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The Emmys are confusing this year, so here's a guide to what is and isn't eligible
We pull back the curtain on Emmy eligibility and explain why the seasons you’d think are up for awards just … aren’t.
Robyn Beck/AFP via Getty Images
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Robyn Beck/AFP via Getty Images
We pull back the curtain on Emmy eligibility and explain why the seasons you’d think are up for awards just … aren’t.
Robyn Beck/AFP via Getty Images
Here we sit in January 2024 and the Emmys are nigh — the ceremony that should have taken place in September was postponed due to the Hollywood strikes. Now, some of the Emmy contenders you’ll see Monday night aired well over a year ago – as far back as June 2022. How, exactly, did that happen? Skip ahead to see what’s eligible in outstanding drama and comedy. Or, gather ’round for a little history:
Some of us are old enough to remember a time before streaming, before cable, when there were just the three television networks. Back then, during the Cretaceous, as ichthyosaurs swam the turbid seas, there was a system that every network followed: Television series premiered in the fall and had their season finales in the spring; the summer was given over to reruns.
From the mid-1970s on, the Emmys ceremony always took place in late August/early September, which made sense – they were, after all, largely a promotional tool to herald the new television season by honoring the one that came before. They were part of the hype surrounding the networks’ launches of their new fall line-ups, which used to be surprisingly glitzy affairs, replete with earwormingly cheesy theme songs.
But then came cable, and streaming, and the gradual phasing out of the hoary 22-episode season, even on broadcast networks. Today, television seasons start and end at will, yet the Television Academy has maintained a white-knuckle grip on the Old Ways: The Emmys ceremony takes place in September, and it honors shows that aired in the window between the start of summer of the previous year and the spring of the current one.
Other awards that honor television make it simpler. The Golden Globes ceremony, for example, takes place in January, and any television show that aired any time in the previous calendar year is eligible.
As prestige streaming services started lapping up greater and greater shares of Emmys, the Television Academy’s antiquated adherence to the notion of a September ceremony made it difficult to keep track of which seasons of a streaming series were eligible in any given year.
This year, that confusion is compounded by the fact that the Hollywood strikes caused the Academy to delay the Emmys ceremony. For the first time since the 1950s, Emmys will be handed out in January – this Monday night, in fact.
Yet the Emmys’ eligibility window hasn’t changed. This year’s ceremony will only honor shows that aired between June 1, 2022 and May 31, 2023. That’s a long time ago, and it means that several nominated shows have had time to produce and air full seasons beyond the ones that are currently nominated.
Given all that, it’ll be useful, come Monday night, to keep straight which specific seasons and which performances are actually in the running. So here’s a handy guide.
Outstanding drama series
Andor, Season 1, Disney+
This one’s easy – we’re talking the first and only season (so far) of Andor, the Star Wars series that eschewed lightsabers, lore and lyricism for a refreshingly grounded tale of rebellion, sabotage, incarceration and (most marvelously!) the petty office politics that drive the engine of the evil Galactic Empire.
Better Call Saul, Season 6, Part 2, AMC
For those of us, like me, who’d prematurely resigned ourselves to a world where Better Call Saul ended without the Emmys ever recognizing the outstanding work of Bob Odenkirk and Rhea Seehorn, good news. The series intentionally divided its sixth and final season so that its last six episodes would air during this ceremony’s eligibility window. So we’re talking about the episodes that take place in the immediate aftermath of a major character’s death, and that portray the resolution of the Nebraska flash-forward, involving a hilarious mall heist, and Saul Goodman’s final fate. That means those of us who’ve been pulling for this show and these actors for years are gonna get still another chance to get our hearts broken one last time.
The Crown, Season 5, Netflix
Take note: We’re not dealing with the most recent, bifurcated final season, but the one before it, which introduced a new raft of cast members, most notably Imelda Staunton’s Elizabeth, Elizabeth Debicki’s Diana and Dominic West’s Charles. The season mostly tracked the implosion of the Charles-Diana marriage; it ended with the handover of Hong Kong and the ascension of Tony Blair. (Last weekend, Debicki’s performance as Diana won her the Golden Globe for best actress in a television drama — but that award was for her work in the first half of the show’s final season. Got it? Still with me?)
House of the Dragon, Season 1, HBO/Max
Again, no confusion here: This is the only season of HBO’s Game of Thrones prequel that’s aired so far. All those characters with their irritatingly similar names (Rhaenys! Rhaenyra!), all those dragons, all those ghastly kids being even ghastlier jerks to each other. The series is a huge investment for HBO/Max, so the execs will be looking for some love Monday night. (It’s probably churlish to note the conspicuous absence, in these nominations, of another hugely expensive fantasy series from another major streaming service, so let’s just give Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power some time alone to lick its wounds.)
The Last of Us, Season 1, HBO/Max
This twisty fungus-among-us post-apocalyptic series has only aired its first season, but that season was meaty as a portobello. Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey are in the running, and Nick Offerman took home the Emmy for guest actor in a drama category for his heartbreaking work in episode 3.
Succession, Season 4, HBO/Max
The series’ turbulent and triumphant final season ended juuuust under the wire. That surprising character death, and all the venal, grasping, desperate jockeying for position it kicked into motion, all took place during the Emmy eligibility window: The series finale aired on May 28 of last year, and the window closed just three days later; they knew what they were doing. Brian Cox gets his one last shot at an Emmy for the role of Logan Roy, but he’s up against fellow actors Kieran Culkin (who hasn’t won for his portrayal of Roman Roy) and Jeremy Strong (who took home an Emmy for his performance as Kendall Roy back in 2020).
The White Lotus, Season 2, HBO/Max
Yes, this is Season 2 – the Italy season. Sex workers, Vespas, villas, “These gays are trying to murder me,” the whole sun-baked Sicilian schmear. Pretty much the entire ensemble cast is up for acting Emmys; root against Jennifer Coolidge at your peril.
Yellowjackets, Season 2, Showtime
The furious (you’ll forgive me) buzz around this time-hopping series cooled a bit in its second season, which earned it fewer Emmy nominations. But Melanie Lynskey’s fearless and funny performance as a survivor of a group of athletes stranded in the Canadian wilderness years before earned her her second Emmy nom for the role.
Outstanding comedy series
Abbott Elementary, Season 2, ABC
This raft of nominations are for the show’s sophomore season. The show’s first season earned it a win for outstanding writing for a comedy series, outstanding casting for a comedy series, and a win for Sheryl Lee Ralph. It’s up for all three of those again, along with repeat acting noms for creator Quinta Brunson, Janelle James and Ralph. New this year: acting nominations for guest Taraji P. Henson and series regular Tyler James Williams.
Barry, Season 4, HBO/Max
Barry’s fourth and final season just beat the eligibility buzzer: Its harrowing/hilarious final episode aired three days before the window closed. This is the season where everything catches up to Barry at last, even as he escapes prison, and lives off the grid before returning to LA for a final reckoning.
The Bear, Season 1, FX
Cast your mind back, back to June of 2022, when all of a sudden your most TV-savvy friends started talking about this riveting, funny, stressful show about a sandwich place in Chicago. It’s hard to remember, now that The Bear is widely considered one of the best shows on television, what it was like to discover how raw and real and refreshing it was back then. But Monday night is the first chance the Emmys will have to recognize this show – all of the nominations are for Season 1, when it was still a scrappy underdog that could all too easily have disappeared into the glut of the cable grid. Rest assured: There will come a time for Season 2’s brilliant, cameo-studded Christmas dinner episode to receive its due – but that’s next year’s concern. This is the first chance The Bear‘s stars, writers, directors and producers will be able to step into the Emmy spotlight.
Jury Duty, Season 1, FreeVee
This one’ll be easy to keep straight. There’s only been one season of this fake reality series that cast a good-natured real guy as a jury member, surrounded him with actors, and had him sit through a fake trial. It’s hugely unlikely that a second season is even possible, now that the game’s been revealed.
The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Season 5, Prime Video
The fifth and final season of Amy Sherman-Palladino’s profile of a fictional female comic took real chances, offering teasing flash-forwards that threw the show’s (too-comfortable) status quo into disarray. In the main storyline, meanwhile, Midge got a writing gig on a talk show, and chafed against its demands. The Emmys showered the show with awards in its opening seasons; it remains to be seen if the series’ gratifying willingness to shake things up in the home stretch will turn their heads again.
Only Murders in the Building, Season 2, Hulu
Don’t get it twisted – these nominations aren’t for the most recent season of Hulu’s comedy mystery series, which widened out the world of the show into musical theater, and featured guest stars Paul Rudd and Meryl Streep. No, we’re talking about Season 2, which stuck to the murderous goings-on within the tony Upper West Side apartment building referenced in the title. RIP Bunny.
Ted Lasso, Season 3, AppleTV+
The third and final season may have its detractors, and the show never recaptured the cultural cachet it enjoyed when it debuted, but never mind. Season 3 has got plenty of chances to win something Monday night. It alone ate up half of the slots in the guest actress in a comedy series category, though that award ended up going to Judith Light for her work in Poker Face.
Wednesday, Season 1, Netflix
A huge hit that likely owed more to star Jenna Ortega’s pitch-perfect deadpan delivery and less to its setting (another school for outcasts) or its plotting (a clunky love triangle). But a hit it was, and it stands poised to soak up a lot of Emmy love on Monday night, albeit mostly for technical awards.
Author Julia Elliott won for her short story collection Hellions.
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Forrest Clonts/Tin House
Writer Julia Elliott has won this year’s Carol Shields Prize for Fiction for her short story collection Hellions. The award honors work by women and nonbinary authors in the U.S. and Canada.
Elliott, who also authored the novel The New and Improved Romie Futch and the short story collection The Wilds, is known for blending elements of Southern gothic horror, surrealism and fairy tale. Hellions, published in 2025, includes stories set against backdrops like a plague-stricken medieval convent, a feminist art colony, and small Southern towns.
“This eerie, eclectic, genre-leaping collection takes no half-measures; every sentence of Hellions crackles or crawls,” wrote the prize jury in a statement. “Here, human folly moves against a backdrop of horror and magic … But for all its wildness, there is tremendous control.”
The prize, named after a Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, awards $150,000 to one winner each year. Novels, short story collections, and graphic novels by women and nonbinary authors are eligible.
This year’s finalists included Quiara Alegría Hudes (The White Hot), Lee Lai (Cannon), Megha Majumdar (A Guardian and a Thief), and Sonya Walger (Lion). They will each receive $12,500.
The Carol Shields Prize went to writer Canisia Lubrin in 2025.
You can listen to actor Donna Lynne Champlin read Elliott’s story “Hellion” on the Death, Sex & Money podcast here.
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By Helen Shaw, Vanessa Friedman, Léo Hamelin, Laura Salaberry and Sutton Raphael
June 2, 2026
At around 1 in the morning at the Sassafras Saloon in Hollywood, four masc lesbians in cowboy hats and chaps were dancing on top of the bar while bartenders attempted to continue making espresso martinis beneath them.
One performer crawled into the crowd and between the spread legs of an audience member, licking the air between their thighs. Another wrapped a belt around their girlfriend’s neck while thrusting against her to Bon Jovi’s “You Give Love a Bad Name.” The ravenous audience, almost entirely women, fluttered dollar bills all around, while easily filling the saloon’s 300-person capacity.
Across Los Angeles, countless strip clubs and revue shows were unfolding at that same hour, though none quite like this and likely few provoking this level of frenzy. The night had all the riotous energy of a scene from “Coyote Ugly,” with the choreographed masculinity of “Magic Mike.” Playing on the latter’s name, this was the doing of Magic Mascs, an all-masc lesbian and translesbian revue, by sapphics for sapphics.
Skye Valentinez, from left, Alexa Legend, Daddii Syd and King Captain are members of Magic Mascs, an all-masc lesbian and translesbian collective, that started in February.
“Our idea was to give lesbians what men get all the time at a strip club, but instead of just sitting around and singing ‘Pink Pony Club,’ actually going wild,” said group founder Daddii Syd, a.k.a. Syd Latimore.
The performers, self-described “daddies” — Daddii Syd, Alexa Legend, Skye Valentinez and King Captain — formed Magic Mascs in February. The performance at the Saloon was their third overall, but the group has already become an institution within lesbian nightlife in Los Angeles. They will make their debut during a Pride Month performance on Friday at Womxn Pride’s rooftop party in downtown L.A.
The members come from professional dance backgrounds. King Captain entered dance school at age 12 and taught dance for nearly a decade. Daddii Syd has danced since childhood. Alexa Legend spent years go-go dancing across clubs in the city before joining the troupe. Skye Valentinez, the baby of the group — cherub-faced, smiling through braces — is the newest to performing, though she steps into it naturally, exhibiting the same living, breathing caricature of masculinity as the rest of them.
“No one’s trying to be cisgender,” King Captain makes clear. “We’re not trying to be the kind of men who are born into and fed by patriarchy,” Daddii Syd added. “We’re redefining masculinity.”
King Captain gets their underwear stuffed with dollar bills from the crowd.
Magic Mascs’ success follows a broader trend of lesbians confidently stepping into masculinity before hungry eyes. In the past year, performative masc competitions have appeared across the country, with lesbians — hair slicked back and carabiners dangling from their Carhartt jeans — showing off in front of leering crowds. Magic Mascs feels like a more professionalized version of that phenomenon, less tongue-in-cheek — just tongue.
“We always knew there was a huge hunger for this,” Daddii Syd said.
Their first performance, in San Diego, sold out fast.
“I knew right away we were onto something special,” Daddii Syd said.
Videos of the troupe traveled far across sapphics’ algorithms, especially clips of King Captain, whose devoted fan base — known collectively as “The Castle” — make arduous trips just to see them in the flesh. One fan drove more than 20 hours from Dallas to San Diego to see Magic Mascs. Another sent an edible fruit bouquet from Australia.
Backstage, every gesture from the troupe was ultra-confident. Captain, wearing briefs stuffed with a sock full of rice, talked to me with a leg cocked on the footrest of my stool. Daddii Syd, Alexa Legend and Skye Valentinez stood pelvis-forward, hands behind their heads, flexing ropey muscles. They loved the camera, eyeing it like prey while tipping the brims of their cowboy hats. (“You guys are like the modern-day Beatles,” our photographer said.)
King Captain gets the Hollywood crowd into a frenzy during a recent show.
Everything in the show revolved around their hips. The performers rolled and glided before delivering sudden, mechanical thrusts powerful enough to rattle nearby glasses. Their bodies were taut with effort and exaggerated lust. Daddii Syd performed with her girlfriend Jamie in matching plaid, not leaving much to the imagination as they licked whipped cream off each other.
Alexa Legend, who described herself as shy offstage, eventually stripped down to nipple pasties and a cowboy hat, firing confetti from her crotch into the crowd. King Captain swerved their hips like a powerful mechanical bull. “Oh, Captain, my captain,” someone in the crowd said, hand pressed dramatically to her forehead.
They paid particular attention to a woman in a wheelchair in the crowd — typical of their performances — asking if they could sit on the wheelchair. They received keen consent. “That was, um, very nice,” she told me after, still a little lost for words.
“We’re huge on consent,” Daddii Syd said. At the start of the show, they told the crowd to cross their arms in a Wakanda Forever pose if they didn’t wish to be touched. They checked in constantly while moving through the crowd, leaning close to ask questions like, “Is this OK?” and “Anywhere you don’t like to be touched?”
Captain learned these habits through work in intimacy coordination and under the mentorship of Tonia Sina, among the first professional intimacy coordinators in Hollywood. That ethos of care extended beyond their interactions with the audience and into the way they interacted with one another offstage.
“We want everyone in the crowd to feel gorgeous,” King Captain said before the recent show at Sassafras Saloon in Hollywood.
King Captain, left, and Lauren Henson, a stage kitten for the Magic Mascs, perform together on the bar.
Forming a sanctuary for themselves was just as important to the troupe as emboldening others’ desire. “It’s hard to find other masc friends,” Daddii Syd said. “Everybody’s weirdly competitive and trying to sabotage each other.” King Captain agreed, asking: “Why can’t we all be daddies at the same time?”
Daddii Syd and King Captain, who are both in their 30s, had little butch representation or friendship growing up and they have now become something like father figures to Alexa Legend and Skye Valentinez, who are in their 20s.
“We have to protect each other,” King Captain said. “We have to look out for each other.”
Daddii Syd put her arm around Skye Valentinez and said: “Look at this beautiful baby we have.”
That tenderness carried straight into the night. There was a striking seriousness to the whole performance, which spanned from just past 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. Unlike a bachelorette party or the typical male revue, there was no giggling in the room, and no wink of camp from the performers. Here was a rare claim to unabashed public sapphic desire; it was given the scale and seriousness routinely afforded to heterosexual display, like the gleeful bravado of a man striding into Hooters.
By the end of the night at Sassafras Saloon, the performers had stripped down nearly to nothing, pouring water over themselves while the audience roared. The atmosphere felt like one of collective release, a recognition that masculinity and desire don’t belong only to men — that a group of four masc lesbians can be horny, inspire horniness and ultimately stir a hysteria that once greeted Channing Tatum or even the Beatles.
It was the magnitude of the response that night at the Saloon, as on every other night they’ve performed, that’s inspiring their next moves: total domination in sum. The troupe is already planning a national tour through Florida, Dallas and Sacramento, though Daddii Syd’s ambitions extend much further.
“The idea,” she told me, “is to go global. Like a boy band.”
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