WandaVision snags 23 Emmy nominations including Best Limited Series

All hail the Scarlet Witch! The Disney+ series WandaVision was a cultural and critical juggernaut earlier this year, driving internet buzz and social conversation in a way that few other pieces of media had managed in the wake of the pandemic that upended all our expectations for what we’d be watching this year. And now Marvel has reaped the rewards, scooping up a bevy of Emmy Awards nominations for the show.

WandaVision conjured up 23 – yes, you read that correctly – nominations across a wide variety of categories, including Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited Series for Elizabeth Olsen, Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited Series for Paul Bettany, and Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Limited Series for Kathryn Hahn. The show itself was nominated for Outstanding Limited Series.

The series also received multiple behind-the-scenes nominations, including Outstanding Directing For A Limited Series and three separate nods in the Outstanding Writing For A Limited Series category. And, yes, in case you were wondering, “Agatha All Along” was indeed nominated for Outstanding Original Music and Lyrics.

Why WandaVision’s Emmy nominations matter

This is all a much bigger deal than you might think, if only because it means that the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences has finally decided that to stop ignoring the glut of quality superhero and comic book properties on our screens today and the performances that power them.

Besides WandaVision, Amazon’s violent superhero drama The Boys also received a Best Drama nomination, and somehow Don Cheadle got a nomination for Best Guest Actor even though he appears in exactly one scene of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. And even though that last one is kind of patently ridiculous, it’s difficult not to read all this as important signs of progress, that this type of genre TV is, at last, being taken seriously in awards circles.

(Though, truly, I will never be over Vincent D’Onofrio’s performance in Daredevil not getting the awards recognition it surely deserved. His Wilson Fisk was next level.)

That all, of course, goes double if the show takes home multiple awards, which seems likely given its many nominations and high-caliber cast.

The 73rd Primetime Emmy Awards will broadcast on Sunday, Sept. 19, 2021, at 8 p.m. ET on CBS. All nine episodes of WandaVision are now streaming on Disney+. (If, for some reason, you need to catch up.)

Are you excited about WandaVision’s nominations? Sound off in the comments.