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.
We don’t know exactly when Roman is going to return, but it’ll almost certainly be as a surprise at one of WWE’s major monthly events. The two most likely candidates are this Saturday’s Money In The Bank (which I discuss here) or at SummerSlam in August. Fans are convinced and rightfully so that Solo’s recent attack on Roman’s longtime manager Paul Heyman, a character who isn’t normally involved in anything physical, was simply too brutal for Reigns to ignore. His character wouldn’t put up with that, nor would WWE want his character to seem like he would put up with it; so, therefore, he must be coming back soon.
But what does that mean for The Rock? Well, a certain percentage of WWE fans are convinced Solo Sikoa isn’t actually acting on his own. They think The Rock is ordering him to remake The Bloodline so when he returns, he’s in charge, not the longtime leader Roman Reigns. The People’s Champion, while being outwardly subservient to Reigns since his return last year, has also planted enough seeds of doubt to make it clear he’s not happy as a second in command. That’s likely especially true after Reigns lost at WrestleMania and likely in his eyes, dishonored the family legacy.
We don’t know exactly where any of this is going in the short-term, but the long-term path seems pretty clear. We are eventually going to get a Bloodline Civil War, likely with Roman Reigns and The Rock as leaders of rival factions of the family. Reigns will likely take the OG members Solo Sikoa kicked out, plus some other family members who left awhile ago like Jey Uso, and The Rock will take Solo Sikoa and this new army of vicious family members he has added including Jacob Fatu.
I think it’s unlikely we see The Rock and Roman Reigns return at the same time. I also think it’s unlikely The Rock, with all his movie star commitments, is going to work a significant portion of the year. So, I suspect we’ll see Roman Reigns return first, likely at SummerSlam in August. I think he’ll start feuding with Solo Sikoa for a few months and then we’ll see The Rock around Thanksgiving at Survivor Series. That would allow for a new injection of momentum into the storyline, and it would, in theory, allow The Rock to work the roughly four months between then and WrestleMania to build out a story and perhaps the most anticipated wrestling match ever against Roman Reigns at WrestleMania 41, which he's hinted at.
Of course, that’s all just still speculation at this point. So, we’ll just have to watch for clues each week and wait for these huge returns to come at some point in the future.
