WWE has been without its two biggest stars, The Rock and Roman Reigns, since early April. The former has been shooting a new film, doing movie star things and getting injured, while the latter has been taking some time off after dropping The WWE Championship and losing a singles match for the first time in more than three years in the main event of WrestleMania 40.
Fortunately, Triple H and the rest of the creative team have weathered their absence nicely, thanks in part to Drew McIntyre doing the best work of his career and some fantastic turns from other key players like Cody Rhodes and Damian Priest.
For those of you who may not be watching wrestling on a weekly basis, let me recap quickly. The Rock and Roman Reigns are part of the same real life legendary wrestling family, which their villainous characters refer to as The Bloodline. Collectively, that family has main evented more than fifteen WrestleManias over the last four decades.
Ahead of WrestleMania 40, they worked together to try and stop WWE’s top babyface, or good guy character, Cody Rhodes from finally winning The WWE Championship in honor of his father. He was able to overcome, however, and Roman and The Rock went on hiatus the next week with the implication being they’d return to reclaim glory.
In their absence, however, WWE has started moving their story in a different direction. Solo Sikoa, Roman’s younger cousin, has started systematically bringing in new family members, ones who are loyal to him. In addition, he’s pushed out longtime Bloodline OGs and close Roman Reigns allies Jimmy Uso and Paul Heyman and recently declared himself Tribal Chief. It all seems to be building to Roman Reigns returning and confronting his cousin Solo about what’s been going on.
