YMMV / Luke Harper

• Creepy Awesome: Internet-savvy fans really liked his ability to put on great matches with anyone, and the fact that his Discus Clothesline was a sweet way to put a guy down. These same fans also, on the other hand, found him very, very creepy. This really ramped up when he joined AEW as the Exalted One of The Dark Order.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Harper was generally considered by smarks to be the most outright talented member of The Wyatt Family- he was easily the best technical wrestler of the four, still intimidatingly large and powerful despite not being as huge as Erick Rowan or Braun Strowman, lightning-quick for his size, had excellent psychology and selling, and was a surprisingly good talker, especially after Bray Wyatt lost most of his credibility and people tuned out his rambling promos. Although Strowman's monster booking made him the most-popular member of the stable, a lot of fans still thought Harper deserved a much bigger push than he got. In fact, according to rumours, WWE took him off TV in 2017 because he was too over!
  • On a sadder note, it wasn't until after his tragic early death that the unbelievable outpouring of tributes for him from people all over the wrestling industry really revealed exactly how beloved Jon Huber was, a man who knew a lot of people and was liked by all of them, with nobody having a single bad word to say about him.
• Harsher in Hindsight: His entire interview with the AEW Unrestricted podcast can be considered this; according to Tony Schiavone it was recorded the day before his condition worsened, and the episode was published while he was in the ICU. In particular, Brodie talked about being unable to finish a workout on his exercise bike. This was one of the first symptoms of the illness that killed him.
• Heartwarming in Hindsight: While the Dog Collar Match that ended his TNT Championship run wasn't intended to be his final match ever, there is at least some solace in the fact that Brodie himself chose that stipulation both in and out of kayfabe, allowing him to have a send-off on his own terms. The non-kayfabe reason for the stipulation is extra poignant for Brodie, as he wanted to pay tribute to his favourite wrestling match: Greg Valentine vs. Roddy Piper at Starrcade 1983. It was also an incredible match from bell to bell, leaving everyone with an indelible memory of what a great worker he really was.
• Heartwarming Moments:
  • The "Brodie Lee Celebration of Life" tribute show episode AEW put together for him (on extremely short notice, since their planned episodes for the last episode of 2020 and the first episode of 2021 had been prerecorded so everyone could go home for the new year) was immediately considered the finest show of its kind ever produced, with the Dark Order paying homage to their fallen leader and everyone coming together to honour Brodie's memory and support his family.
  • Less than two days before the end of 2020, a Brodie Lee shirt ("Exalted in Heaven") was released on merchandise site Pro Wrestling Tees, with all proceeds from its sales going to support Jon Huber's family. The site crashed from the load, and in those two days it outsold every other shirt for that year.
• Memetic Mutation: It's ____day. You know what that means.^note Throughout his WWE run, Luke Harper tweeted nothing but this phrase every single day. It apparently came about because WWE required him to operate a Twitter account, but he didn't know what to do with it.
• Tear Jerker: His death at the age of only 41, from lung issues in no way related to his wrestling career, devastated everyone who knew him and all of his fans. He'd been in the middle of what looked like being the greatest run of his career in AEW, with fans eagerly awaiting his eventual return after being out for two months, so the news of his passing was absolutely shocking, generating a massive outpouring of grief - from both AEW and WWE, in spite of WWE's long history of treating wrestlers who leave for other companies as persona non grata - of a level that genuinely hadn't been seen in response to the death of a wrestler since Eddie Guerrero.
• Unexpected Character:
  • His return to WWE television on Clash of Champions 2019 took everyone by surprise.
  • Likewise, not many people picked Brodie Lee to be The Dark Order's Exalted One.^note Everyone assumed he was coming to AEW, but with several new signings coinciding with several new characters being teased at once, he was very much the long shot pick for the role — the majority assumed that Matt Hardy was going to be the Exalted One and that Brodie Lee was more likely to be Jake Roberts' new client (that ended up being Lance Archer instead). However, those who were familiar with what a good talker Lee was capable of being when given the chance did have him in as a likely pick.