If you've been online at all in the past two years, you've undoubtedly heard of Raygun. Or, at the very least, you've seen a viral video of her jumping around like a kangaroo on a global stage.

Back in 2024, breakdancing made its historic debut at the Paris Olympics. It was a milestone moment that hip-hop dancers and B-girls and boys had been fighting for over decades. 

Naturally, many Australians tuned in to watch history in the making. What they got instead was Rachael "Raygun" Gunn taking the stage with a routine so deeply confusing it earned her a flat zero across the board from the judges.

True to form, the internet erupted.

Watch: Untold: Raygun: Breaking Badly Official Trailer. Article continues after video.

The memes were endless, the late-night comedy bits were ruthless and a massive wave of public mockery quickly took over social media.

But as the viral storm grew, the conversation shifted from lighthearted teasing into something much more sinister: widespread online accusations of corruption, rigged qualifiers and cheating.

Now, Netflix's new documentary, Untold: Raygun: Breaking Badly, addresses the entire saga.

Featuring interviews with Gunn herself, her husband and coach Sam Free, and prominent B-girls from the global breaking community, the documentary meticulously charts her trajectory from her early academic life and introduction to breaking, through her victory at the Oceania Olympic qualifier, to the brutal post-Olympic fallout.

While the timeline is comprehensive, for me, the most compelling section of the documentary focuses on her months of preparation leading up to Paris.

It is here that the film finally answers the one question the entire world was asking: Why did she choose that particular routine?

To the global audience and the breaking community alike, watching a seasoned competitive dancer perform such choreography on the world's biggest stage felt incomprehensible. The Olympic judges clearly agreed. 

However, the documentary provides some interesting context. 

The film reveals the severe mental anguish and paralysing impostor syndrome Gunn experienced while preparing for the Games. In the months leading up to Paris, Gunn and her husband had actually designed a highly technical routine. She spent relentless hours in the gym attempting to master heavy power moves — the athletic, dynamic elements that traditionally score high points in competition.

As the Olympics drew closer, however, she struggled to execute them. To sharpen her skills, Gunn competed in several tune-up events across Europe in the months leading up to Paris (clips from which have since been dissected and criticised endlessly online). 

She performed poorly at every turn. 

"The stress really started to come on," Gunn said in the documentary. 

"We're two months out and there's this looming pressure," Free added. 

Realising that her technical power moves were not landing and with the mounting media pressure going on in the background, Gunn and her coach made a drastic, tactical pivot: they decided to abandon the heavy technicality and instead let Raygun be herself. 

"Why don't we take the thinking behind this routine and then try to find something that was a bit more true to me," Gunn explained. 

Their strategy was to lean heavily into artistic creativity and inject a distinctly Australian flair into the performance.

Sadly, it did not pay off.

Beyond the choreography, Gunn also addresses the narrative that she somehow cheated or manipulated the selection process to reach the Games, all of which were fuelled entirely by social media chatter. 

Notably, several of her fellow Australian B-girls — who openly admit in the film to feeling embarrassed by the Olympic performance — validate that the qualifying process was legitimate and that the cheating allegations were categorically false.

"To be clear on that, the top Australian B-girls were at that event. And on that day, the day of Oceania, she was the best B-girl on that day," fellow B-Girl Flix mentioned. 

The doco also offers a sober look at the human cost of becoming an international punchline. Through intimate video diaries recorded during the peak of the backlash, Gunn opens up about the devastating toll the public harassment took on her mental health. 

In one quiet moment, she discusses starting new anti-anxiety medication and struggling to cope with a persistent, suffocating sense of panic.

"I felt like my whole life was just kinda crumbling before me in a way that I never anticipated and I was just trying to get through the day," Gunn explained. 

Watching the fallout unfold in real time makes one thing abundantly clear: regardless of what anyone thought of the performance itself, surviving that level of global scrutiny could not have been easy.

Untold: Raygun: Breaking Badly is now streaming on Netflix.

Feature Image: Netflix.