‘Sesame Street’ Introduces First Enigmatic Muppet Who Has Yet To Reveal True Intentions

NEW YORK—Renewing their commitment to diverse representation, the producers of Sesame Street introduced the show’s first deeply enigmatic Muppet character Thursday, a fuzzy, frail, and vacant-eyed monster who has yet to reveal his true intentions. “Despite our progress over the years, we realized Sesame Street had not yet found a way to represent mysterious, unsettling personas who speak in cryptic verse and invoke a sense of portentous doom,” head writer Ken Scarborough said of Rodolfo, a pale and perplexing puppet who in his debut episode hovers motionlessly in the background of every scene, eventually stepping forward to challenge the viewer with an inscrutable riddle. “We have Rodolfo looking up at the sky a lot, tearing absently at his fur, and counting backward from 10, over and over, for no discernible reason. This adds an air of authenticity to the character and will introduce children to the kinds of haunting and inexplicable figures they may one day find lurking in the shadows of their own lives. Longtime fans can also watch as beloved residents of Sesame Street like Big Bird, Abby Cadabby, and Elmo mumble warily to themselves in an attempt to discern whether Rodolfo is friend or foe, never really finding an answer.” At press time, children watching the latest episode had reportedly been driven to madness by the repeated deployment of Rodolfo’s catchphrase, “It’s coming…it’s coming soon.”