WWE Superstar Johnny Gargano has opened up about the emotional reasoning behind his unusual planking storyline on SmackDown, revealing how his character’s struggles with failure were connected to his desire to make his young son proud.
The storyline, which ran from February through September 2026, saw Gargano repeatedly lying motionless as part of an extended character arc. In a video published on his official YouTube channel, Gargano explained why his character had seemingly given up and what ultimately motivated him to stand up and start fighting again. “It’s complicated, but the easy answer is right there. I feel like everyone expected me to be that guy, and I tried to be that guy, and I couldn’t. I felt like I was letting a lot of people down, and I hated that.”
Gargano explained that one of the most emotional elements of the storyline involved his son, Quill, who watches WWE SmackDown and views championship victories through the lens of his love for video games. To Quill, winning a title means collecting treasure, and he would regularly ask his father whether he was going to bring that treasure home. “Even more so, I think you heard Quill [his son] ask in the vlog, ‘Did you get the treasure?’ Quill watches the show. He watches SmackDown, and he loves video games. In his head, when you win or get a championship like those, you get the treasure. It’s a treasure to him.”
Gargano recalled repeatedly promising Quill that he would do his best before leaving for SmackDown, only to suffer another defeat. He described the heartbreaking scenes that followed, with his wife, fellow WWE Superstar Candice LeRae, showing him their son’s reaction over FaceTime. “I don’t know how many times over the past year we would fly out on Thursday, and before I would leave, Quill would ask me, ‘Dad, are you gonna win? You gonna get the treasure?’ And I would tell him, ‘I’ll try, man. I’m really, really going to try.’ Then I would have a match on SmackDown, and I’d lose. I’d come back through the curtain, and Candice would have the phone in her hand. She’d be on FaceTime, and she’d show me Quill just crying, bawling his eyes out, saying, ‘Daddy lost. He’s not gonna get the treasure. No, there’s no treasure.’”
Gargano explained that the repeated disappointment became central to his character’s mindset. Rather than continuing to pursue success and risk another failure, he convinced himself that avoiding the challenge altogether would be easier than letting down the people who believed in him. “That broke me. So, in my head, it was easier to just not try than to get up and fail and let people down. I’m not saying that’s right. I’m not saying that’s the way to go about things, but that’s what I did.”
The turning point came in Cleveland, where Gargano received an opportunity to challenge for the WWE Championship. He explained that the crowd’s reaction when he finally stood up reminded him that fans had not abandoned him, even during his character’s lowest moments. “I don’t know. Cleveland changed everything. I got a chance at the WWE Championship, a title I’ve dreamed of my whole life, and I took a leap of faith and stood up. That reaction to me changed everything because it showed me that it didn’t matter. It showed me that people still believed in me. Even when I gave them no reason to, they still believed in me.”
Gargano concluded by explaining how that experience renewed his character’s determination to keep trying, regardless of the possibility of failure. “And that just showed me, I don’t know, if I try, if I really, really try, I think I can make anything happen.”
The explanation adds a more personal dimension to one of WWE’s more unconventional storylines of 2026, with Gargano framing the months-long angle around disappointment, self-doubt, and the importance of finding the courage to try again.
