‘AGT’ Reveals Wildcard Acts For The Quarter-Finals
NBC Reading Time: 2 minutes
America’s Got Talent officially has 36 acts for the live shows!
To lead up to the first quarter-final episode next week, AGTÂ aired a recap episode of all we’ve see so far this season. Even though the hour mostly consisted of clips from previous rounds, we did get a little bit of new information: the announcement of the three wildcard acts that will round out the quarter-finalists.
Wildcards are acts that were eliminated in a previous round, but selected by the show to return to a later one. The three acts announced for this honor tonight were…
- La Fontaine Humane (aka the Human Fountains)
- opera singer Daniel Emmet
- video projection act Front Pictures
Historically, AGT wildcard acts have had a hard time advancing any further than the round they were brought back for. One notable exception to this was magician Steven Brundage in Season 11, who had a massive fan campaign behind him to return to the show. Brundage nearly ended up in the finals, only to be eliminated after losing the Dunkin’ Save vote in his semi-finals episode and losing the tiebreaker after the judges’ choice resulted in a deadlock.
I actually think two of this season’s wildcard acts have a decent chance at making it to the semi-finals (and maybe even beyond). Front Pictures is an act unlike most others this season and many fans were disappointed to see them missing from Judge Cuts round. And Daniel Emmet got a huge underdog edit in the auditions, being one of several singers Simon requested to hear a second song from as well as a great performance and emotional video package edit in his Judge Cuts episode.
The Human Fountains on the other hand will most likely be eliminated after their next performance. Their act definitely takes skill and is something you won’t see many other places besides AGT, but the novelty appears to have worn off for a lot of viewers. Add that to their slot being in next week’s episode which looks absolutely stacked and their chances to make the semi-finals are looking pretty slim.
Something else to keep in mind: assuming the live shows operate in the same fashion as the last few seasons, each of the three quarter-final episodes will see seven acts advance to the next round. Since there are 22 spots in the semi-finals and only 21 acts sent through via the quarter-final results, there will be yet another wildcard chosen from the acts eliminated in the first three live shows. It’ll be interesting to see who is selected to return, and I’ll be keeping a close eye on the possibilities over the next few weeks.
