Ladies and gentlemen, presenting Academy Award nominee Kirsten Dunst! 

The star earned her very first Oscar nod, for best supporting actress for The Power of the Dog on Tuesday morning, 28 years after her precocious breakout performance in Interview with the Vampire. Also nominated were partner Jesse Plemons, co-stars Kodi Smit-McPhee and Benedict Cumberbatch and director Jane Campion. The Lost Daughter’s Jessie Buckley also earned her first nomination, while past winner Olivia Colman picked up her third — both for playing Leda Caruso, at different stages of her life. First-time filmmakers Lin Manuel Miranda and Maggie Gyllenhaal also got their flowers, with two nominations for Tick Tick... Boom! and three for The Lost Daughter, including best adapted screenplay. Meanwhile, cinematographer Ari Wegner, whose lens captured Phil Burbank’s vicious outbursts and tender interludes, is the second woman ever to be nominated for best cinematographer. Oh, and with 12 nominations, The Power of the Dog just joined some pretty rarified company. (Two words: Ben Hur.)

Did all those numbers just make your skin tingle? Are you the friend who spouts off Oscars trivia during the watch party? Or do you just want to see Plemons and Dunst holding hands on the red carpet? No matter your level of Oscars enthusiasm, here are some of the biggest takeaways from the 2022 Academy Awards nominations. Now, go smash that ballot come March 27. 

The Power of the Dog joins the Oscar big leagues.

With 12 nominations, The Power of the Dog is now tied with past Oscar behemoths Gladiator, Ben-Hur, My Fair Lady, On The Waterfront, The Song Of Bernadette, Dances With Wolves, Schindler’s List and The English Patient for total nods. The record for most-ever nominations by a single film is held by James Cameron’s Titanic, Damien Chazelle’s La La Land and Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s All About Eve, with 14 nominations each. The likes of Rob Marshall’s Chicago, Robert Zemeckis’ Forrest Gump and Fred Zinnemann’s From Here To Eternity follow with 13 nominations apiece. (TL;DR: Bronco Henry now has more nominations than Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King and The Godfather: Part 2.)

What’s more, Campion is the first woman to helm a film with this many nominations — the previous record holder was Oscar-winner Kathryn Bigelow, with nine nods for The Hurt Locker. 

Jane Campion is the first woman director to be nominated twice. 

Campion earned her first nomination for best director 28 years ago, for the 1993 period drama The Piano. She lost to Steven Spielberg, who took home the Oscar for Schindler’s List at the 66th Academy Awards, but she won that year for best adapted screenplay. (In an ironic twist, the two are once again facing off in a competitive director’s category, with Spielberg nominated for West Side Story this time.) If she wins, she’d be the third woman to take home the golden statue, after Kathryn Bigelow (2009) and Chloé Zhao (2021). Only seven women have ever been nominated in the best director category. 

Ari Wegner is the second woman ever to be nominated for best cinematographer.

Wegner is only the second woman of all time nominated in a historically male-dominated field. The first was Rachel Morrison, nominated in 2018 for her work on Dee Rees’ Mudbound, another Netflix film, after 90 years of all-male contenders. She lost to Roger Deakins for Blade Runner 2049, which means Wegner could become the first woman ever to win the prestigious award. 

You never forget your first!

With nominations in three out of four acting categories, The Power of the Dog is celebrating some major firsts: best supporting actor nominees Jesse Plemons and Kodi Smit-McPhee and best supporting actress nominee Kirsten Dunst are all celebrating their freshman nominations. The Lost Daughter’s Jessie Buckley is also celebrating her first nod in the best supporting actress category. Kristen Stewart also earned her first nomination in the best actress category for her performance as Princess Diana in Spencer. She is only the second Twilight cast member to earn that nomination: Anna Kendrick was nominated in 2010 for Up in the Air. Meanwhile, King Richard’s Aunjanue Ellis and Belfast’s Ciarán Hinds are two more first-timers, and CODA’s Troy Kotsur made history as the first deaf actor to earn a best actor nomination.

Welcome to a long Hollywood romantic tradition.

Plemons and Dunst join best actor and best actress nominees Javier Bardem (Being the Ricardos) and Penelope Cruz (Parallel Mothers) on the best double date ever as the two couples nominated for Oscars in the same year. They’re part of a long history of romantic competition at the Oscars; the first couple to earn simultaneous nominations dates back to 1932, when Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne were both nominated for The Guardsman. They were followed by legendary Hollywood couples Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh, Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, and Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn. 

Asked about earning her first nomination with Plemons, Dunst told Variety: "I mean, it’s just so crazy to be a couple and have our first nominations together. It’s like a storybook. You know what I mean? It’s so weird. It’s amazing." 

Two actors are nominated for the same role.

The Lost Daughter protagonist Leda Caruso is walking the same red carpet footsteps as Vito Corleone. With nominations in the best actress and best supporting actress categories, respectively, Colman and Buckley could be the third actor pairing to win Oscars for playing the same role, after Heath Ledger and Joaquin Phoenix for the Joker and Marlon Brando and Robert DeNiro for Vito Corleone. Another best actress nominee, Ariana DeBose, could mark a fourth major duo win — she’s nominated for playing Anita in West Side Story, the very same role that earned Rita Moreno her first Oscar in 1962.