WWE Has Forgot How To ‘Finish The Story’

WWE

Back at WrestleMania XL, Cody Rhodes defeated Roman Reigns to finish his story in the Bloodline Rules main event, winning the Undisputed WWE Championship for the first time.

The match was praised as one of the greatest main events in the history of the event, with the moment the sole defining moment of WWE over the past few years.

The main events of WrestleMania 39 and WrestleMania XL have been often compared to Marvel’s Avengers Infinity War and Avengers Endgame, with years of storytelling coming together in a major moment that rewarded long term fans of each respective product.

In the early years of the Paul Levesque era, WWE’s commitment to long-term storytelling was arguably WWE’s greatest strength, with the card for WrestleMania 39 being planned out as far back as the early Fall of 2022, and all naturally coming together.

However, WWE has been unable to reach the heights of WrestleMania XL in the years since, and as more and more questionable decisions are made, one thing is now pretty clear:

WWE has forgot how to ‘Finish The Story’.

The Bloodline Story Saved WWE

In 2020, Roman Reigns made his return to WWE television after taking several months off due to the shut down caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, but he did so as a heel, a role many fans had hoped to see him in for a number of years.

Following his return, Reigns was incredibly hands on with his creative after recent frustrations with his booking, which included such 2019 Vince McMahon genius as ‘The Big Dog’ mascot and being covered in dog food by Baron Corbin. It’s really hard to imagine why Reigns may have been frustrated.

Reigns’ return would lead to him taking on a new moniker in WWE; The Tribal Chief, and a few weeks later during his 2020 rivalry with Jey Uso, the Bloodline storyline officially began.

The story would make for great television for the rest of 2020, all of 2021 and the first half of 2022, but it wasn’t until the change in creative regime in the Summer of 2022, and Sami Zayn’s major addition to the storyline, that we would start getting the ‘cinema’ we all remember.

Sami joining the group, Jimmy Uso immediately accepting him and Sami having to win over Jey Uso over the next few months, leading to War Games where Sami would choose the Bloodline over his own best friend Kevin Owens, before ultimately pulling the trigger on Reigns at the Royal Rumble when Roman forced him to assault his best friend.

This all led to the perfect crescendo at WrestleMania 39, where Zayn and Owens defeated the Usos to win the Undisputed Tag Team Championship to end their record breaking run with the gold.

What made the moment so great was that, after years of Vince McMahon tearing up scripts on the fly, WWE finally saw out a long term storyline plan, with viewers being rewarded for watching the shows weekly.

Weathering The Storm With Cody Rhodes

The decision to then have Cody Rhodes lose to Roman Reigns the following night, even at the time, was a rather questionable decision.

Cody felt like the perfect person to dethrone Reigns for the belt at WrestleMania, and it was clear what WWE was setting up for; Cody Rhodes would return to the main event of WrestleMania a year later and avenge this loss to finally defeat Roman Reigns, and after the past 8 months, WWE had earned that goodwill to fans.

For the first time in a long time, fans were willing to ‘let it play out’.

The first sign of weakness would come in February 2024, when, just two days after Cody Rhodes seemingly cemented his spot against Roman Reigns at WrestleMania for the second year in a row, Seth Rollins and Cody Rhodes teased them potentially facing off for the World Heavyweight Championship at WrestleMania.

The segment was not taken at face value however, as fans weren’t going to be fooled into thinking Cody would win the Royal Rumble and choose to face Rollins at WrestleMania.

However, that week on SmackDown, Rhodes would indeed announce his intentions to step aside, offering his spot in the match with Roman Reigns up to The Rock instead.

The move felt straight out of the late 2010s Vince McMahon playbook, and fans were not happy that it felt like their investment over the past year was all for nothing as WWE threw away their long term plans for a cheap ‘moment’ at the final hurdle.

And fans let their voices be heard.

Whatever spin Paul Levesque and Nick Khan want to put on the WeWantCody situation in 2026, the company made an entire documentary at the time documenting that, in fact, Rock vs. Roman was planned for WrestleMania XL, and those plans changed due to fan backlash.

WWE would then weather the storm, ending with the version of WrestleMania XL we all saw on April 6 and 7, 2024, with the incredible moment that truly did feel like WWE’s ‘Avengers Endgame’.

However, much like Marvel Studios themself, that moment marked the beginning of the end for WWE’s focus on long term plans, and they have spent the years since shamelessly trying to recapture what made that moment great without knowing what actually made it great.

Where Did WWE’s Focus Change?

It’s hard to pinpoint where exactly WWE’s focus changed, but the beginning of the end can be traced to Bad Blood 2024.

When CM Punk and Drew McIntyre’s iconic Hell In A Cell match was bumped to the opening match of the show in favor of the Reigns and Rhodes vs. Solo Sikoa and Jacob Fatu main event, it was natural to expect a major moment would take place to close the show.

That’s exactly what it seemed like we got, when The Rock would appear for the first time since the Raw after WrestleMania with a subtle warning to both Cody Rhodes and Roman Reigns, where he threw up three fingers and left.

What did this mean? We didn’t know, and we had months of speculation about The Rock’s fingers waiting for his next appearance, which was announced for the Raw Netflix Premiere on January 6, 2025.

That night, the long awaited follow up to the Bad Blood angle was… nothing.

The Rock came out as Dwayne Johnson, put over the Netflix executives and shook hands and hugged Cody Rhodes on the show, with the two rivals laughing and sharing a drink backstage.

Dwayne would go into hiding for the next month and a half until he was called upon by Ari Emanuel to help sell tickets for the Elimination Chamber in Toronto.

Then, all of a sudden, WWE remembered that it had a story with Cody and Rock, with Rock offering to take Cody’s soul, but John Cena instead turning heel in what was an incredibly viral moment.

The last chance to save the story was at WrestleMania 41, but instead of The Rock appearing, we got Travis Scott and Travis Scott alone, and John Cena defeated Cody Rhodes to win his 17th World Championship in underwhelming fashion.

A moment that even a few years ago would have got the attention and love it deserved, now reduced to a cheap ‘viral moment’.

WWE’s Continued Pitfall Into ‘Moments’

Since WrestleMania 41, almost all goodwill the company had coming out of WrestleMania XL had evaporated, and now it seems like company is genuinely incapable of ‘finishing the story’ like it did back then.

Sure, there are still a lot of cool moments that make the fanbase happy, such as Seth Rollins’ SummerSlam cash in and the Bloodline reunion, but there are no real long-term storylines for fans to sink their teeth into, and it feels like you are no longer being rewarded for paying attention to the show.

The most egregious recent example was the ongoing saga with Rhea Ripley, IYO SKY and the Kabuki Warriors that began in October 2025.

The story had played out on television for six months heading into WrestleMania, where IYO would have faced Asuka and won after Kairi finally stood up to Asuka after months and months of abuse.

However, not only did that not happen, the match didn’t even take place at WrestleMania, and the story was never finished because Kairi Sane was released in the middle of the storyline.

Six months of television that fans were invested in pissed away just like that.

The 20 year story arc between Cody Rhodes and Randy Orton was not considered enough for this year’s WrestleMania main event, and Pat McAfee and Jelly Roll were added for the sake of making a ‘moment’.

After naturally reaching it’s conclusion when Roman Reigns defeated Solo Sikoa on the Netflix Premiere, the Bloodline storyline is back as a rehashed version of itself that very much reads in a similar desperate tone as Kevin Feige trotting Robert Downey Jr on stage to announce him as Victor Von Doom.

WWE Has Forgot How To Finish The Story

The recent departure of Ilja Dragunov brought to light the continued error of WWE ‘pushing the can down the road’, as we never even got to see he and Gunther go at it on the WWE main roster stage.

After years of chasing the Intercontinental Championship to incredible fan support, Sheamus was let go from the company before he could even win the title, making those years of investment in the chase all for nothing.

Even more recently, Oba Femi would go on the WrestleMania 42 post show and call out Roman Reigns, with Reigns responding by telling Oba ‘lets see how you do over the Summer’, a clear teaser that the two would face off at SummerSlam, which didn’t end up happening even after Oba won King of the Ring.

At this time in 2022, WWE knew what most of the match card for WrestleMania 39 would look like and stuck to plans, with Mania 39 being looked at by many as the best WrestleMania in years, and one of the best of all time.

Now, it seems that the company can barely put one foot in front of the other without tripping over itself.

For a company branded the ‘storytelling company’ whose boom period came about due to this exact phrase. In 2026, it seems as though WWE has forgot how to ‘Finish The Story’.

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