YMMV / Alexa Bliss

• Arc Fatigue: The combined time period of her first two reigns as Raw Women's Champion (separated only by a 8-day reign by Sasha Banks) was frequently criticized due to it being overly long and plodding (it lasted almost an entire year). It doesn't help that she spent several months not defending the title (from October 2017 to February 2018).
• Audience-Alienating Era: The mid 2017-2018 period of her time as Raw Women's Champion isn't too fondly remembered unless you're a Bliss diehard - since she was booked to be much stronger than she had on Smackdown, killed Bayley's momentum by defeating her for the title in their first match and kept dominating storylines. That period killed a lot of the fan reactions that had explosively cheered when she was drafted to Raw.
• Awesome Music: Glitter, Glitz, Sparkle, BLISS, accompanied by a suitably kickass (yet adorable) theme. And the heel remix is equally as good, if not better. Doubly so for her corrupted Remix as the Fiend's sidekick The Fury. Triple that for her new psycho child like music after splitting from The Fiend known as The Evil Is Mine. Also with her hybrid character and present gimmick Fight Me.
• Base-Breaking Character: As stated in Broken Base, her reputation in the IWC became very polarizing when she won the Raw Women's Champion. While she was largely well-liked as the Smackdown Women's Champion, Bliss had gained a large number of detractors by the fall of 2017, eventually exacerbated by the following summer after once again becoming champion. Numerous people think of her as a good in-ring competitor with extraordinary mic skills while others dislike her for not being as innovative and hard-working as the other women on the brand (ex. Mickie James, Sasha Banks), and even people who consider her a good in-ring competitor considered that the overexposure of her long reign caused Arc Fatigue, not unlike another female wrestler widely agreed to be a good in-ring competitor who spent a long time being champion, Charlotte Flair.
• Broken Base:
  • Her heel turn was initially divisive. Some welcomed it, given that Alexa wasn't doing much beforehand - and the turn showed that she could play the heel role effectively. On the other hand, she played the face role extremely well too and many were annoyed that WWE didn't capitalise on her being another Kid-Appeal Character like Bayley - especially given that she was a Token Wholesome as a face and became Hotter and Sexier as a heel. Averted when she went up to the main roster, where her heel character proved to be a big success with fans, winning the Smackdown Women's Championship twice and getting an increasing amount of fan support. But after her controversial run as Raw Women's Champion, some fans have looked back to the sparkly gimmick and wished more had been done with it (especially in light of Alexa's comments that she was basically forced into the heel role because the writers hated writing for it and claimed it "wasn't relatable.")
  • She fell back into this territory rather quickly after being drafted to the Raw brand as part of the Superstar-Shakeup, especially after the disaster that was her feud with Bayley. Much of the problem comes down to the fact that, unlike on SmackDown, where Alexa was presented consistently as a cowardly heel who compensated for her weaknesses by cheating, she's defeated face after face totally clean in title defenses after constant manipulative attacks and tag team losses took up most of every single lead-up. Not helping matters is that, instead of regularly using her fairly unique-looking Twisted Bliss to put her opponents away, most of her victories now come off a snap DDT, which comes out of nowhere and brings the match to a screeching halt. In fact, she's just as likely to break out Twisted Bliss every once in a while or use the even worse alternative of a forearm smash, which looks so implausible from someone as small as she is that it sometimes comes off like a regular slap to the face. Some even criticize her for being reticent to take bumps or use any of her athleticism which was noted since NXT to actually work high-quality matches, whether or not they think she's actually capable of such. Combine that with the fact that she's held the Raw Women's Championship pretty much the entire time since she arrived, and it's easy to see how people might complain about her being overpushed (special mention goes to the fact that she did not defend the title for well over four months during her 2nd reign). Even after losing the championship definitively to Ronda Rousey in 2018, Alexa got credited in her rematch with having her offense sold by Ronda before anyone not named Nia Jax, as well as getting her personal dream match with Trish Stratus at the all-women's Evolution pay-per-view (though this was later nixed due to her suffering from multiple concussions), while others on the Raw brand like Sasha Banks, Bayley, and Ruby Riott have been starved from consistently meaningful work for months.
  • Her Demonic Possession gimmick from 2020 to 2022, with opinions ranging from finding it Creepy Awesome and entertaining, to others finding it tiresome and too gimmicky. Discussions online tend show fans are pretty split between those who thought it was a great reinvention that gave Alexa way more to work with, to those who think it wasn't a bad gimmick but has long since became an Arc Fatigue, and those who never enjoyed it and want her Goddess gimmick back. Not helping matters is it was tied heavily into her association with The Fiend, only for him to be released from WWE and thus no longer having a point behind it, and the fact it destroyed her friendship with Only Friend and Morality Pet Nikki Cross.
  • This is especially due to people's overall not-so-swell opinion of her Fiend-Lily gimmick versus the massive merchandise sales. Yes, the one-and-only Lily doll. It sold so well that it currently ranks as number 3, only behind "Stone Cold" Steve Austin and John Cena. Yes, she even surpassed the more popular New World Order and WWE's current top guy Roman Reigns. Out of the active current roster, she sold the most. If that isn't enough, the Lily doll remained sold out at certain points in time.
• Catharsis Factor: Anyone who had grown tired of Bliss' Raw Women's Championship reigns would have been immensely satisfied to see her be annihilated by Ronda Rousey during her final match as champion at the 2018 SummerSlam.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Bliss was initially popular as a wholesome babyface in NXT but tended to get overshadowed by the Four Horsewomen's ongoing storylines with each other. Then she began to get noticed by fans when she turned heel and managed Blake and Murphy, as she steadily got over based on her promo and character work to the point she overshadowed both her charges. Once they broke up Bliss became an integral part of the NXT Women's division and challenged for the title several times while Blake and Murphy have failed to replicate their BAMFactor success as singles competitors.
  • Once winning the SmackDown Women's Championship she became this on the main roster, as her improvement in matches, her spectacularly GIF-able expressions and a series of killer promos caused a lot of fans to recognise her talent despite being a heel.
  • Really noticeable on her Raw debut, where she gets a huge positive reaction despite being a heel, and actually gets cheered when she mocks Sasha and Bayley's friendship segment. Bear in mind, they're Raw's two top female babyface. This began to fade away after she won the Raw Women's Championship though (see Broken Base).
• Fan Nickname: Some fans attribute a Parts Unknown for her - The University of Bliss. She was also dubbed "Tinkerbell" during her sparkly gimmick days.
• Growing the Beard: While Alexa had been held as an up and comer with lots of potential, her title feud with Bayley on NXT was regarded as the point where she started looking like a serious contender. When she was called up to the main roster and won the #1 contendership to face Becky Lynch, the fans rejoiced.
• Harsher in Hindsight: The phrase "The evil is mine!" has become this with Bray Wyatt's release from WWE, meaning she's now the only thing that remains of the gimmick. Subverted with his 2022 return though.
• Love to Hate: Alexa made a good career playing an Alpha Bitch.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • This facial expression appears to be headed that way.
  • "Five Feet of Fury" became a Red Baron — in fact, it's now one of her standard Twitter and Instagram hashtags for her posts.
• Moe: In her NXT 'Fairy Princess' days, she was short, a Perpetual Smiler, wore a tutu and blew glitter everywhere. Even the commentators would Squee about how cute she was.
• Most Wonderful Sound: "Glitter, glitz, sparkle, bliss!"
• My Real Daddy: Since being drafted to the main roster, many fans believe (and even Alexa herself strongly implies in interviews) that the SmackDown writers portray Alexa better than the ones from Raw, which is supported when Alexa went from a Love to Hate Breakout Villain to an over-exposed and very divisive generic Heel character immediately after she was drafted to the latter brand in 2017. When Alexa was drafted back to SmakDown late into 2019, she even managed to regain the fans' good graces.
• Never Live It Down: The infamous "Bayley: This Is Your Life" segment.
• Nightmare Fuel: The storyline of her being corrupted to joining Bray Wyatt throughout mid-2020, culminating in her appearance in the Firefly Fun House happily poisoning Ramblin' Rabbit and then briefly appearing with glowing white eyes before she laughs at Bray beating Ramblin' to a pulp. Taken to new HORRIFYING levels on the June 7 2021 episode of Raw when Lily (her creepy doll she introduced after Mania 37) haunted Shayna Baszler into a dark room in the vein of Chucky and Annabelle!
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Being paired up with Nikki Cross, in a storyline that finally broke the trend of Alexa transparently betraying her allies and culminated in the two of them rescuing the Women's Tag Team Championship from universally-loathed incumbents The IIconics, brought a considerable swathe of lost fans back to Alexa's side and made her more of a Base-Breaking Character again rather than an all-out pariah. A good title run, coupled with fan sympathy after another horribly-timed injury on Alexa's part, pulled her all the way out of the heap to the point of crowds greeting her with booming "LEXI!" chants.
• Rooting for the Empire: It is fairly common for Alexa to be cheered over her opponents despite being portrayed consistently as being an Alpha Bitch with few if any redeeming traits. This has been said by many to be a result of a wider problem that many fans feel WWE has great difficulty making likeable Faces compared to cool Heels.
• She Really Can Act: A lot of fans were very impressed by Alexa's acting as part of her storyline with Bray Wyatt, specifically noting that she's really good at appearing to be brainwashed or possessed.
• Smurfette Breakout: While Blake and Murphy are good wrestlers, their team lacked much character prior to Alexa's joining them. Once her character work and promos took off she began to spark a lot of interest and reactions from the NXT fans — more so than her charges, the NXT Tag Team Champions. After the BAMFactor split, Alexa began chasing the NXT Women's title for a while before being called to the main roster during the 2016 draft while only Murphy has had success on the main roster, and even then, it’s on 205 Live, widely regarded as WWE’s C-show.
• Special Effect Failure: At the end of her match with Charlotte Flair at Extreme Rules 2021, when Alexa was raging after Flair tore Lilly apart, eagle-eyed fans spotted a tablet in Alexa's mouth, presumably to create a foaming effect that did not go off.
• Squick: Any time she bends her elbow back to make it look like her arm is broken.
• Take That, Scrappy!: As stated in Catharsis Factor above, the 2018 SummerSlam saw Bliss finally drop the Raw Women's Championship to Ronda Rousey in an extremely one sided match that barely even lasted four minutes.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Has a small tendency of taking one character and performing really well with it only to get it shelved in favor of another, resulting in this reaction recycling and undermining itself. First some fans were disappointed that she didn't use the redneck gimmick when she debuted, having won a good amount of her fans from the promo video showing it. But then her Everything's Better with Sparkles gimmick was well received as a unique and original character who had potential to become a good Kid-Appeal Character like Bayley, so this wasn't too glaring. And then many were disappointed when that got replaced with a rather generic sexual heel, but she's taken and owned the heel persona to the point of becoming arguably the most popular (and believably successful) female wrestler in the entire company despite being surrounded by superior in-ring workers — much like her favorite wrestler Trish Stratus. However, the constant championship push and glaring mismanagement with how her character interacts with the superior workers around her since she's gone to Raw has caused a noticeable break in that reception, and WWE was unlikely to change her established superstar persona to something else that can continue the cycle until late 2019 when she finally turned Face again via her Odd Friendship with Nikki Cross.
• Took the Bad Film Seriously: Despite the awful 'Bayley - this is your life' segment, it was noted that Alexa tried her best to commit to it and make it work. As noted on the 'Funny' page, a highlight was how Alexa worked the crowd and tried to get them invested in it.
• WTH, Costuming Department?: Her hair on NXT from late 2015-2016 looked especially bad - with the red extensions in particular looking more like elastic bands than actual hair. Understandably, by the time of her main roster debut, she'd switched her look up a lot.