AEW Hot Takes of the Week: There are too many similar factions

3. There’s Too Many Similar Factions

In the last slide, I mentioned that less is more in this business. That allows the audience to soak in and digest every move, match, superstar, and segment with ease rather than overcomplicating things and turning off new viewers because of how confused or lost they may be.

That is why I am not a fan of both the number of factions in AEW and the similarities between some of these factions. Let’s just run through all of the factions in AEW right now: The Inner Circle, The Elite, SCU, Best Friends (with Orange Cassidy), Jurassic Express, #StrongHearts, The Dark Order, BBB, and now The Nightmare Collective.

That is a total of nine factions, and I still feel like I’m forgetting some. Now, I have no problem with most of these factions because their alliances make sense, and they are so different from one another that there really shouldn’t be any confusion of who is aligned with whom.

The problem that I have is with the three latest factions that AEW has been introducing on screen. That would be The Dark Order, BBB, and The Nightmare Collective. On their own, they’re three super intriguing, dark, and mysterious factions that could really work well in AEW. However, the basis and gimmicks of these factions are all basically the same.

The Dark Order and The Nightmare Collective are literally the exact same! Both are cults looking for new recruits to pledge undying loyalty to their group. Their names are even synonyms! I get that one is based out of the women’s division and one is in the men’s, but when the same gimmick is shown by two different sets of wrestlers on the same show, it is nothing short of confusing.

Now, BBB is not exactly a cult, but the brooding undertone and the idea of preying off the poor to take down the elite (literally) is still there. Their vignette was incredibly interesting, but the only problem was that I just saw a similar one by The Dark Order earlier in the show, so why should I care about theirs? And the same goes for Brandi’s promo about The NightMare Collective.

Again, individually, these are great factions because they would normally be different from what everyone else is doing. In this case, however, there just seems to be too many factions doing the whole dark and brooding gimmick, which causes me to lose interest in all of them.

I need to see more differences in these factions before I can really start to get invested in them, or, in my opinion, the two cult factions should combine to make one big Nightmare Order hybrid, while BBB can be more like mercenaries.

AEW, and pro wrestling as a whole, is always going to be polarizing, so I don’t expect anyone to agree with my takes. Let’s just keep the conversation rolling and enjoy the show!