The infamous Dowager Empress of Qing Dynasty, Cixi, outlived both her son his successor.
When her son died his wife would have become the new Dowager Empress but since Cixi was strong the poor woman lived in obscurity until she died.
Cixi ruled as a Dowager from 1864 until 1908, when she died a day before her son's successor (foul play has been suspected to this day), and only after Cixi died, the wife of her son's successor, Longyu, 33 years younger than Cixi, could become the Dowager Empress, and she was allowed that only because Longyu happened to be a daughter of Cixi's brother.
4 years later the dynasty was no more and Longyu died the year after Qing fell, but that's another story.
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Given that Min Heejin and MNet, the organizers of MAMA, have not been that friendly, it is possible that MNEt gives New Jeans some award with a strange name, essentially a Lifetime Achievement Award, and deem it ineligible from winning a Grand Prize ever again.
That makes NewJeans Senior Singers.
However, in Asia, if there are more than one Senior something, the Most Senior is the person who became Senior first, no matter the age or whatever.
Out of all acts which debuted after 2000, the first Senior Singer is IU, who received the Lifetime Achievement Award, then called the Mot Popular Vocalist Award, catalogueing her entire career up to then, from MAMA on the year 2014, when she was 21 (her real age was not revealed until 2019).
After that, BTS and BoA received Lifetime Achievement Awards, but because there is already someone who became a Senior Singer before, they are less Senior than IU and cannot claim their Seniority over her.
So, even if NewJeans receives the Lifetime Achievement Award from MAMA this time, that does not make it Senior, since the Senior Singer has no intention to leave showbiz anytime soon. No matter what, no one can become Senior to IU, because she became a Senior Singer before everyone else in the room.
So, even if NewJeans now has a Lifetime Achievement Award on its belt, they will have to wait to claim their Seniority until IU is no longer in Showbiz to do so.
