He looks wounded out there. His cheeks are flushed. Palms are sweaty, knees weak, arms are heavy. Ryan Joyce is on a finish already. Single‑20. This is as human, as vulnerable, as vincible, as we have ever seen him on that stage. There’s a fearless crowd‑pleasing underdog out there playing like he’s got nothing to lose. And it’s not him.

So, Luke Littler, what do you do at your moment of greatest peril? When this world championship last‑16 game is teetering on a pinhead, when an unfancied opponent 22 years older than you is throwing absolute bombs, when everything has been tried and nothing has worked? When millions are slowly sitting bolt upright on their sofas, in anticipation of an almighty upset?

Related: Peter Wright rolls back years to dethrone Luke Humphries at PDC world darts

Well, if you’re Littler, you mop up the match with legs of 12, 13 and 14 darts, producing an average of 111 in the deciding set. You let out a feral roar, not the roar of a kid but the roar of a prizefighter, a prizefighter who has just come through one of the most bloodying fights of his life. You shake hands and take your curtain call from an adoring public. You dust yourself off. And you go again on New Year’s Day, secure in the knowledge that on this stage what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.

And Littler will be stronger for this punishing night in the People’s Palace, for solving a puzzle far tougher than anybody expected the world No 29 from Newcastle to set him. Three times Littler took the lead and three times Joyce pegged him back, grunting and harrumphing, skewering his doubles as if he wanted to kill them.

Of course, for seasoned viewers of the man they call Relentless, very little of this was staggering. Ignore the novelty Tetris shirt and Tetris walk‑on music. Ignore the unwieldy action in which he seems to release the dart from somewhere near his hairline. Actually, ignore that ranking as well, which would probably be a good deal higher if he didn’t have a crippling fear of flying that has prevented him from turning out at many of the European Tour events for which he qualified.

[17] Peter Wright (Sco) v Stephen Bunting (Eng) [8]

[4] Luke Littler (Eng) v Nathan Aspinall (Eng) [12]

[15] Chris Dobey (Eng) v Gerwyn Price (Wal) [10]

[3] Michael van Gerwen (Neth) v Callan Rydz (Eng)

All matches to be played 1 Jan 2025; times TBC

Because when the darts are sitting nice in his fingers, Joyce can fling arrows with the best of them: two major semi-finals, the scalps of Rob Cross, Michael van Gerwen and Nathan Aspinall on TV this year alone.

When they’re not, he can still kill you with the sort of lethal finishing that wins him legs he has no right to win. Even so, his record at Alexandra Palace since a 2019 quarter-final – three wins in five years – was surely relevant here, too.

Instead it was Littler feeling the pressure: lots of frustrated tugging on the shirt, lots of facial tics, lots of sucking on imaginary eggs. His scoring was as ridiculously fecund as ever: an average of 103, his 14 180s putting him well clear on the tournament list. It was on the outer ring that he looked fallible: just 35% there, including missed set darts, missed match darts in sets six and seven.

Plenty to work on, then, but also a growing sense of just what it will take to conquer here, the reserves of courage and bottle he will need to find. “Honestly, I think I went into 10th gear at one point there,” he said. “I had to. He threw everything at me. I just wanted him to miss.”

Littler still favourite, then, but the resurgent Van Gerwen is also assembling a serious body of work. Here he fought off a sizzling fightback from Sweden’s Jeffrey de Graaf, powering to a 4-2 victory in the more open half of the draw. And with seeds around him dropping like a north London phone signal, he may never get a better opportunity to end his six-year wait for a fourth world title.

Afterwards, he cut a less bombastic figure than usual. He talked about how much he was missing his kids. He paid tribute to the crowd. He even paid due deference to his next opponent, Callan Rydz, who has been playing some superb stuff. Something real has changed here: darts is no longer Van Gerwen’s alpha and omega, his sole reason for being. And yet somehow he seems more comfortable in his own skin than he ever was when he was dominant.

Stephen Bunting, meanwhile, is the cult hero in serious danger of becoming the real thing. Luke Woodhouse never stood a chance in a 4-0 whitewash, and certainly there would be few more popular winners of the trophy than this likeable Liverpudlian with a legendary social media game and one of the greatest walk-ons in the sport.

He plays Peter Wright next, who obligingly took Luke Humphries out of his path on Sunday night. For Bunting, talent, confidence and opportunity are moving ominously into alignment.

In Monday’s afternoon session, Nathan Aspinall powered past an out-of-sorts Ricardo Pietreczko 4-0 to set up a quarter-final with Littler, Rydz fought back to beat surprise package Robert Owen 4-3, and Chris Dobey edged past Kevin Doets. He will face Gerwyn Price when the quarter-finals get under way on Wednesday.