Stephanie McMahon was reintroduced into TV about two years ago as part of an angle with HHH and Vince. It was at this point that Stephanie started making weekly appearances. During this time the trio of Vince, Steph, and HHH were considered lukewarm faces. They all teased flashes of being heels, but for the most part they were doing comedy and not playing a role in the major company angles.
Kaitlyn got an early taste of the wrath of Stephanie when she interrupted a segment with Steph who was in the ring with AJ Lee. AJ was a heel at the time and Steph was giving her the business in the ring when Kaitlyn came out to interrupt. Steph marched up the ramp and before excusing herself viciously warned Kaitlyn never to interrupt her again or else. It was an odd moment. Steph really seemed to take it over the edge. It put Kaitlyn’s character in a position to not be able to react. Kaitlyn was made to look extremely weak just for the simple fact of Stephanie wanted to look strong with no payoff between the two planned. That's bad booking.
Later Steph would turn heel with HHH and form the Authority. Fans were treated to weekly promo’s where HHH and Steph would have the entire locker room out on stage and they would take turns dressing them down, heels and faces alike. Steph was a driving force for the group and was particularly vicious on the Rhodes Bros. They had lost their jobs and Dusty Rhodes, their Father, came to their aid to plead for their jobs back. During the promo Dusty went off script and gave a fair dressing down to Stephanie, something that was long overdue. It was widely reported that Stephanie was extremely upset backstage and Dusty didn’t appear on Raw for over a year and a half. She did not like looking bad.
That would be one of the rare times that Stephanie was made to look bad during the entire Authority run. For the duration of this run she is often pitted against males who for some reason have lost the ability to stand up for themselves. Whether it is the Big Show, Kane, or even John Cena, Steph seems to have the ability to make them feel and look terrible.
HHH and Stephanie are both guilty of giving better than they let people give them. They often go a little too hard on the faces they are verbally jousting with. It puts the talent in a bad spot. Certainly no one goes as far over the line as Stephanie and Hunter, but even so no one is encouraged to shoot back hard after what happened to Dusty.
So here it is almost a year and half since the debut of the Authority. HHH seems to be in the cross hairs of Sting and it would seem that’s the setup to end his run at the Authoritarian bully. Stephanie on the other hand has been more vicious than usual lately. She ran down John Cena hard a few weeks back and this week ran down Big Show and Kane.
Stephanie has been built as a nearly untouchable “promo” only character. She has no direct foil. There seems to be no immediate plans for AJ Lee to feud with her. The Bellas are both heels so that won’t be. It’s unlikely any male will lay their hands on Steph do to the WWE being PG these days. Yet, there is still a huge amount of fan angst that could result in a massive pop when Stephanie finally gets hers.
The question is how. The answer could be as simple as Charlotte Flair. Flair is set to move up to the main roster and probably debut post WM31. It might make sense for a HHH-less Stephanie to go a little nuts post WM31 where Cena is now the US champ and Daniel Bryan is the IC Champ, two Superstars she can’t stand.
So basically Stephanie is overrun with power and she’s out of control. Put her in the ring on Raw running people down and have Ric Flair’s music hit. Have Flair come out to tell Stephanie it’s over and that he’s looking out for her and HHH. She needs to stop her actions. Stephanie would then unload on Flair to the point where he fires back on her. As he tries to walk away from the situation she could take a few low blows on him.
Flair would be powerless to do anything because she’s a female. Just then you hit Charlotte’s music. She hits the ring and her and Stephanie have an exchange. The rest writes itself. Charlotte goes over and gets a huge introduction into the main roster. She can reestablish quality matches rather than what we have been getting for years now from the Divas division.
It gets all that heat off Stephanie to fuel the Charlotte, and probably the entire division, while allowing Steph to have a graceful exit. WWE rarely creates win/win situations anymore, but this would surely be one of them.
It’s difficult to have faith in WWE to figure out angles like this. They likely don’t see what Stephanie’s doing as being a problem. They probably believe her promos are good and that’s the heat they need, but as this has dragged on she’s seemingly doing more damage than good. If you’re not working towards payoffs then all your doing is damage. Stephanie has been untouchable for almost 2 years now. It’s time for her run to end. Let’s hope the WWE figures out some way to put a cap on the Queen of WWE sooner rather than later.