YMMV / Eva Marie

• Awesome Music: Eva might be...well, Eva, but kudos to CFO$ for giving her a great entrance track, "Time to Rise". The remixed version, which has added drums in the intro, is even better.
• Base-Breaking Character: Almost universally despised in her early years, she moved into this during her NXT re-debut. Half the base still hated her guts and thought she had no place in a wrestling ring. Others were happy that she at least tried to improve and supported her. No less a mind than Mick Foley vouched for her. This by and large snapped back into The Scrappy territory when she left NXT without any noticeable improvement.
• Best Known for the Fanservice: Granted, her character has always been seductive (and given her infamously less-than-standard in-ring skills, it was certainly even more pronounced than other female wrestlers), but it seems that the one moment everyone remembers from her 2016 run, in which she had the gimmick of faking multiple unfortunate incidents in order to avoid in-ring competition, was the one time she faked a Wardrobe Malfunction to avoid a match.
• Common Knowledge: "WWE released Mickie James, Chelsea Green, Peyton Royce and Billie Kay to make room for Eva to come back" - a common statement that sprung up after a vignette hyping up Eva's return in 2021. She had actually been hired back in 2020, and given their several highly profitable contracts (e.g. FOX, USA, Peacock, Saudi Arabia), WWE could've rehired Eva and not done any roster cuts with little to no difficulty if they wanted to. It's also extremely unlikely Eva has a say in who else gets hired and fired. Not to mention, roster cuts and call-ups/debuts/returns both taking place shortly after WrestleMania was a commonplace thing in the pre-AEW years. It seems to have been born from irritation at the fact that the WWE felt the need to cut several talented wrestlers, yet had room in the budget for Eva, which then mutated into them having cut several talented wrestlers to make room in the budget for Eva.
• Creator's Pet:
  • Played up slightly on Total Divas at first, where she was portrayed as a Too Dumb to Live Gold Digger who frequently got away with her epic fails. WWE appeared to be trying to invoke this by putting her on TV with minimal wrestling training. However she's not a straight example as she didn't get any wins or pushes, being used only as a Jobber or manager. Until she joined NXT and got pushed to the moon, anyway.
  • The fact that WWE persisted for so long with Eva Marie at all despite both her massive unpopularity and, let's be honest, complete lack of talent suggests that someone upstairs definitely had her back. The most likely candidates would be either Vince McMahon himself, or his right-hand man Kevin Dunn (based on their observed proclivities). Though even they got the hint eventually and let her contract run out.
• Fan Nickname: Inverted, as her mangled version of a Complete Shot has been referred to by a lot of her online detractors in the wrestling fandom as the "Complete Shit".
• Fan-Preferred Couple: For some reason, many fans would've liked to see Eva become a valet for a heel Roman Reigns. Both are Creator's Pets and hated for pretty much the same reasons, so many were interested in seeing how much heat the two would draw together. The fact she wouldn't wrestle in this scenario would also be a plus for her numerous detractors.
• Funny Moments: The time her below-mentioned hammy introduction got to her name.... and then revealed that she wasn't at the arena yet as she was stuck in traffic.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • The hatred of her by the fans has reached memetic levels a la Justin Bieber. After an episode of Total Divas showed her getting people's names wrong as a ring announcer, her being clueless became a meme. Essentially it would have her Comically Missing the Point with something wrestling-related.
  • Her forced Mary Sue introduction (see below) is gearing up to become this.
  • A popular meme during the brand split draft was that she had been drafted to Pornhub^* not helped by Vivid, the company that produced adult films starring Chyna and Sunny, sarcastically tweeting at her offering her a film "when her failed wrestling career dries up". It doesn't help that part of her entrance now consists of entering in a long robe and then taking it off, which puts a lot of focus on her ample breasts.
  • Eva's suspension led many fans to joke that she took her gimmick so seriously she willingly got herself suspended to avoid wrestling, not helped by the fact that she never returned to WWE television after this, disappearing into her NEM Fashion venture and B-movie acting roles. Some have suggested this might actually be serious, given the timing of this disappearance^* she was being pushed toward the SmackDown Women's Championship, her own assessment of her ring work as being terrible to the point she doesn't have a favorite match, as well as a recent sports panel show in which she defended pro wrestling when porn star Mia Khalifa dismissed it as fake.
• Misblamed:
  • Eva is much hated among wrestling fans, purportedly for WWE's attempts at giving her a mega-push despite her utter lacking of in-ring ability in the midst of the "women's revolution" era. Eva's own conduct, however, indicates complete acceptance of the fact that she's not a good wrestler as well as respect for wrestling itself. She's admitted on a podcast that her ring work sucked, she went to Brian Kendrick and then to NXT to try to improve, her own actions ultimately negated the mega-push on SmackDown Live, she tried for numerous ideas to get herself back on WWE TV as a non-wrestler before ultimately leaving the company as soon as her outside ventures got rolling, and she schooled Mia Khalifa with a reasoned, non-bitter defense of the athleticism and art form of pro wrestling on a sports talk panel. All the rightful blame for her failed experiment of a wrestling career would rest at the feet of the McMahons who tried to force the square peg of a Hollywood version of Sunny into the round hole of a manufactured Trish Stratus (which is ironically the exact opposite of how Trish became successful), and it can be argued that Becky Lynch inaugurating a WWE title as well as the rise of Alexa Bliss only got the space to happen after Eva herself torpedoed the whole thing.
  • As noted under Common Knowledge above, many fans blame Eva's re-signing for the releases of Mickie James, Chelsea Green, Peyton Royce and Billie Kay. Eva had been re-signed in October 2020, months before those other women were let go, and another wide spate of releases less than two months later would claim Lana and Ruby Riott. Not to mention the men which were part of those two massive rounds of cuts as well, including Samoa Joe in the first round and Braun Strowman and Aleister Black in the second, as well as the extremely close time proximity between the two Black Wednesdays, has given way to a far more serious theory about what's going on with the company which entirely disconnects Eva from any logical blame.
• Narm Charm: Her absolutely over-the-top and ridiculous entrance that premiered at the first WWE SmackDown after they reintroduced the brand split, where the entire arena was bathed in red light while a male old-school narrator-style voiceover described Eva in such a way that it made her sound like a Mary Sue. It got major heat from the crowd, but many watching at home admit to busting a gut laughing at it and that it was easily one of the best parts of the show. It was first tested out at NXT live events, albeit not as a voiceover; but with Eva forcing ring announcers Tom Philips and Eden Stiles to introduce her with it.
  Voiceover: From Concord, California, comes the most stylish, elegant, bewitching, eternally beguiling, contentiously charismatic, and fantastically fascinating woman to appear in this or any arena. Allow yourself to be seduced, enchanted, dazzled, and entranced by All Red Everything herself, Eva Marie!
• Never Live It Down: She lived in the shadow of her disastrous first performances in the ring. She's attempted to live it down by going down to NXT but never did for a good majority of fans.
• Periphery Demographic: She was actually quite popular with Total Divas audiences^note Though she was hated at first due to her original portrayal as a Gold Digger but is near universally detested by actual wrestling fans.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap:
  • She attempted this by getting more training and competing at NXT. Her X-Pac Heat has died down a little and some would argue that she's transformed it partially into genuine heel heat. There can be audible "let's go Eva" chants during her matches at NXT anyway. There's also a few who find her Love to Hate. Unfortunately, many fans also say that she has reached a point where she is almost completely unrescuable from the heap — just like how Star Wars: The Clone Wars couldn't completely save Jar Jar Binks.^note Funnily enough, at least one fan has posited a theory that Eva is playing up how terrible she is and is actually better than she's letting on, similar to the idea that's caught fire in the Star Wars fandom about Jar Jar secretly being a trained Force user and Sith mastermind. Unfortunately for Eva, that sort of thing is much easier to believe about a CGI movie character than a real life inexperienced pro wrestler. Especially since internet smarks typically aren't the type that forget or forgive very easily. Judging by her near-unanimous negative reaction upon her return to the main roster in 2016, her scrappy status looks to be set in stone.
  • Since being drafted to SmackDown even with it only being on for two weeks, Eva has actually gained some supporters for two reasons. One, as mentioned above her absolutely amazing entrance that is oozing with cheese and is blatant self-aware praise about Eva, along with her doing things like faking injuries/traffic delays and pulling her top down in order to get out of competing in matches. Second, in that it seems the WWE are actually taking her in the direction that fans wish they would take someone like Roman Reigns in the sense that they're taking a genuinely loathed and inexperienced wrestler and pushing them as a cowardly heel instead of a forced face. It's worth noting that her last match before the release - a 10-Diva tag at WrestleMania did show some visible improvement in her, but she wasn't in the ring long enough to properly judge it.
  • Largely undone however, similarly to Reigns ironically enough, by her violating the wellness policy and being suspended for 30 days after having the first four weeks of Smackdown Live's women division built around her. Like Roman the fans were less than pleased at a performer being given so much opportunity and then getting themselves suspended. This was amplified further when consensus was the women's division began to pick up steam and surpass RAW's the instant Eva was out of the picture, and considering that the three most over women on the main roster are on RAW ^note The fourth Horsewoman, Becky, being on SmackDown is no small feat (though to be fair the introduction of an actual title was just as much of a help in that sense). She also never appeared on SmackDown again and sat out the rest of her contract to focus on her new fashion line, seemingly confirming that Eva was only using WWE as a stepping stone and forever tarnishing her less-than-stellar reputation with the hardcore fanbase.
• Spiritual Successor: She's considered to be the 21st Century equivalent of Sable, a Faux Action Girl who gets by on Fanservice. It's actually unfortunate for her that she's working in an era where this character type is not only no longer a free ride to success, but actively despised by both casual and hardcore fans alike. It does make an excellent source of heel heat if properly applied, though.
• Unexpected Character: Show of hands, after all of the above, who would've ever expected to see vignettes on RAW promoting her return in 2021?
• The Woobie: As the seasons of Total Divas have gone on, viewers have come to see Eva as such. Whether the conflict with her family over her marriage to Jonathan was real, it's still very sad when Eva discovers that her father has cancer. It's later revealed that she's a recovering alcoholic who has massive issues with body image. Reports of her interactions with fans list her as one of the friendliest and most accessible employees too — with a general attitude of "It's a shame that someone as lovely as Eva is so bad at wrestling."
• X-Pac Heat:
  • During her first run with WWE she garnered more nuclear heat than the Trope Namer ever did. You know it's bad when Full Sail started chanting the name of her just-debuted jobber opponent. When she issued her title challenge to Bayley on the November 18 edition of NXT, the crowd was booing so loud that Eva couldn't get her words out and Bayley herself was trying to calm the fans down. There are two reasons for this: the first is, in the words of Taimapedia, her "propensity to make the first Sin Cara look botch-free", and the second is her lack of mic skills to make up for it. All the other recipients of X-Pac Heat currently in the WWE have one or the other, or maybe just a terrible character; Eva had all three, making her more hated than the rest of them combined.
  • Through some almost impossibly tone-deaf booking, WWE managed to garner a re-signed Eva a fresh new coating of loathing before she'd even re-debuted- first by, despite signing her again at the end of 2020, only officially announcing her return shortly after releasing several talented and popular but under-used women, including the legendary Mickie James (as mentioned under Mis-blamed this is not in any way Eva's fault, but is still a really bad move by WWE), and then giving her the gimmick of "Eva-lution" shortly after Mickie had given a shoot interview where she revealed that she'd been told by a backstage figure that female wrestlers "didn't draw" and there was no chance of WWE doing a follow-up to their critically-acclaimed all-woman "Evolution" PPV from 2018, which combined with Eva's existing reputation as an atrocious worker and an extended period of really awful booking for the RAW women's division, was a move that people saw as WWE rubbing their lack of interest in taking women's wrestling seriously in the audience's faces. And then it came out that WWE intended Eva's new gimmick (that of a model who'd worked really hard to become a wrestler) to be a face gimmick. Fortunately they realised at the last second that this was never going to work (since she'd already garned nuclear heat even before she'd made her first live appearance) and switched to pushing her as a heel the week before her redebut, but still, she never had a chance, and after all the fuss WWE had made about her return she got the axe less than half a year after redebuting.