After months of rumors, Eva Marie finally returned to WWE last week on Raw. Well, a vignette of the woman formerly known as All Red Everything did anyway. You'll have to wait a little while longer for the real thing. WWE didn't give away much about what it has planned for Marie. All the returning star said was that fans should expect the Eva-lution.
That might have sounded familiar to a few fans. That's because it feels a lot like a formula WWE has used time and time again. A formula that doesn't seem to work, but as Vince McMahon has demonstrated with a lot of things in the business, that isn't going to stop him from trying it again. You know, just in case.
Emma To Emmalina
Perhaps the most infamous example of this behavior, and the OG in terms of the examples covered in this article, revolves around Emma. Emma's time in WWE was tumultuous. The Aussie star was released in 2017 only to be hired back shortly after. A long time after that, Emma underwent a complete rebrand. It seemed promising at first. Vignettes would air each week teasing the arrival of Emmalina.
Those weeks turned into months. Not only was there no sign of Emmalina outside of the vignettes, but Emma wasn't making appearances either. Four months later, Emmalina walked out onto the stage, made an about-turn, and walked right back through the curtain. WWE then announced the transformation of Emmalina back to Emma, at which point the former Superstar once again disappeared.
Liv Morgan In A Bath Tub
McMahon clearly thought he was onto something via the bizarre Emmalina bit. Either that or the chairman just loves messing with people. Yeah, probably the latter. Liv Morgan was another target of this treatment, and her story might be even stranger. As seems to go part and parcel with an ineffective repackaging, Morgan's transformation also required her to be off TV for the better part of a year.
Morgan was ripped from the comfort of The Riott Squad and left to fend for herself on Raw. Her vignettes centered around Morgan being in a bathtub. That was never really explained. Perhaps someone on the team behind the idea just wanted to see Morgan take a bath. Regardless, when Morgan did eventually return to TV, it was to reveal that she had been having an affair with Lana. No, you didn't misread that. After the wild Lana love triangle angle fell on its face, Morgan's transformation, including her newly revealed sexuality, fell by the wayside.
Speaking Of Lana...
Lana actually underwent a similar transformation, although The Ravishing Russian's wasn't as wild as Emma's or Morgan's. It also played up an element of here real-life. Unlike filming vignettes that make no sense and lead to nothing, making a part of someone's real-life an integral part of their wrestling persona has been proven to work. For Lana, it was her ability to dance.
WWE still used the vignette treatment to make it happen. The short packages played each week and featured music that fans either found incredibly annoying or catchy as hell, and nowhere in between. Unlike all of the other examples mentioned so far, the character has stuck. Well, sort of. At least Lana didn't get released like Emma, nor did she revert back to her former character like Morgan.
Don't Forget Carmella
Yes, there's more. Other than Marie, Camella is the most recent example of WWE using the same recycled idea and vignette style to try and shake up a female star they have run out of ideas for. In this instance, WWE showed close-ups of a mystery woman preparing for her big reveal. The trouble is, thanks to those videos showing a distinctive tattoo, everyone knew who the mystery woman was. Despite the repackage, Carmella felt more or less the same. On this occasion at least WWE has stuck to its guns and appears to be pushing Carmella again judging by last week's SmackDown.
Mandy Rose deserves an honorable mention too. While she wasn't repackaged per se, the dodgy music and soft filter could have been applied to any of the examples mentioned above. In fact, the filter might well have been applied in Morgan's case. The one thing all of them have in common is a sense that someone backstage longs for a time prior to the women's evolution. All of them feel rooted in a time we thought WWE had left behind.
And the hits just keep on coming as was proved via Marie's return last week. The hope is that Marie has been training hard and when she steps back between the ropes, she will be able to hold her own with a whole new generation of stars. It's too soon to tell, but history dictates we probably shouldn't be getting our hopes up.