The Wyatt Family Gimmick Must End at WWE Royal Rumble 2017

There is no pleasure or schadenfreude in this pronouncement: The Wyatt Family is dead, and it's time to give up and break it up. For good.

Don't get it twisted; if they wanted to, the Wyatts could probably milk this stable for another few years, languishing at the middle to lower end of the roster until retirement. But both Bray Wyatt and Luke Harper are fit for better things than that. They both deserve to contend for singles belts. But neither will, so long as the current creative direction persists.

There's no exact "jump the shark" moment when this wonderful, unique gimmick went so terribly wrong. It's been a slow, degenerative process over time, but we're now at the point where the whole schtick is difficult to take seriously—the result of multiple missed opportunities.

The first was at WrestleMania 30, when Bray Wyatt fought John Cena in what should have been The Eater of Worlds' star-making, catapulting match. It was the culmination of two incredible years for this new, promising wrestler—The Minister of Darkness for the PG era.

There were so many tantalizing possibilities. What if Wyatt "fixed" a wrestler every other week, and soon, he had an army of unwashed, unshaven, dead-eyed minions behind him? A takeover angle would have been brilliant, with Luke Harper and Erick Rowan as Wyatt's lieutenants.

Instead, at WrestleMania 30, Wyatt received his first pinfall loss on the main roster. It felt like a travesty; Cena would not have lost an ounce of credibility by doing the job. But even then, the angle was salvageable. Wyatt could still have won the rematch cleanly and then won the rubber match.

Instead, neither possibility came to fruition. First, Cena lost a Steel Cage match at Extreme Rules 2014 in the flukiest manner possible. A singing child in a sheep mask distracted him. Then, Cena won a Last Man Standing match at Payback 2014. The final score was 2-1 in Cena's favor.

Soon after, The Wyatt Family members went their separate ways, but WWE Creative didn't commit to making a clean break. All three members—Wyatt, Harper and Rowan—kept their backwoods appearances. This was especially strange for Rowan, who still looked like an evil cult member but was booked as a babyface.

Wyatt's WrestleMania 32 match was against The Undertaker, which Wyatt had no chance of winning. He was now 0-2 on the big stage. Meanwhile, Rowan and Harper got some tag team momentum going. But Rowan was injured and sidelined, and that was the end of that.

So The Wyatt Family reunited (probably by necessity) after unimpressive solo runs. Wyatt recruited Braun Strowman as the newest addition to the stable, but in 2015, Strowman was still too inexperienced to wrestle well—he mostly stood by ringside and attempted to look as big and scary as possible.

The Wyatt Family then entered a feud with The Undertaker and Kane, and WWE experimented with making Wyatt supernatural. Wyatt claimed on Raw that he had stolen The Undertaker's soul, and he proceeded to conjure lightning from the sky.

This was poorly conceived. Wyatt was frightening because he was relatable; he represented a specific type of unhinged yet charismatic, religious zealot. Turning Wyatt into a wizard undercut all of that dramatic tension. At any rate, magical powers or not, it did no good. The Wyatt Family lost again—this time at Survivor Series—to The Undertaker and Kane. 

The beginning of 2016 brought fresh indignities. The Wyatt Family confronted The Rock at WrestleMania 33 and got decimated by The Great One and an injured Cena. On the same night, Rowan lost an impromptu match against The Rock in a record-breaking six seconds. That's when it became clear—this stable was never going over.

By this time, many of the eccentricities that we originally loved about the stable had vanished. Remember the name-drop of the host city? What about the multiple reprisals of "He's Got the Whole World in His Hands"? How about the heat-generating spot when Wyatt "danced" with his opponents?

The counterargument goes something like this: Heels should not generate cheers, and heel Superstars should eliminate the parts of their routines that generate them. Well, maybe. But did WWE need to cut The Wyatt Family off at the knees in the process?

Strowman left the stable because of the draft. The current iteration of The Wyatt Family is stop-and-go. Rowan is out with an injury again. Harper is probably leaving the stable after the Sister Abigail he received last Tuesday. And Wyatt is currently teaming up with Randy Orton, who will likely not be sticking around this storyline much longer. He's too big of a draw, and WWE isn't going to let him fly under the radar when there's money to be made. Orton is another inevitable Wyatt loss waiting to happen. 

So enough is enough. Break The Wyatt Family up. Rowan is probably done—his sheep mask is more over than him at this point. Harper can head down to the WWE Performance Center, get a clean shave and figure out a new gimmick—he deserves a push outside of Wyatt's shadow.

And as for Wyatt? He's good enough to fly solo, which Creative should have stuck to originally. He can keep the gimmick, slightly modify it or start anew. It's whatever he wants to do; the man has irrepressible talent. But his stable has begun to hold him back rather than empower him.

The rumors have been flying again, as they are wont to do at this time of year. According to the Wrestling Observer Newsletter (h/t Nick Paglino of WrestleZone), Wyatt could win the WWE Championship at Elimination Chamber. One can hope, but history gives little indication that this will ever happen. It will have to be seen to be believed.