At WrestleMania 37 and the 2023 Royal Rumble, the future Night Editor unknowingly captured the closing images of The Fiend—and Bray Wyatt himself.

Long before there was Blackout Wrestling, the Night Editor was already photographing in the dark.

Bray Wyatt made sure of it.

Some wrestlers entered beneath spotlights designed to show every detail. Wyatt made the lights disappear. He stepped through smoke, shadows and thousands of floating fireflies, carrying a lantern that barely revealed the man holding it.

That was his gift.

Wyatt didn’t simply enter an arena. He changed the atmosphere inside it.

The Night Editor photographed him twice near the end of his WWE journey. The first came at WrestleMania 37 in Tampa, Florida. The second came nearly two years later at the Royal Rumble in San Antonio.

Nobody holding a camera on either night could have known what those photographs would eventually become.

Together, they captured the final match of The Fiend and the final televised match of Bray Wyatt.

The night The Fiend died

At WrestleMania 37, Raymond James Stadium was flooded in red as The Fiend emerged for his match against Randy Orton.

The photographs almost look as if they were taken somewhere beneath the arena rather than inside it. Red lasers slice through the darkness. The Fiend stands between the ropes like something summoned rather than introduced. In another frame, he launches through the air toward Orton, his striped pants and distorted mask briefly separating from the black background.

Then there is the image that contains the entire strange ending.

Alexa Bliss sits above the ring on an enormous jack-in-the-box. Orton is down. The Fiend stands beneath her as the stadium disappears into darkness around them.

Bliss’ sudden transformation distracted The Fiend, allowing Orton to strike with an RKO and win the match. WWE called it one of the most bizarre encounters in the company’s history. (WWE)

It became even more significant with time.

Wyatt later explained that, in his mind, The Fiend died that night in Tampa. The character was gone, never to return in its original form. (Fightful)

The Night Editor had unknowingly photographed its final moments.

One last walk through the darkness

Wyatt returned to WWE at Extreme Rules in October 2022, emerging through a glowing doorway with his lantern after months away. He was no longer simply The Fiend. He was Bray Wyatt again—more vulnerable, more human, but still surrounded by whatever waited beyond the light. (WWE)

Three months later, the Night Editor’s lens found him again.

At the 2023 Royal Rumble, Wyatt walked through the Alamodome carrying that familiar lantern. Thousands of phone lights hovered above him. In one photograph, his face barely emerges from the black while the lantern glows beneath it. In another, Wyatt raises the light toward an arena filled with artificial fireflies.

The match itself transformed under black light. Ring ropes glowed neon green. LA Knight’s gear flashed against the darkness. Bodies appeared and disappeared between purple beams as WWE presented its first Mountain Dew Pitch Black Match.

Wyatt defeated Knight with Sister Abigail. He then pursued him through the crowd, applied the Mandible Claw and watched as Uncle Howdy crashed from an elevated platform onto Knight below. (WWE)

It would be Wyatt’s final televised match. (Associated Press)

But perhaps the most powerful photograph from that night came after the monster had disappeared.

At the post-show press conference, Windham Rotunda sat beneath ordinary lights with his mask removed. He wore a backward cap, spoke into a microphone and smiled.

The lantern bearer was gone. The human being remained.

Wrestling’s last boogeyman

Professional wrestling will always have monsters. There will be masks, smoke, supernatural warnings and performers promising to drag their enemies somewhere worse than defeat.

But Bray Wyatt may have been its last true boogeyman.

Not because he was the final wrestler to embrace horror, but because he could still make an entire stadium surrender to it. Fans didn’t simply watch Wyatt’s entrance. They became part of it, raising their lights and waiting in silence for something to emerge.

His matches were debated. His stories sometimes became tangled inside their own mythology. But when the lights went out, none of that mattered.

He made people look into the darkness.

Windham Rotunda died Aug. 24, 2023, at 36. WWE remembered him as a defining performer of his generation, celebrated for his captivating presence and creativity. (WWE)

The Night Editor’s photographs now carry a weight they never possessed when the shutter clicked.

They preserve the red nightmare of The Fiend’s final match. They preserve Wyatt’s last televised battle beneath the black lights. And they preserve the quiet contrast of the man behind it all, smiling after the darkness had lifted.

The last boogeyman is gone.

But somewhere inside these frames, the lantern is still burning.