Alexa Bliss has occupied a unique spot in WWE programming over the last year. Her booking was intertwined with Bray Wyatt's Fiend character—including a long feud with Randy Orton—and she has more recently broken out on her own. Bliss’s most recent efforts have revolved around her creepy doll Lily. More than an accessory, though, might Lily become a full-blown character, and even Bliss’s partner as she goes after the WWE Women’s Tag Team Championship.
Shayna Baszler Could Offer The Entry Point
Since WrestleMania 37, Alexa Bliss hasn’t had a clear direction. She has cut increasingly eccentric promos and conducted oddball interviews, but particularly in the absence of The Fiend to play off of, she hasn’t had a sense of focus in terms of partnerships or opponents.
Bliss had a confrontation with Shayna Baszler on the most recent episode of Monday Night Raw. Particularly given that their angle garnered a featured spot, closing out the show, it stands to reason that things are only getting started between the two. The Queen of Spades has devoted most of her attention in recent months to her tag team with Nia Jax, including a long reign as Women’s Tag Team Champions. As such, it only makes sense that a feud with Baszler would, by extension, mean a feud with Jax.
Who better to team up with Bliss than the new character that’s an extension of her own: Lily? Given the buzz around their act and the degree to which Baszler and Jax have run their course as a tandem, it would make sense for Bliss and Lily to win the feud. That victory could logically enough set them up as natural challengers for the Women’s Tag Team Championship.
WWE Can Afford To Take Risks With The Women’s Tag Team Championship
For most titles in WWE, there’s a degree of credibility that the company has to look after. After all, many fans cite Vince McMahon’s reigns as WWE and ECW Champion as low points for those titles. Likewise, the fact that non-wrestlers like David Arquette and Vince Russo held the WCW Championship put a permanent stain on that otherwise prestigious belt’s legacy.
For the WWE Women’s Tag Team Championship, there’s not necessarily a great deal of credibility to protect. It’s not overtly a comedic championship like the 24/7 title. However, the inconsistency of booking and failure to feature the title put it on par with WWE’s older women’s titles, pre-Women’s Revolution. Back in those days, it wasn’t out of character for Debra, The Kat, Harvey Wippleman, or The Fabulous Moolah in her mid-seventies to get turns with the strap.
Alexa Bliss winning the title with ostensibly an inanimate object for her partner certainly sounds silly. Nonetheless, Bliss herself is quite popular and her offbeat character has the Internet talking. Bliss and Lily reigning would, at minimum, generate more buzz for the titles than Natalya and Tamina carrying on as champs.
Lily Could Get Embodied
It’s difficult to see a true end game for Lily as a character, just as Al Snow’s Head or Erick Rowan’s mechanical spider had limitations on what they could accomplish. Lily’s potential will be even more limited as WWE returns to putting on shows in front of live crowds. This transition likely means WWE putting a cap on the cinematic tricks the production team put into play during the empty arena and ThunderDome eras.
Bliss’s current run has been defined, however, by magical turns and personality overhauls. It would actually be somewhat consistent with her trajectory for Lily to morph into a real person who might wrestle by Bliss’s side. This might offer a way of introducing an NXT call up under a new gimmick. Alternatively, it might offer a mode for WWE to rebrand one of the number of women on the main roster who aren’t doing much at this point. In the wake of Ruby Riott’s release, Liv Morgan in particular feels like a viable candidate.
In the end, the idea of Alexa Bliss and Lily winning the Women’s Tag Team Championship together doesn’t make complete logical sense and would certainly leave a more serious segment of fans unhappy. For fans who’ve been eating up Bliss’s character work, though, and who were all in on The Fiend, WWE could certainly do a lot worse than to experiment, and take one of their least prestigious titles into a bold new direction.