Recently, Jeff Hardy has teased showing a different side of himself after moving to Smackdown in the WWE Draft. A different ego, and with many fans wondering if this could be the WWE debut of a former Hardy persona in Willow, or perhaps a brand new character not yet seen before. What better occasion than this to look at some of the “darker” characters portrayed throughout the career of Jeffrey Nero Hardy.
The Demon From Down Under Willow the Wisp
The most notable of his other characters would have to go to Willow The Wisp aka Willow aka Wyldo Jinx. Willow is a masked alter-ego of Jeff that he described at one point as a “Super Heel”. Hardy’s Willow persona was first seen during the era of O.M.E.G.A, a smaller independent promotion run by the young Hardy Boyz before signing to the WWF, and was also used during some WWE enhancement matches in 1996 under the guise of Wyldo Jinx. Super fans of Hardy would see the character return during the virtually unknown online only run of the Hardy Show DVD series from the 2000s. Jeff spoke about the inspiration for Willow in the Hardy Boyz book Exist 2 Inspire from 2003, besides being inspired by his childhood love of Jushin Thunder Liger, Hardy had this to say of the Willow Origins:
“The name Willow the Wisp came from the Marvel Comics bad guy Will O’The Wisp, which in turn came from an English folktale about a guy who was murdered, and then his body was dumped into a swamp. His ghost became known as will-o’-the-wisp. It was a mischievous spirit that would appear as a bright light to which led travelers off the road and into the marshes...Willow the Wisp was supposed to be just pure evil.”
The most notable appearance of Willow would come in 2014, where a frustrated Jeff would in storyline quit Impact Wrestling, just to return a few months later as his masked former persona. This would be the biggest taste of Willow a television wrestling audience had ever received, and came fully equipped with puzzling promos that resembled a combination of spoken word poetry and villainous monologues you might see from DC’s The Joker or The Riddler.
Broken Matt Hardy And The Final Deletion
2016 saw the return of Willow yet again, when an Impostor Willow cost Jeff a match, only to be revealed later to be the debut of a new “Broken” version of Matt Hardy who was hellbent on “Deleting” his brother. This would all build up to one of the more popular episodes of Impact Wrestling of all time, The Final Deletion, in which Matt would successfully defeat his brother transforming him into an obedient and soul-less vessel known as Brother Nero. The Brother Nero Character is a more sadistic and violent version of Jeff Hardy, coming together when he was driven to the brink of madness by losing the Hardy name to his brother and then having to do his bidding before fully embracing his new role as Nero. Brother Nero existed because Jeff himself had become obsolete.
The darkest of all of Hardy’s personas is actually just Jeff, but finally as a true heel. At Bound For Glory 2010, during the main event for the TNA World Heavyweight Championship, Jeff joined up with the manipulative powers of Eric Bischoff and Hulk Hogan in a move that would eventually form the group known as Immortal. This would see Jeff portray himself as the Anti-Christ of pro wrestling and led to some of the darker promos of his career. This era is most notably remembered for the divisive Immortal Championship belt Hardy debuted for his heavyweight title run, and his match with Sting in which he was reportedly “too intoxicated” to wrestle, leading to one of the more embarrassing matches in TNA history.
It is interesting that all three characters at one point took place in TNA and or Impact Wrestling. but never the WWE in any major way before, possibly because of how valuable Jeff is as just classic fan-favorite Jeff Hardy. Jeff is one of the biggest babyfaces of this generation, so it makes sense for WWE to never want to turn him heel or cover up his very marketable and well-established face with a mask.
The biggest thing that separates Willow from all other versions of Hardy is that putting on the mask seems to really unleash a completely different side of Jeff’s charisma. While Hardy’s normal promo work has developed nicely over the past twenty years, he has always, and still does come across as reserved on the microphone, and Hardy coming off as down to earth when he speaks is one of the things that draws fans to him. As Willow though, Jeff is free to be a cackling trickster who speaks in riddles. The mask unlocks a much more unabashed Hardy, and that character on WWE television should lead to some more memorable moments from the man who has made a name for himself as one of the more captivating personalities of the last twenty years.