It’s all about the momentum, and boy did “Widow’s Bay” have it.
Katie Dippold’s horror-comedy series entered the Emmy race so late that its final three episodes weren’t even eligible for this year’s awards, but it didn’t even need a full season to dominate the 78th Primetime Emmy Awards and break the record for comedy-series wins.
On paper, the Outstanding Comedy Series award looked like a real race between “Widow’s Bay,” which came into this year’s Emmys with 19 nominations, and the final season of “Hacks,” which set a new record for comedies with 24 noms. In fact, the running order of Monday night’s show suggested that the Television Academy and the show’s producers thought the Outstanding Comedy Series category had more suspense than the Emmys’ typical final award, Outstanding Drama Series, in which “The Pitt” was a prohibitive favorite to beat “Pluribus” and win its second consecutive Outstanding Drama Series Emmy.
But that’s not exactly how it worked out. Voters made their intentions clear when they gave the first award of the night to Kate O’Flynn for “Widow’s Bay” over Hannah Einbinder for “Hacks.” Then they gave the third award to “Widow’s Bay” star Matthew Rhys for his other 2025 role in the limited series “The Beast in Me.” Then they gave the sixth award to “Widow’s Bay’s” Stephen Root over Harrison Ford, and the 10th award to Rhys again, this time for “Widow’s Bay,” then the 11th one to Dippold for writing “Widow’s Bay,” a category that had probably been the best shot for the wonderful finale of “Hacks” to put up a fight.
By the halfway point, the suspense had pretty much been drained out of that final award of the night – although “Hacks” die-hards could disagree by remembering that two years ago, “The Bear” set a new record for the most comedy wins in a single year before “Hacks” stole the top comedy Emmy. But lightning didn’t strike twice for “Hacks,” with “Widow’s Bay” completing the near-sweep that had been feeling pretty inevitable for most of the night.
“The Pitt,” on the other hand, didn’t look all that dominant heading into the final drama award. Its actors lost to Allison Janney for “The Diplomat” and Tom Pelphrey for “Task” in the supporting categories, where it appeared that the frontrunner was hurt by hogging all those nominations (three out of the seven actors and four out of seven actresses nominated were from “The Pitt”), with neither Janney nor Pelphrey splitting the vote with castmates.
Going into the final awards, “The Pitt” was one of four different drama series with a single win in the night, while “Pluribus” led with two drama wins, both of them in categories where it was going head-to-head against “The Pitt.”
But last year “The Pitt” won even though “Severance” had lots more nominations. It established itself as the voters’ favorite and followed that 2025 victory with a strong second season; it wasn’t about to falter after spending the entire Emmy season as a worthy frontrunner.
Still, the night will be remembered as belonging to the comedy series set on the creepy island. In a way, the dominance on the part of “Widow’s Bay” was a feel-good story of a show coming out of nowhere to charm and spook its way into the winner’s circle, led by a unanimously adored cast and a showrunner who must be a lot more twisted than she looks. But it was also yet another instance of Emmy voters narrowing their focus and bestowing all their love on a single show.
This is the fifth time in the last seven years that a series has set a new record for the most comedy wins in a single year. That was good news for “Schitt’s Creek” in 2020, “The Bear” twice in 2024 (once in a delayed ceremony in January and again in September), “The Studio” in 2025 and “Widow’s Bay” this year – but it’s not a great look for Emmy voters, who continually feel as if they’re rubber-stamping a small number of favorites rather than really considering the varied options available.
On the other hand, you can find some variety in voters’ choices if you look at the big picture. “Ted Lasso” is the only series to win the Outstanding Comedy Series award more than once in the last 10 years, with the last stretch bringing single-year victories for “The Bear,” “Hacks,” “The Studio” and now “Widow’s Bay.” (Other winners in the past decade are “Veep,” “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” “Fleabag” and “Schitt’s Creek.”)
The Television Academy stirred up controversy and drew the wrath of the major Hollywood guilds with the decision to move half a dozen categories off the primetime telecast and deposit them in the non-televised Creative Arts Emmy shows on Sept. 5 and 6, which had the effect of making the limited-series categories, normally a significant part of the telecast, little more than an afterthought.
The Outstanding Limited Series award went to “DTF St. Louis,” lead acting awards to Matthew Rhys and Sally Field were dropped in between the drama and comedy categories and supporting actor and actress winners David Harbour and Linda Cardellini got a conciliatory booking as presenters, with enough time in their intro to let them toss in a few thank-yous that they would have been making had their categories been presented on the main show.
As for what the show did with the time it saved by moving those categories into the Creative Arts shows, it appeared that it made time for a few more video sketches like the Taylor Swift-meets-“Law & Order” one that took a cute idea and belabored it for longer than necessary, and for extended chat between presenters — which, while occasionally funnier than usual, is never anybody’s favorite part of an awards show.
But for those who liked the bits (or those who wanted to know who to blame), Outstanding Variety Series winner Stephen Colbert provided an answer by telling the audience that his out-of-work writers had penned the Emmy show, and that they were all looking for additional work. There are, perhaps, worse ways to get your name out there.
The category in which Colbert won provided another intriguing wrinkle, because this year the variety-series Emmy was reclassified as an “Area” award, which could have resulted in all five of the nominees being awarded Emmys if they’d gotten enough votes in a five-part “yes or no” vote. (Any nominee with 90% yesses gets an Emmy.) Instead, the award went only to the final season of Colbert’s show, handing “Last Week Tonight With John Oliver” a rare loss and continuing a trend in the small number of Area categories: Almost every time, only a single nominee gets enough votes.
But then, his show’s cancellation gave Colbert all the momentum in the variety category this year. And as the 78th Emmys demonstrated pretty conclusively, momentum is king.
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