The Primetime Emmy nominations have been revealed, and while Netflix obviously doesn’t figure because it seems to cancel all of its biggest shows in the genre before they’ve had a chance to truly spread their wings, it’s been a banner year for fantasy nonetheless.
HBO’s video game adaptation The Last of Us and Game of Thrones prequel House of the Dragon – along with Disney Plus’ spin-off to a Star Wars spin-off Andor – all managed to land a spot among the nominees for Outstanding Drama Series, while even the polarizing Obi-Wan Kenobi made a surprise dash towards the shortlist for Outstanding Limited Series.
The aforementioned episodic offerings have also gained recognition in various other top-tier categories including acting, writing, and directing, but the single most expensive TV series there’s ever been has failed to secure a single high-profile nomination, despite Amazon pushing The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power for a hypothetical 22 nods in total.
At a cost of $465 million for the first season, the sprawling fantasy didn’t quite manage to live up to the hype with critics or audiences, and we can now definitively add awards bodies to that number, too. Nominations for fantasy/sci-fi costumes, main title design, prosthetic makeup, original main title theme music, sound editing and special visual effects among others are all well deserved, but when it comes to naming fantasy’s heaviest hitters, The Rings of Power simply doesn’t make the cut.
Of course, there are plans for a five-season run in total, so its time may yet come…