documentary bid WWE: Unreal is wherever their creation and commerce meet. It’s besides wherever the second often wins out, grinding the tensions that pass originative endeavors into a good particulate and sweeping them nether the rug. Touted arsenic a behind-the-scenes saga and the archetypal ever peek into pro-wrestling writers’ rooms, Unreal promises an exclusive exposé. But that is, to punctuation the wrestling lingo that’s go mundane vocabulary successful our hyper-online, always-engaged epoch of fervent fandom, a work. Unreal is axenic marketing, a five-episode ploy to tribunal caller viewers for Raw, SmackDown, and the Royal Rumble. Even that pledge to enactment the writers successful the spotlight goes mostly unfulfilled.

The archetypal play of Unreal tracks respective wrestlers, matches, and ongoing storylines from WWE’s debut connected Netflix done its yearly springtime flagship, WrestleMania – “wrestling’s Super Bowl,” arsenic galore stars and executives punctual us. Some faces, similar Hollywood mainstays John Cena and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, volition beryllium acquainted to newcomers. Others, similar Australian goth queen Rhea Ripley and electrical Samoan sensation Jey Uso, haven’t yet breached done to the mainstream, but their wide entreaty makes them the cleanable subjects for this speed-run done the WWE basics, aimed astatine telling adjacent non-fans what they already know: that wrestling, portion hard-hitting and high-flying, is scripted entertainment. “Our concern is astir telling stories,” says erstwhile rival and existent Chief Content Officer Paul “Triple H” Levesque= successful the archetypal episode, inadvertently tipping his manus towards the fabrication of WWE: Unreal itself.

What the unacquainted whitethorn not recognize – and what the bid hopes they won’t – is that for the longest time, immoderate movie oregon documentary with WWE’s stamp of support has rewritten history. Unreal is nary exception: Its effort to propulsion backmost the curtain happens wholly connected WWE’s terms, resulting successful a sterile depiction of the originative process with fewer meaningful struggles oregon butting of heads – arsenic though each lucifer and storyline were destined to beryllium cleanable from its inception. This removes the backstage friction that provides overmuch of the promotion’s allure, making Unreal a passive experience.

The large occupation with this framing is 1 that ardent fans volition instantly recognize. Since the 1990s – and particularly successful the modern property of societal media – being attuned to wrestling has meant pursuing the ins and outs, the breaking quality from journalistic sources, the nuggets of rumors and juicy gossip wherever 1 tin find them. By and large, pro-wrestling fans emotion this razor-thin enactment betwixt phantasy and reality, and however declaration disputes oregon real-life animosity betwixt wrestlers shows up connected surface successful ways the institution whitethorn not ever beryllium capable to help. With Unreal, WWE tries to capitalize connected this signifier of engagement, but attempts to exert power wherever it different can’t, reframing each moving portion and anticipation arsenic a known quantity.

Thankfully, that’s not ever the case; the 3rd episode, titled “Worth the Wait”, gestures towards the vulnerabilities, originative anxieties, and tensions that pass the storylines of pistillate WWE superstars including up-and-comer Chelsea Green and weathered seasoned Charlotte Flair. However, Unreal precise rapidly drops each of these threads successful favour of an uncanny, robotically creaseless mentation of events. For instance: Green’s intriguing onscreen struggle, arsenic a Canadian, to get booked connected a large Canadian amusement is wholly forgotten the adjacent clip WWE is seen returning to Canada. Of the antheral competitors, lone Cena is afforded the accidental to beryllium emotionally exposed, arsenic helium discusses aging and competing successful his last twelvemonth earlier retirement. In existent WWE fashion, precise fewer storylines consciousness complete, and nary different institution exists successful the wrestling scenery – adjacent though respective of the featured wrestlers came up done rival promotions similar AEW.

Unreal’s operation is straightforward, cutting betwixt the in-ring action, backstage coordination, and consequent interviews. This occasionally yields entrancing moments, similar erstwhile the directors successful the accumulation motortruck are forced to support up with communicative turns that were intimately guarded each the mode up to air, resulting successful the originative highwire enactment of unrecorded editing connected the fly. But this is conscionable 1 of respective components successful the making of WWE that person a scant fewer minutes of screentime successful Unreal. More often, it does what immoderate wrestler mightiness erstwhile delivering a “promo” connected the mic: utilizing the guise of storytelling to precise explicitly merchantability you something. Give an embittered quality a few, uninterrupted minutes connected air, and they’ll endanger to bushed up their hostile astatine a designated clip and place, not-so-subtly reminding you erstwhile to acquisition the adjacent pay-per-view event. Unreal, meanwhile, tracks the timeline of each occurrence with an onscreen calendar wherever Monday nighttime is marked “Raw” and each Friday is marked “SmackDown,” grooming america to retrieve erstwhile to tune successful next.

It’s understandable that WWE would privation to grow its audience, fixed the company’s present worldwide, instantaneous reach. But that results successful Unreal spending mode excessively overmuch clip explaining the rules oregon assorted lucifer types. It’s a bore for anyone remotely acquainted with wrestling – who, arsenic it happens, is precisely the benignant of idiosyncratic who mightiness beryllium funny successful a behind-the-scenes documentary successful the archetypal place. Nonfans aren’t apt to beryllium swayed by a process-oriented instructional video; they’re going to determine if wrestling is worthy their clip based connected wrestling itself.

There’s a full lo-fi cottage manufacture tracking this benignant of worldly connected YouTube, wherever ravenous fans stitchery to thigh up the latest wrestling scuttlebutt. WWE: Unreal is, successful comparison, acold excessively polished and pristine to animate this benignant of devotion, lacking immoderate existent play beyond seeing however the adjacent firm decree translates into ratings. It’s the uncommon TV amusement to animate this thought: They should’ve near it to the amateurs.