If you liked Jonathan Bailey in Wicked, please consider: This Catboy

Although he had already gained quite a bit of fame as Anthony Bridgerton Bridgerton and for his steamy queer role opposite Matt Bomer in Fellow travelersJonathan Bailey shot into the consciousness of a lot of people this past weekend as Evil drove his way into the box office and charmed his way into our and Oz’s hearts as the dashing Fiyero. But we have a recommendation for the new convert: what if he had cat ears, a tail and a giant magic wand?

Yes, Bailey’s secret best role can’t be found on screen or TV – but instead in the critically acclaimed MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV like perhaps one of the video game franchise’s most universally beloved supporting characters period, 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 XIVreboot in 2013, A Kingdom Rebornan avid researcher of a mysterious structure known as the Crystal Tower, with links to its ancient history revealed as players journey through a series of raids that take place on its floors. However, the character would not be voiced until 2018, when G’raha was elevated to become a major figure in the then-upcoming expansion, Shadowbringers. There, he becomes a protagonist in the game’s primary narrative and requests the help of the player’s Warrior of Light and their allies to help another world in XIV‘s multiverse from a cataclysmic threat before joining these allies as a regular supporting character in the following expansions, 2021’s End walker and this year’s Dawnrail.

G’Raha is the kind of character that is almost laser designed to be glomped on by Final Fantasy‘s fan base. Deeply in love with the player character, his steadfast belief in their abilities and his adventurous curiosities – on top of his frequently expressed desire to not just see the world, but see it by your page – has made him one of the game’s most popular characters and the subject of reams upon reams of fanfiction dedicated to making even the tiniest hint of romantic subtext in the game as textual as possible (out of some 40,000 Final Fantasy XIV-related works on Archive of Our Own, over 5,000 have G’raha among their associated 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 friend and world-weary mentor, his savage Shadowbringers the story takes him on, it makes him so popular. Much of that is down to Bailey’s voice work, which imbues the character with a serious playfulness that simultaneously XIV‘s poetic Shakespearean dialogue style feels smooth and natural, and in the next charming grandiosity. G’raha is both a larger-than-life, omniscient magister who’s helped save the world multiple times, and also your lovably goofy best friend who’ll probably show just as much joy biting into a burger the size of his head , as he is whipped away on your next adventure. Bailey plays that balance with a resolute charm that’s not just easy to make you weak at the knees if catboys are your thing, but reflects the kind of bright-eyed, hopeful wanderlust that sits at the heart of Final Fantasy XIVs great tale.

In a play about the triumph of light over darkness, about eternal faith in the face of despair, few characters embody what G’raha does, and Bailey asserts that in every line you get to hear him. And that’s also something he gets about G’raha’s appeal. Although the actor has rarely spoken about his performance in XIVearlier this year he opened up in an interview with BAFTA about how aware he is that the character has become beloved by his fanbase – and how, in an effort not to step back from the role while balancing his stage and screen career, he managed to rekindle his tongue-in-cheek between takes for Final Fantasy XIV and appears in Company. And isn’t that kind of dedication charming in itself?

Hopefully, it’s something Bailey will maintain as his Hollywood star is set to shine even brighter (in addition to Evilthe sequel, he is in charge of the next one Jurassic World movie with Scarlett Johansson next year), and we’ll be adventuring with G’raha for years to come, wherever Final Fantasy XIV takes us next. But while we wait to see Evil part twothere’s never been a better time to get your Bailey fix by jumping in FFXIV. I mean, you sat through an almost three hour movie musical. What’s a few hundred hours of play on top of that?

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