The conversation can begin and end with an analysis of depth. Right now, Bayley and Sasha Banks are your main faces. Charlotte, Dana Brooke, and Nia Jax are the heels. Alicia Fox can go both ways. She has been mostly a face these last few months, but she has had a few matches with Bayley not too long ago. When Emmalina eventually debuts, if it ever happens, she will likely be a heel. Her character is just made to be a heel, unless the WWE pulls a swerve and has her debut as something else. If Sasha Banks turns heel, that leaves just Bayley as the only true face on Raw's women's roster. Why would the WWE do that to themselves?
Depth is about more than just quantity. It is about quality. You can say that Bayley and Sasha Banks are both great in-ring performers, so letting Sasha turn heel won't hurt. Just turn someone else face. Who? Dana Brooke is not great in the ring. Charlotte is probably better off as a heel. Nia Jax is unlikely to turn face, although they might soon need to do it with the lack of freshness coming up. The WWE can definitely choose to turn someone face to balance out a possible heel turn for Sasha Banks, but that person they turn is not likely to be a great option, whether you are talking about them as an in-ring performer or their ability to play a good face character.
Moving away from a discussion of depth and just looking at Sasha Banks, does she need the heel turn? You can talk about staleness and her just being a better heel, but smarks are likely to care about her just because of her wrestling ability and history of big matches. And even if she does turn heel, who is she going to feud with? Alicia Fox? No one is going to want to see that. Bayley? Where would that leave Charlotte? They would just make a lot of problems for themselves. There are still options for Sasha Banks as a face. She has a feud going with Nia Jax. When Emmalina debuts, Sasha can feud with her. By the time all that is done, then the WWE can think about putting her back in the title picture or a heel turn.
How about in terms of overness? There is definitely room for Sasha Banks to become more popular than she is. The problem with this era is that you are often caught between two extremes of crowd types. You have rowdy smarks that will destroy anything they don't like and heavily support what they do like. But then you also have some crowds that just seem dead. In between that, you have marks that will cheer for Roman Reigns, much to the disapproval of smarks. The overness of a lot of people is not what it used to be. I remember Daniel Bryan being a little less hot during his last run as an in-ring performer. Even The Undertaker and other such legends don't always get the reactions you would expect. What does all that mean for Sasha Banks. I don't think you need to turn her heel just because her crowd reactions are not consistently awesome. It is just a sign of the times.
Part of the problem is how the WWE wants to run the women's divisions in this era. They are just forcing themselves to have more angles going on than they can properly manage. Look at Smackdown. You have Nikki Bella feuding with Natalya, Alexa Bliss and Becky Lynch going at it over the title, and they are still trying to find matches for Carmella. They don't have the depth to pull it off. They have to rely on jobbers not even on the main roster to feed to Carmella recently, and it isn't always pretty. Nikki and Natalya are just arguing and brawling. Alexa and Becky are playing with masked women. On Raw, trying to force having multiple women's feuds will also stretch the depth. And all it will take is one key injury here or there to destroy what the WWE is trying to do. If the WWE relied properly on the periphery like they used to in the diva era, they could come up with something for Sasha Banks to do without a heel turn. If they made better use of the periphery, I would say the WWE has just about as many women as they need on both rosters. But with the way they want to handle things in the era of the women's revolution, both rosters need more women to manage what they are trying to do.
In the end, where do I stand on the issue of Sasha Banks turning heel? No, don't do it. It would hurt the depth of Raw's women's roster. No face turn of the women already on the roster can properly balance it out. There are no women debuting from NXT on the horizon just yet. There are no other returns to help this division. There are still things for face Sasha Banks to do. There are still other women to be pushed. A heel turn for Sasha Banks would probably not help these other women. And if the WWE does go through with this heel turn in the coming weeks and has Mickie James return as a heel, then it would be incredibly stupid. I would have not seen such incompetence since the Buffalo Bills special teams in the final game of the recent season. Why would you have so many heels and so few quality faces around?
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