real glass, go cry me a river

The quick overview is that Christian joined up with Jack and Lucha in early summer 2021, acted in a mentor* role for Jack (if you subscribe to my fics, you’ll know how often I see this as grooming/abuse, but for purposes of the actual canon kayfabe story, we’ll call it a mentor role), and then, in summer of 2022, turned on Jack after Jack and Lucha lost the tag belts. Lucha then also turned on Jack, which kicked off both Jack’s heel turn (summer 2023) and the splintering of that stable (Christian and Lucha would ally and remain together).

The Pillars storyline ran spring 2023, and when that story ended, Jack and Darby split for their next respective stories: Jack had his heel turn (delayed) due to Christian’s original betrayal and subsequent need to prove himself as being “worthy”, and Darby had his protégé Nick Wayne, who finally turned 18 and could get his AEW contract. Darby and Nick practically grew up together when Darby trained with Nick’s deceased father Buddy, and coming into AEW, they fell immediately into the brotherly, close bond mirroring what they have in real life. At the same time, Christian and Lucha were going into their story, where Lucha became “Killswitch”, stopped speaking, and became sort of Christian’s killing machine.

Brawl In happened in August of 2023, and Jack disappeared off the map until 2024, and we’re not going to talk about the dark times there, but what we DO need to talk about is how they still ran the rest of the story without him present. Vamp and I remained convinced that he was supposed to be somehow involved in this, even peripherally, and wasn’t due to giant manchildren throwing assault tantrums backstage, but that’s not really important; they ran the story anyway. Darby put himself into the crosshairs of Christian, and they started a feud in fall 2023.

This feud is actually notable because the trajectory completely changed near the 60% mark, and they fell into a holding pattern to extend to WrestleDream, which we clocked immediately but simply didn’t know the reasoning behind (Cope getting hired). Darby wanted the TNT belt Lucha had (that Christian was claiming as his own), so they started a series of title matches against it, and all the while, Nick was there by Darby’s side. (In Wembley, Lucha actually picks Nick up and carries him to the back during the tag match, which I tend to forget because the rest of All In ‘23 is kind of a blur to me.)

This is the feud where Christian successfully got in Nick’s head enough for Nick to turn on Darby, very violently, to join Christian. (His mother Shayna would hold out for a few weeks before also joining Christian’s side.) Since that feud ended, Darby and Nick have had zero interactions in AEW, and this served as both the severing of their bond and Nick’s heel turn. Nick would then remain by Christian’s side for almost two years. It was very obvious to everyone watching that Nick was Jack 2.0: young talent, dead father, searching for a mentor slash father figure to look up to and emulate. It’s AMAZING they were able to run the whole thing without once mentioning Jack’s name.

Now, this is where things get both Fucked Up™ and interesting. Lucha ends up falling very ill and being out from fall of 2024 until spring of 2025. Jack is out completely in 2025 up to this point because TK hates me. Nick finally turns on Christian in summer of 2025 (with Kip), completing the cycle: Christian betrayed his first mentee, and was betrayed by his second, a beautiful loop of EVIL. They finally get back on track for some stories, and Nick breaks his leg, YET ANOTHER INJURY falling into these storylines plagued with them.

But they pivoted: Nick ran a promo before All In where he claims he set up whatever was coming next, and what came next was Lucha returning to tag with Kip against Christian. Lucha’s RETURN was orchestrated by Jack, and they pieced together the promo they’d filmed for it without showing him (though we had clearly identified his hands within, like, 2 minutes) without giving Jack’s involvement away. THAT DOES NOT MATTER, though, because Nick claimed he was the one who set it up, which means NICK reached out to JACK, and they planned bringing Lucha back to life, or something else happened here to get this entire thing under way. THEY MADE IT KAYFABE so it doesn’t matter that it was an injury pivot, it’s what we have to work with now.

Now this is the part we don’t know! We don’t know anything about the Jack and Nick team-up to bring Lucha back, and we’ve got a number of incredibly intriguing possibilities. I’m going to run through them here so we can all percolate this prior to the broadcast filming tonight (even though the episode doesn’t air until Saturday):

Possible story #1: Jack was already planning to bring Lucha back and Nick simply used this, claiming responsibility for it, and borrowed Lucha for awhile before Jack came back into the picture. This one is annoying, because I think it’s the one they’ve stuck with, but it explains NOTHING about why Nick would ever KNOW Jack was doing all this to bring Lucha back to life, nor why Jack would send Lucha to ally with Nick for the time he did. This is one of those “injuries fucked up our timing” things I suspect we all have to live with, but it’s frustrating, because it has a lot of holes. WHY would Jack just send his newly resurrected dino friend to ally with Nick? Why would he care about Nick at all when he had RESURRECTION POWERS??

Possible story #2: Nick contacted Jack to orchestrate bringing Lucha back, assuming he could ALSO control Jack the way Christian could, and Jack is assumed to be a face. This one is actually interesting to me, because it opens up SO MANY OPTIONS. Nick’s arrogance in thinking he could fully emulate Christian’s insidious control. Jack either knowing from the get-go what Nick was trying to do and pivoting when it served his best interests, OR Jack assuming the best about Nick at the beginning (like maybe we could join forces, we have such similar backgrounds) and then discovering Nick is a lost cause. With Nick being injured, we lost all these, but they’re incredible to think through.

Possible story #3: Nick contacted Jack to bring Lucha back for whatever reason, and Jack played it up because for a brief and beautiful period of time upon his return we got very morally gray tweener Jack with full intents to turn on Nick when the time was right. This is my favorite one; I wish Jack had stayed with the tweener bit, I wish we were still getting his little heel behaviors while he was running face, and I mourn what could have been had Ibushi not gotten hurt and necessitated JE for the Elite face turns (ugh). The idea of both Nick and Jack having been DESIGNED with this devious, sinister undertone by the very man hoping to control them is DELICIOUS. Both of them were running their own schemes and for a moment, they happened to line up, but Jack had no intention of aiding Nick, and Nick had no intention of working long-term with Jack. THIS sets up the bigger story of them both having revenge on Christian as a long-term slow burn, and I LOVE the idea of it.

So now we stand with the match finally happening, a thousand questions as to what conspired between these two when it came to Lucha and the vengeance on Christian, and me pitifully asking AEW to spare a brief thought to over three years of stories being created and give me something to work with here. HOW did Nick and Jack even end up communicating with each other? How would Nick KNOW to go to Jack to get Lucha back to life? Or did Jack see Nick’s betrayal and think, huh, finally, something I could use for myself and be the one to reach out? Did death finally break the Christian thrall on Lucha that has never, ever been explained and I know never will be because they hate me personally? AHHHH questions.

What will be important to pay attention to during this match are: 1) how Jack handles going into this with his ex-mentor’s most recent mentee who followed a very similar path that he did except for the ending, 2) if commentary makes any mention at all or gives us any lore drops to answer some of those old questions from last summer, and 3) if Lucha is ringside for any of this to factor in as the linchpin between them. ALL OF THESE THINGS are going to add to the rich tapestry that is this intersecting storyline, and I’m GOING TO DIE waiting for it to happen.