(Special shoutout to the immensely talented and uniquely extraordinary Chappell Roan for song lyrics that adhere to my very soul. Her beautiful music is the soundtrack to this feud in my mind. If you’re a fan, perhaps you’ll be able to both see why and uncover a few easter eggs as you follow along. All love.
Kris Statlander.
Willow Nightingale.
A couple short months ago, these two names mentioned together (or not) induced nothing but smiles on the faces of wrestling fans all over the world. Since they each arrived in All Elite Wrestling and even before, they represented all that was good. Our hearts skipped a beat when we heard their upbeat and heroic music and our pulse raced with the feelings that they each filled our souls with every week. So strong in fact, I’d suggest that you’d have had to stop the world just to stop feeling them. And who would want to do that?!
On their own, we saw some incredible matches. Both were allowed to be themselves on screen and fans came flocking. It’s amazing how natural a character appears when there is so much of the human being portraying them shining through. The passion seeps out in the ring. The love for the business seems more real because it is! The commitment is never questioned. They feel real because they ARE real. We just wanna get to know them.
With how loved both extraordinary women had been, it’s only natural that they’d be led together. Thanks in part to that smarmy and beautifully calculated Stokely Hathaway, we got to watch a new age superpowers team rule the women’s division for a short but worthwhile time. But as so often happens in professional wrestling, good times don’t last between ideal partners. Historically, it’s just bad news. As most of us might have guessed, the implosion was authored by Stokely himself. Some might call him jealous, but I think he just has a kink for watching…ruin at his own hand.
Stokely gets his kicks sowing evil seeds and causing the utmost chaos in the company that welcomed him just over two years ago. His past deeds reflect this behavior, and none of us should have been surprised to see the partnership between Stat and Willow implode, but it still stung. And things have only gotten more personal and more contentious since that memorable turn. Willow has taken the worst of it without a doubt. Today, she fights for revenge. She’s gotten so close but seems to always just lose it.
Is her day coming? Or is she ultimately headed for more heartache? I think we’ll soon find out.
The story has been authored beautifully from the beginning. Sure, the Stokely addition and ultimate result could be argued as predictable, but for a long time, I went back and forth on who I thought might actually turn on the other. Maybe others didn’t, but what can I say? I immerse myself into these stories. AEW let it play out long enough that it did cause a visceral reaction when it was revealed that Kris Statlander was the one under Stokely’s thumb all along. The crowd popped huge when she finally put her canine teeth in the side of Willow’s neck.
As they should have. It was a massive moment!
The fans had questions, as we should have. Credit where credit is due, Statlander’s reasons were logical and her actions actually well overdue. Her presence is that of a top heel. She’d just never been given the chance. It’s an old school wrestling story if there ever was one. Menacing heel versus white meat babyface. A tale as old as time and one that always works. Stat said she was tired of always being depended on as the one to “save the day.” In other words, she had always been a good, good girl. No longer.
With Stokely in her ear, Willow’s life has been made ridiculously difficult and even more painful since that first contentious encounter. She hasn’t been given a moment’s peace. A once beautiful friendship – one that seemed so natural – has turned into a bitter blood feud in just a matter of weeks. I’m sure she tries not to care, but like anyone else carrying a recent betrayal, it hurts her feelings. And more than that I’m sure.
It’s been a great ride in both storytelling and entertainment – one of my favorites AEW has ever done. And I say this as they carry on their feud in the arguable shadows of the epic that has been Toni Storm and Mariah May’s masterpiece, not to mention the slowly advancing stories between Mercedes Mone and Britt Baker and Deonna Purrazzo and Thunder Rosa.
How about just one second to appreciate the work the women of AEW and ROH have been doing of late, huh? It’s awesome stuff. And it’s about time that so much focus has been given to so many captivating stories up and down that outstanding women’s roster. Anyway…
Whether the blow off to this match happens in London or in Chicago, it should place the ultimate exclamation point on a feud that has been rock solid from the jump. Dark Stat in all her raging emo glory. Stokely with the grimiest smile in wrestling. And Willow walking that walk…
I have no doubt that whenever we’re gifted with the blowoff (if it’s even the final match), we’ll leave satisfied. How could we not? The story has taken two of the most upbeat and bubbly on screen characters in all of AEW and changed them on such an indelible scale. Even Willow. She’s evolved in a beautiful way and will leave this feud in a much better place than she was when she walked into it. It’s a testament to both her character work AND her work in the ring.
To take sunshine and turn it to ash is one hell of a trick. No more dancing. No more high fives. No more smiles. Not for either of them. Not until it ends. There is no more happiness. Just the opposite.
They weren’t always this way. But when you’ve gone through what they have together, maybe bitter feels better? Maybe violence feels better? Maybe that’s the only solution?
They’re sick in the head. You’d have to be to be heading for the collision that they are. Only one woman is going to walk out, and I don’t believe it will be either of the women we knew before this all began. It’s not their fault. This is what hatred does. This is what revenges does. It blackens the heart and weathers the soul. Not completely. But a little.
Kris Statlander.
Willow Nightingale.
Soon, a friendship birthed of sunshine and rainbows will die a death of hatred and bitterness. They’ve had my attention since the jump and that’s only intensified since. It started with a fated friendship but “even upside down, it’s beautiful somehow…”
