Although he had already gained a good deal of renown playing Anthony Bridgerton in Bridgerton and for his steamy queer role opposite Matt Bomer in Fellow Travelers, Jonathan Bailey shot up in awareness for a lot of people this past weekend as Wicked whisked its way into the box office, charming his way into ours and Oz’s hearts as the dashing Fiyero. But we have a recommendation for the newly converted: what if he had cat ears, a tail, and a giant magic staff?
Yes, Bailey’s secret best role can’t be found on the silver screen or on TV—but instead in the critically acclaimed MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV as perhaps one of the video game franchise’s most universally adored supporting characters full stop, G’raha Tia.
A red-haired member of the game’s feline species, the Miqo’te, G’raha was introduced as part of a supporting endgame questline in the base version of XIV‘s reboot in 2013, A Realm Reborn, an eager researcher of a mysterious structure known as the Crystal Tower, with links to its ancient history revealed as players journeyed through a series of raids set within its floors. The character wouldn’t be voiced however until 2018, when G’raha was elevated to become a major figure in the then-upcoming expansion, Shadowbringers. There, he becomes a major character in the game’s primary narrative, requesting the aid of the player’s Warrior of Light, and their allies to help another world in XIV‘s multiverse from a cataclysmic threat, before joining those allies as a regular supporting character in the following expansions, 2021’s Endwalker and this year’s Dawntrail.
G’Raha is the sort of character almost laser-designed to be glommed onto by Final Fantasy‘s fanbase. Deeply enamored with the player character, his steadfast faith in their abilities and his adventurous curiosities—on top of his frequent expressed desire to not just see the world, but see it by your side—have made him one of the game’s most popular characters, and the subject of reams upon reams of fanfiction that are dedicated making even the slightest inkling of romantic subtext within the game as textual as possible (of some 40,000 Final Fantasy XIV-related works on Archive of Our Own, over 5,000 feature G’raha among their affiliated tags).
But it’s more than just G’raha being the player’s biggest fanboy that makes him charming, or the heady mix of eager-eyed friend and world-weary mentor his wild Shadowbringers storyline takes him on, that makes him so popular. A lot of it is down to Bailey’s voice work, instilling the character with an earnest playfulness that in one turn makes XIV‘s poetically Shakespearean dialogue style feel smooth and natural, and in the next charmingly grandiose. G’raha is both larger than life, an all-knowing magister who’s helped save the world times over, and also your affably goofy best friend who’s likely to show as much joy biting into a burger the size of his head as he is being whisked away on your next adventure. Bailey plays that balance with a resolute charm that isn’t just easy to make you weak at the knees, if catboys are your thing, but reflects the sort of bright-eyed, hopeful wanderlust that sits at the heart of Final Fantasy XIV‘s grand narrative.
In a game about light’s triumph over dark, about everlasting faith in the face of despair, there’s few characters who quite embody it like G’raha does, and Bailey nails that in every line you get to hear him. And it’s something he gets about G’raha’s appeal, too. Although the actor has rarely spoken about his performance in XIV, earlier this year he opened up in an interview with BAFTA about how aware he is that the character has become beloved by its fanbase—and how, in trying to not step back from the role while balancing his stage and screen career, he managed to inflame his tongue jumping between recording for Final Fantasy XIV and performing in Company. And is that kind of dedication not charming in and of itself?
Hopefully it’s something Bailey will maintain as his Hollywood star is set to shine even brighter (beyond Wicked‘s sequel, he’s co-leading the next Jurassic World movie with Scarlett Johansson next year), and we’ll get to go on adventures with G’raha for many years to come, wherever Final Fantasy XIV takes us next. But while we do wait to see Wicked Part Two, there’s never been a better moment to get your Bailey fix by hopping into FFXIV. I mean, you sat through a nearly three-hour movie musical. What’s another few hundred hours of gaming on top of that?
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