Aleister Black made his WWE return on SmackDown in a new look and with a dark, new vignette
Aleister Black finally made his much-awaited return to SmackDown last week but the WWE superstar was seen in a new persona.
Absent from television since his October 2020 draft to SmackDown, Black returned with a mysterious vignette which saw him sat on a chair with a book titled ‘Tales of the Dark Father’.
The whole video had a very Ari Aster-y vibe to it and things got even more intriguing when he opened the book to read from ‘Chapter One: The Dragon’.
“I attended many funerals as a child. Father would bring me to these celebrations of life and death. He could deal with me because I was too little to understand, but as I grew older, father became colder and more distant, and that’s when it started to become apparent I was not taught how to defeat The Dragon, I was taught how to become The Dragon because father was right… I could never be like you weak-minded fools.”
He didn’t have a match on the night but his vignette was a massive story in itself. And it seems that the underrated star is finally getting a character that he fits in well.
Black, in his vignette, went on to mock the listeners, which would only confirm the fact that he is returning as a heel.
“You gawking at the screen right now, you are the monsters and I am nothing like you, and I would never help you. You are the ones who reveal the true rotten nature of man, with your lies and your deceit, you transform your own children into bigger monsters than you are. Like rotting corpses, you should be scorched from the Earth to make room for more fertile things.”
Fans were largely left impressed, and so was Corey Graves, who spoke on his WWE After The Bell podcast about how much he loved Aleister in his new look.
“The World of Aleister, I think he’s a megastar waiting to breakout. But he was sort of, lost in the shuffle. We haven’t really seen him. And seemingly out of the blew this new vignette with the Book that he had, and it just stood out to me. It was so different to anything on our show… And I love this Aleister Black because it’s less, and I hate to use this word, gimmicky. “
He also mentioned that Aleister has had to reinvent himself a little because of his unavoidable comparisons with The Undertaker due to the gimmicks he had been given in the past.
“The Undertaker owns that world [What Aleister’s last character tried to be]. Undertaker is such an icon, anybody who does anything remotely dark or relative to that vibe is gonna be compared to the Undertaker. That’s due to nobody’s fault, that’s just the guy. Undertaker is the dude, no matter what. So, to Aleistter’s credit, he has had to reinvent himself a little bit. Tweak things based on that 2-minute video that I have seen. This to me sounds like Aleister, the man that we know; who is incredibly intelligent, charismatic, deep thinking…”
That’s just about a fair assessment. It is pretty evident that WWE fans cannot wait to see what Black has in store for them next. And from what we have seen so far, it looks like WWE has done a pretty good job (fingers crossed!).
Follow our dedicated WWE page for instant WWE news and updates