The New Era (WWE)

The New Era is a period of professional wrestling within WWE, which spans from May 1, 2016 to the present day.
Initiation.
After the Reality Era ended, the 2016 WWE Payback pay-per-view was dubbed as the "start of a new era in the WWE". The event was headlined by Roman Reigns and AJ Styles. 
Much like what happened to John Cena during the PG Era, Reigns would become a prominent figure in major storylines during the New Era to mostly negative reactions. Roman Reigns emerged in victories in "passing of the torch matches" against top stars of the former eras such as Triple H, John Cena and Brock Lesnar at WrestleMania 32 and No Mercy (2017) and SummerSlam (2018) respectively but his push was halted in mid-2018 due to his leukemia diagnosis. Since his return from leukemia in early 2019, crowd response to him has been more positive. Starting at SummerSlam in 2020, Roman Reigns would turn heel, allying with his former rival Brock Lesnar's manager Paul Heyman.
Seth Rollins, Drew McIntyre, Braun Strowman and Bray Wyatt with his new "The Fiend" persona have also become top stars during this period.
The women's evolution.
As a continuation of the Diva's Revolution that began in 2015, the Women's Evolution picked up further momentum in the New Era, with women have regularly competed in stipulation matches that were previously reserved for men, including the Royal Rumble match, Elimination Chamber, the Money in the Bank ladder match, Hell in a Cell, WarGames, and TLC matches. On the Raw-branded Hell in a Cell pay-per-view event in 2016, Charlotte Flair and Sasha Banks made history being in the first women to main event a WWE pay-per-view event. This match was also the first women's Hell in a Cell match. In 2018 WWE recognized the women's titles as world championships equivalent to the men's world titles. Flair and Becky Lynch in particular received much success during this period, with them being interchangeably considered the "face of the women's division" in the New era. Flair, Lynch and Ronda Rousey headlined WrestleMania 35 in a triple threat match which Lynch won on April 7, 2019, making them the first women in WWE history to main event WWE's flagship event WrestleMania. Bianca Belair became a dominant star in the women's division in 2021, and defeated Sasha Banks in the main event of night 1 of WrestleMania 37 to win the SmackDown Women’s Championship, becoming the first African born women's world champion in the WWE.
The second brand extension.
As part of the New Era, WWE would reintroduce the brand extension in the Summer of 2016. The new brand split became effective with the 2016 WWE draft on July 19, 2016, with "SmackDown" changing its name to "SmackDown Live" and moving to Tuesday nights.
The NXT brand, which primarily serves as a developmental territory for WWE, had gained increasing prominence during The Reality Era, with its weekly television series and NXT TakeOver events frequently receiving critical acclaim. In particular, was viewed as a superior event to WrestleMania 32, the latter being held the following night to mixed-to-negative reviews, and has been cited by some pundits as the point where the brand can no longer be considered a farm league.
"WWE NXT" would later move from the WWE Network to USA Network on Wednesday nights and expanded to a two-hour format to complete against the upstart wrestling promotion All Elite Wrestling and its flaghsip show "Dynamite" on TNT; a moved which marked the beginning of Wednesday Night Wars. Raw and SmackDown talent would begin to make more frequent appearances on NXT programming, while the likes of Finn Balor would return to the brand full time.
Other notable occurrences.
At WrestleMania 35, Kofi Kingston became the first African born WWE Champion.
Former multi time world champion Edge made his in-ring return from a nine-year hiatus at the 2020 Royal Rumble.
The Undertaker retired on June 21, 2020 after 30 years with the WWE, having wrestled his final match against AJ Styles at WrestleMania 36 in a cinematic Boneyard match.
In 2021, WWE announced that NBCUniversal Television and Streaming had acquired the exclusive U.S. distribution rights to WWE Network, and that the service would be folded into the NBCUniversal-owned streaming service Peacock on March 18, 2021 ahead of the 2021 Fastlane event. Existing and future WWE Network content started to be hosted by a branded channel within the Peacock service starting with Fastlane. Peacock's censorship of historical content and footage attracted early criticism by fans and critics. 
On the March 1, 2021 episode of "Raw", Bobby Lashley defeated The Miz in a lumberjack match to win the WWE Championship for the first time and became only the third African-American to win the title.
COVID-19 pandemic.
For most of 2020, WWE was affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. WWE was barred from having live attendance, although WWE has used some of their own crew as part of a limited crowd in a protective environment, as with the highly advertised , which was also the 25th anniversary of the first In Your House events, and the first under the In Your House banner since 1999, the main event being a well-received women's triple threat match in which Io Shirai defeated Charlotte Flair and Rhea Ripley for the NXT Women's Championship. Subsequent events in 2020 have also used WWE's own crew as their limited crowd throughout the pandemic. Beginning in August, WWE would move events to a new virtual crowd and arena stage dubbed "WWE ThunderDome".
Beginning in August, WWE would move events to a new virtual crowd and arena stage dubbed "WWE ThunderDome". A similar setup, the Capitol Wrestling Center, would be introduced for the NXT and 205 Live brands in October, while NXT UK would move to the BT Sport studio upon their return in September.