AEW has started building toward a return for Toni Storm, who has been off TV for more than seven months, but the comeback is reportedly still far off.
Fightful Select reported that sources within AEW said Storm’s return won’t happen anytime soon, but the creative team could add new elements to the storyline surrounding her disappearance in the meantime.
AEW reportedly had big plans for Storm in 2026. But after she defeated Marina Shafir at Revolution on March 15, the company learned she would be unavailable until at least the end of the year.
AEW then decided to write her off TV with a mysterious backstage attack on the March 18 edition of Dynamite.
Fightful also revealed new details about the creative plans behind the attack. According to the report, AEW planned to plant clues pointing to multiple suspects, though the company already had one person in mind to reveal as the attacker. But it kept the attacker’s identity open to allow for possible changes to the storyline.
AEW continued laying that groundwork at WrestleDream on October 17, when it deliberately handed out cassette tapes to some members of the media.
Astrid Pizarro, a content creator, received a package with a recording labeled “Toni Storm Tapes” and marked as the first of five. She explained how she ended up with the tape.
“I was handed out the tape at WrestleDream by somebody,” Pizarro said. “I opened it, it just said ‘play me.’ Thankfully my dad and my brother have a cassette player, so I was able to play it today. I was the only one in my area that got it, and it says one out of five. I don’t know who the other four people are.”
The first tape, titled “Mundanities,” features Renee Paquette narrating purported recordings from a device Storm secretly carried in her bag.
In the storyline, a package of five analog tapes with no return address arrived at AEW’s office in Jacksonville, Florida. The recordings show different sides of Storm’s life.