She never screamed to be heard. She whispered instead, like a ghost in your hotel mirror or the creak in your grandmother’s attic. Isla Dawn wasn’t built for the machine. The machine cranks in rhythm — buzz-cut, steroid-bloated rhythms of showbiz brutality. Dawn glided into the WWE system like fog through a church window, gothic and eerie and strange. She didn’t belong. And that was her power.
Born Courtney Stewart in the rough edges of Balornock, a district in Glasgow that never made it onto travel brochures, she could’ve become a dancer, an actress, maybe a poet who self-published chapbooks and read them in the rain. She studied acting at Langside College, dreamed in dialogue, and chased footlights before she fell in love with steel ropes and suplexes. Wrestling found her in the same way tarot finds the brokenhearted — promising pain, mystery, and a chance to rewrite fate with your bare hands.
When she broke into the indie scene in 2013, the crowds didn’t know what to make of her. She wasn’t shiny or loud. She moved like a séance and sold pain like it was currency. Under the black lights of Tidal Championship Wrestling and Reckless Intent, she carved out a presence — not just a wrestler, but an experience. A spell cast with forearms and moonlight.
She toured Stardom in 2016, the 5Star Grand Prix offering her the kind of proving ground that buries the weak and crowns the obsessed. Her win-loss record was forgettable. But Isla wasn’t there to rack up W’s. She was there to learn how pain bends time and to figure out how to make a match feel like a prophecy unraveling.
WWE saw her. But they didn’t understand her.
They slapped on the name “Isla Dawn,” a character that sounded like it belonged in a haunted fairytale, and maybe that’s exactly what she was. A Grimm’s leftover. A sacrificial lamb that forgot to die.
Her NXT UK run was a slow burn in a company addicted to fireworks. She got fed to Asuka in a squash match back in 2017 — before the name, before the gimmick. It was a blink-and-miss moment. But if you looked closely, you saw something. A twitch. A flicker. The kind of twitch you get when someone’s about to snap, or speak in tongues.
Then came the black mist.
By 2021, Dawn was less wrestler, more witch. She summoned promos like rituals. Ouija boards. Tarot decks. No one else was doing that. WWE is a place where most gimmicks feel like used-car commercials with abs. But Isla Dawn? She was the real deal. When she spat black mist into a rival’s face, it wasn’t a cheap pop — it was a curse, whispered into the marrow of the match.
She feuded with Meiko Satomura — a woman who kicks harder than most people pray. Dawn lost. She kept losing. But she kept getting back up, every defeat another bone tossed onto the altar. The company gave her just enough leash to dangle her mystique, but not enough to win anything that mattered. And still, she haunted the corridors of NXT UK like an echo.
And then she found her coven.
In late 2022, Isla Dawn collided with Alba Fyre, a fellow firestarter from Scotland. Their feud melted into partnership, and The Unholy Union was born — two women, both touched by the old world, both drenched in gothic absurdity, both too damn good to stay buried in developmental hell.
Together, they won the NXT Women’s Tag Team Championship at Stand & Deliver. It was Isla’s first taste of gold. Finally, a title not won by politics or promos, but by grit and dark magic. They were drafted to SmackDown in 2023, and though the lights were bigger, Isla stayed the same — soft-spoken menace, long black hair framing a face that rarely blinked.
They feuded with the likes of Ronda Rousey and Shayna Baszler, big names with bigger bank accounts. Isla and Alba? They just wanted the fight. They wanted the moment. And at Clash at the Castle in their native Scotland, they got it. They beat Bianca Belair and Jade Cargill — corporate darlings — in front of their people. For one night, the Unholy Union ruled the kingdom.
But kingdoms fall.
They lost the belts at Bash in Berlin, and not long after, Isla Dawn was released — just another quiet casualty in WWE’s war against nuance. No press conference. No tribute package. One tweet. That’s all. Seven years of sacrifice reduced to a company footnote.
And yet, she smiled.
Because Isla Dawn was never meant to be a WWE product. She didn’t sparkle. She didn’t trend. She didn’t squeal her promos or pose with TikTok filters. She burned slow, like witchfire in a damp field. And she left behind more than belts. She left behind a vibe. A feeling. A thousand little girls watching NXT who now believe you don’t have to scream to be powerful — sometimes, you just have to stare.
Isla’s not done. She’s back on the indie circuit in 2025, reanimating herself in front of smaller crowds with louder hearts. You’ll see her again — in dark theaters and dingy rec halls, spinning curses out of collar-and-elbow tie-ups, dragging fans into her world one slow entrance at a time.
They’ll say she was misunderstood.
But maybe Isla Dawn understood something the rest of wrestling never will: You don’t have to win the world to haunt it.
Sometimes it’s enough to leave claw marks on the walls.
