The Hollywood Reporter (Weekly)
Are Emmy Noms for Genre Shows Merely a Fantasy This Year?
House of the Dragon and The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power hope to follow Emmy favorite Game of Thrones in netting drama series noms — and wins
Ayear ago, it looked like TV was on the verge of a fantasy boom. HBO/ Max’s House of the Dragon and Prime Video’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power were set to premiere within weeks of each other in August and September — two big, expensive productions featuring mythical creatures that sought ratings, prestige and, one would assume, Emmys.
But, now, heading into nominations, both are fighting for spots that do not appear to be guaranteed. Is the hope for fantasy glory at the Emmys, well, a fantasy?
House of the Dragon and Rings of Power were clearly trying to capitalize on the success of Game of Thrones, which netted 161 nominations over its eight seasons. Of course, in Dragon, the legacy is explicit: It’s a direct prequel to the series based on George R.R. Martin’s novels, set about 200 years before the Thrones plot. Rings of Power was conceived more in the spirit of Game of Thrones: Take a beloved work of fantasy literature and make a TV juggernaut. (It’s worth noting that Rings of Power is not an adaptation of the J.R.R. Tolkien trilogy that was turned into Oscar-winning films, but rather based on appendix material that forms a prequel.)
But Thrones was not an obvious Emmy success story. It was always a strong contender in the creative realms, but it didn’t even make it into the drama series category during its first season. It won that prize four years later in 2015, and after that it was unstoppable, taking it home for each of its following seasons, including its divisive final outing in 2019. That last run broke the record for most nominations by a show in a single season with 32.
The Emmy accolades for Game of Thrones were seen as a breakthrough for sci-fi and fantasy at the institution where such beloved, groundbreaking shows as The X-Files, Star Trek: The Next Generation and Buffy the Vampire Slayer were minimally recognized. Lost is often cited as the outlier that won best drama for its first season, back in 2005, never to repeat.
It’s easy to point to Thrones as a landscape changer. Would shows like Stranger Things, Westworld, The Mandalorian and
The Boys have netted their drama series noms if not for Thrones?
Who knows — but probably not.
Thrones pushed the Emmy drama race out of its era of dowager countesses and troubled men and into one where robots and demogorgons could at least have a shot. But, also, none of those shows has managed to win; since
Thrones ended, prizes have gone to studies of privilege like The Crown and Succession, the latter of which is the likely winner this year.
It’s too early to write off House of the Dragon and Rings of Power,
both of which could still earn drama series nods — if not this season, then in later ones, just like Thrones — but there is a distinct sense that the great fantasy showdown of 2022 looks like a skirmish in awards season 2023. What happened?
Well, both series received mildly positive reviews from critics, but the response to neither was rapturous. House of the Dragon did well ratings-wise, while Rings of Power appeared to struggle based on a THR report that confirmed the show had only a 37 percent domestic completion rate.
Pacing problems abounded:
Rings of Power trudged along for an entire season before something major finally happened, whereas
House of the Dragon was filled with time jumps that meant ditching two of the lead actresses halfway through the 10 episodes. And, crucially, neither was actually Game of Thrones, which itself wasn’t the hit it eventually became when it started. Selective memory likes to recall Thrones as a phenomenon from start to finish, but that wasn’t the case, especially when it came to Emmys.
Even if neither Dragon nor
Rings makes the cut, there will likely be some fantasy or sci-fi represented in the drama competition this year. Voters have vouched for The Mandalorian for its first two seasons. Even with a disjointed third season, it could be in contention, as could
Andor, another Disney+ show set in a galaxy far, far away, from Oscar-nominated writer Tony Gilroy. Andor, with its distinct lack of creatures and serious discussions about the nature of rebellion, is arguably most like its non-genre counterparts.
But perhaps the true successor to Game of Thrones is the HBO show that isn’t directly connected to Game of Thrones: the zombie apocalypse road trip The Last of Us. Like Thrones, it is based on source material that doesn’t necessarily scream “prestige TV,” in this case a video game, but it silenced doubters with a first season that won nearly universal praise. And while it probably won’t win — cough, Succession, cough — it’s almost certainly a lock for major nominations.
This is to say that genre is not dead at the Emmys. Game of Thrones opened doors, but maybe just not for shows that look almost exactly like Game of Thrones.