The Wyatt Sicks

After the return of Windham Rotunda to WWE—who worked as Bray Wyatt—at Extreme Rules in October 2022, he was accompanied by a mysterious character who Wyatt identified only as "Uncle Howdy", portrayed by Windham's real-life brother Taylor, who was previously known for performing in WWE as Bo Dallas. Uncle Howdy made numerous appearances, notably in segments involving Wyatt and Alexa Bliss's feud with Bianca Belair in January 2023—Bliss was previously involved in a storyline with Wyatt before Wyatt left WWE in 2021.^[2][3] Wyatt and Howdy last appeared together on the February 17, 2023, episode of SmackDown, where Wyatt and Howdy laid out Hit Row, followed by Wyatt challenging the winner of Brock Lesnar vs. Bobby Lashley, which took place at that year's Elimination Chamber, to a match at WrestleMania 39.^[4] This would also be Wyatt's final physical appearance as he was taken off television shortly afterwards due to an undisclosed illness. Uncle Howdy had one further appearance on the following week's episode of SmackDown where he confronted Lashley, who had won at Elimination Chamber, before the storyline was dropped due to Wyatt's indefinite absence. Wyatt died on August 24 at the age of 36, with Uncle Howdy subsequently removed from WWE programming.^[5] During the April 2024 documentary Bray Wyatt: Becoming Immortal, Taylor showed the unfinished ideas Windham had left. He also implied the return of Uncle Howdy, as seen during the ending of the documentary which saw Howdy's silhouette standing behind Wyatt's lantern. Prior to Wyatt's death, there had been online speculation that he and Howdy would be forming a new version of The Wyatt Family called the Wyatt 6 which would include real-life versions of his Firefly Funhouse puppet characters, which had been seen upon his Extreme Rules return and at the 2023 Royal Rumble.^[6]

In the beginning of 2024, WWE launched an alternate reality game nicknamed "Nightbird". Over the following months, they aired vignettes at live events and during commercial breaks of televised shows, accompanied by production glitches playing out to a Marti Amado song called "Nightbird". In addition, following WrestleMania XL in April 2024, short screen distortions appeared at various times during WWE programming, with each glitch displaying a QR code leading to websites containing imagery, minigames, and riddles that vaguely referenced the return of Uncle Howdy, in addition to his stable (very similar to how Wyatt returned at Extreme Rules 2022). In some cases, WWE's social media profiles and other avenues were taken over by Howdy. This included instances such as including a QR code for WWE 2K24 that appeared when launching the game.^[7]

At the end of the June 17, 2024, episode of Raw, the arena lights went out and a door appeared on stage, similar to how Wyatt returned at Extreme Rules 2022. The door opened to reveal Nikki Cross crawling from the door towards Wyatt's lantern, before standing up and directing the cameraman to go backstage where it was shown that numerous unnamed WWE backstage staff, several security personnel, and Chad Gable, had been brutally attacked.^[8] Erick Rowan, Dexter Lumis, and Joe Gacy were seen standing over the carnage at various points, before finally revealing Uncle Howdy, who led the group out onto the stage to Cross before grabbing the lantern and proclaiming "we're here" and blowing it out, similar to Wyatt. It was then revealed that the group was called the Wyatt Sicks (a play on words of "Wyatt 6 (six)"), with Cross, Rowan, Lumis, and Gacy portraying the respective Firefly Funhouse characters Abby the Witch, Rambling Rabbit, Mercy the Buzzard, and Huskus the Pig Boy.^[9][10][11] On the June 24 episode of Raw, Bo Dallas appeared and "being interviewed" by his alter-ego Uncle Howdy, Dallas lamenting his brother Bray Wyatt's death.^[12]

• 
  Uncle Howdy
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  Erick Rowan
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  Dexter Lumis
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  Joe Gacy
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  Nikki Cross

• The Wyatt Family

• Cagematch profile