It can be hard to recall, considering how beloved the season became, but there was a moment in RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 12 when the whole thing started to feel a bit repetitive. Week after week, Gigi Goode and the already-disqualified Sherry Pie racked up wins, with only the two premieres seeing other queens take top spots. (And while Widow Von’Du and Jaida Essence Hall did ultimately snag those victories in Lip Syncs for the Win, they did so against … Gigi and Sherry.) Adding to the monotony were the routine placements of the same queens in the bottom two: for the first five Lip Syncs for Your Life, either Brita, Heidi N Closet or Nicky Doll was in every single one. In one case, both Heidi and Nicky were!
This all came to a head in Episode 7, which saw Gigi secure a third win while Jan memorably face-cracked at losing the Madonna Rusical. With time and perspective, it’s clear that Gigi did deserve that win—and that Jan was not robbed. (If anyone could reasonably be considered competition for her, it was the simply safe Jaida.) But in the moment, vocal fans were quite frustrated at Jan’s perceived snub, and Gigi was in the unfavourable position of being perceived as too much of a frontrunner. She was an avatar of the season’s monotony, through no fault of her own.
But Episode 8, featuring a branding challenge, would change the game. Not only did Gigi and Sherry both score low placements for the first time in their Drag Race careers, but several lovable underdogs scored deserved top placements. Yes, Jaida had a win already, but it was many weeks ago, and her fans (including yours truly) were getting antsy for her to earn another. Meanwhile, while Crystal Methyd, Jackie Cox and Heidi had all done okay for themselves, they were all yet to secure a win, and they were usually relegated to just one of them scoring in the top next to queens like Gigi and Sherry. Seeing all of them alongside Jaida in the top at once was a thrill, and genuinely changed the trajectory of the season in terms of fan reception.
That was nothing, though, compared to the explosion of joy seeing Heidi secure her first maxi-challenge win. The lovable underdog had already been made to lip sync multiple times, and despite solid performances, there was an impression among viewers that her underwhelming runways would forever keep her from glory. For her to take the victory, and for a branded product that felt like such a perfect extension of her own drag, was like Christmas morning for her fans.
This episode of Season 17 brings those same feelings of joy. In one of the show’s most interesting episodes in years, underdogs find themselves on top, interpersonal conflict flows freely and we get an absolute smash of a lip sync song. I’ve felt the need to defend Season 17 at times this year, but on this one, the work speaks for itself—and the work is excellent.
Lydia B Kollins opens this episode expressing “a deep sadness” to have sent home her boyfriend, Kori King. She’s happy to still be there, but Kori was clearly a real comfort to her—it’s hard to know where she goes now. She still has her foot on Sam Star’s neck, as she has since ranking her last in Rate-a-Queen, telling her that she could’ve been in the bottom over her for the Betsey Johnson design challenge. (“Are you that delusional?” Sam asks.) Lydia knows that she and Lana Ja’Rae are the only ones left without maxi-challenge wins, leaving them looking like sitting ducks, Ru ready to send them home next.
Lexi Love is also not feeling great about her trajectory, having come so close to a win last week but otherwise having a pretty muted run since the talent show. I have to say, I’m also a bit underwhelmed with Lexi this season. She’s been consistently strong on the runway, but it feels like her star power isn’t coming through in the challenges. (And while we can have more than one fashion queen a season, Arrietty’s looks have more often captured my eye than Lexi’s.) It once felt like Lexi was a lock for the finale, but now I see her battling with Jewels Sparkles and Suzie Toot for one of the last spots—with Sam and Onya Nurve way out in front.
Speaking of Jewels, as our last maxi-challenge winner, she gets to decide the performance order for the Villains Roast! That’s right, three iconic villains from Drag Race herstory (read: one each from three of the four most recent regular seasons) are here to get read by the final eight queens. Mistress Isabelle Brooks and Plane Jane are obvious picks—gotta feel for Kori that she didn’t make it to be reunited with Plane—but the choice of Kandy Muse feels more tied to her time on House of Villains than for anything she really did on her season. Kandy may be a strong personality, but I struggle to think of anything she did on Season 13 that was really villainous.
Regardless, it’s time for Jewels to decide who goes when, and holy shit, we haven’t seen this much drama about a comedy challenge performance order since UK Season 2. (Somewhere in the Scottish Highlands, Lawrence Chaney is still yelling at Ellie Diamond for that.) While Jewels does ask the queens for preferences, she says she considers previous comedy and acting challenges, as well as which queens already have wins. She ultimately goes with Onya, Arrietty, Jewels, Lana, Sam, Lydia, Suzie and Lexi, and all hell breaks loose. Arrietty feels like Jewels put herself after her because she knows Arrietty will flop, and as her friend, the Seattle queen feels stabbed in the back. Meanwhile, despite actually getting the show-closing place she wanted, Lexi is furious to be performing right after Suzie—someone she has felt insecure comparing herself to since the talent shows.
You can feel the tension a bit at the table read (fun idea!) with Michelle Visage and guest judge Whitney Cummings, but the queens mostly keep it professional there. Well, Lydia does yawn, but I’d do the same if I had to take comedy advice from modern day Whitney Cummings. Sam demonstrates a facility with roasting that her mom, Trinity the Tuck, never has—“you’ve fucked more rich white men than cryptocurrency” makes me fully guffaw. Suzie tries to set low expectations of herself by calling her comedy too “cerebral,” but Onya catches her red-handed, explaining that none of her jokes have ever gone over Onya’s head. Lexi’s set is very good, from what we hear, while Arrietty has to rely on fully stealing a couple of Jewels’ jokes. Like she literally looks over at her paper and writes them down, like that one cheating meme. It’s actually hilarious for how brazen it is.
But tensions boil over at the makeup mirror the next day. Arrietty and Jewels’ Chismosa Corner is broken up when Arrietty moves away from her, rejecting Jewels’ apologies and attempts to explain her motivation. Lexi adds fuel to the fire, saying that both she and Arrietty no longer mess with Jewels. She goes so far as to accuse Jewels of punishing her for asking for last by putting her after Suzie, since Jewels knows that Lexi feels insecure about Suzie. When Sam tries to recentre and focus Lexi on the task at hand, calling the drama “silly,” Lexi retorts: “$200,000 is not silly.”
Lest you think this drama is over, it reignites when Lana goes over to comfort Jewels, now sitting with just Onya. (Onya earns my stan card many times over in this episode for being such an ally to Jewels while she feels she has no one.) Arrietty and Lexi jump on Jewels once again, and while Jewels admits in confessional she feels no need to apologize to Lexi for giving her what she asked for, she does genuinely feel badly she has hurt Arrietty. Frustratingly, Arrietty continues to push back, saying that she would not have done that to Jewels as her sister. “Damn, so everybody in here ain’t your sister?” Onya interjects, which is a fun puncturing of the modern Drag Race “everybody say love, we are all sisters” dynamic.
Suzie tries to move everyone along by refocusing the energy, with the hope that the roast will be great. “Shut up! Let a bitch be mad!” Arrietty fires back, leading the group to descend into chaos once again. Onya can’t help but laugh that Jewels has “wrecked these bitches,” and indeed, it seems like most of them could not be in a worse mental state for the roast.
My thoughts on all this roughly reflect Suzie’s in confessional: “Where you are placed in the roast does not matter that much. How you personally are affected by where you’re placed in the roast matters a lot.” Just like Lawrence and A’Whora in UK Season 2, Arrietty and Lexi are being their own saboteurs here. (Outer, not inner.) The fact that they let their Jewels lashings get to such a heightened place is not a good look, particularly on Lexi. While I disagree that Jewels was in any way trying to screw over Arrietty, I can understand why her feelings are hurt, and it seems like a fair conflict between friends. Lexi is mad that Jewels did not predict Lexi’s feelings and cater every decision she made in the performance order selection to Lexi. I’m glad Lexi ultimately apologizes in Untucked—after being encouraged to by Onya—because she is clearly in the wrong.
When we get to “RuPaul’s Villains Race,” as show opener Onya calls it, the former villains almost feel like an afterthought in the episode. That’s not a diss: it speaks to just how much the Season 17 cast is bringing it that Drag Race doesn’t need to rely on voices from the past to lift them up. Onya’s set is a terrific start to the show: she’s on fire and in command throughout. Arrietty screws up once, mispronouncing Mistress’ name (“Sound it out, baby,” Mistress says), and she just fully falls apart. Saying she “bombs” is actually insufficient. It is terrible, and it feels so long. To wit, Sam compares Arrietty’s set to “watching a starving dog, and you want to bring it some food but then you’re like, mmm, maybe we should just shoot it in the head.” Ru fully starts cheering when Arrietty begins to conclude her set. The rare laughs she gets are on the jokes stolen from Jewels, which, you can imagine, has Jewels steaming.
This, in turn, causes Jewels to fall apart, and she struggles after her shade at Arrietty (“Wow, that was very … intelligent”). She’s not horrible, but she just doesn’t have command and underperforms relative to expectations. Lana goes next, and conversely, she way overperforms expectations! From the very first line—“Wow, Jewels. I could’ve said it better myself”—she’s confident and funny, taking decent jokes and elevating them with super sharp delivery. My favourite is her last as she introduces Sam: “This next queen, she owns the stage much like her family owned my ancestors.” It’s made even better when Sam volleys back, calling Lana “my longtime family friend.” She’s also great, if a bit overpraised for her southern fried shade.
Then we come to Lydia, and reader, this is a gag. She slays this roast, adding to a long line of unpredictable expert roasters like Coco Montrese and Peppermint. She starts off flirting with Ru, saying that in the wake of losing Kori, she needs “another bald Black man to fill that void.” She has the most creative drag of Mistress’ size: “I’m a really, really big fan … is what Mistress would say if she was dressed as an oscillating fan.” She drags the hell out of Kandy: “I heard you left the Mormon church because you refused to compete with six other women for food.” It’s kind of amazing to see meek Lydia coming for these huge characters’ throats, and doing so with genuinely great comic timing. Hers is a terrific set, so much so that she actually throws Suzie off, as she was expecting to have an easy go of it after Lydia! She’s still fine, and has some great lines, but you can tell she’s off her game.
Lexi goes last, but Suzie’s introduction of her that she has “no friends” utterly derails her. Her jokes are good (I love her calling Suzie “Jinkx Monsoon for dummies”), but like in Snatch Game, she just fails to complete the challenge adequately. Later, during critiques, Lexi is able to put into words exactly why Suzie throws her off so much: “Let’s face it: I was sucking dick and smoking meth when she was studying and becoming better.” She feels like Suzie is better prepared for this competition, and she’s getting in her head about that. Credit where it’s due, Whitney actually gives her very good advice, comparing Lexi to herself and telling her to exorcise her inner critic. It seems to resonate with Lexi, and I hope it leads her to more success in the last few challenges of this season.
After a largely underwhelming Who Wears Short Shorts? runway category (Jewels, Sam and Lexi have my favourite looks), Suzie and Onya get called safe and leave the stage hand-in-hand. It’s so cute it almost makes me forget how silly it is that Onya is just safe this week. But the judges are clearly most excited by our underdogs, Lana and Lydia, and I totally understand why! Both really come into their own in a big way this week, and to see both of them competing for the win while all members of the bottom three are already queens with wins makes for satisfying television. If anyone, I likely would’ve replaced Sam in the top three with Onya, but I did enjoy the few jokes we saw in Sam’s set.
Ultimately, Lydia takes the win, and the other queens are so stoked for her. It’s genuinely adorable. In an episode that is otherwise largely divisive, seeing everyone rally around Lydia in this unexpected moment of victory is wonderful. It instantly upends the competition to give another queen a win this late, and keeps things unpredictable heading into the endgame. I love this episode for many reasons, but a huge part of it is that Lydia’s win shows you can never fully figure out what Drag Race has up its sleeve.
The bottom two are our former Chismosa Corner inhabitants, Arrietty and Jewels, and oh bitch, the lip sync song is “YA YA.” Hell yeah. Put your hands together, because we’re clapping. We’re drumming. We’re snapping. We’re welcoming you to the Beyoncé Cowboy Carter Act II at the Rodeo Chitlin’ Circuit. I love this song so much—it was very close to being #1 on my Spotify Wrapped last year—and I am gagged it’s already a Lip Sync for Your Life song. Arrietty and Jewels do well with it, but Jewels is just a much more natural fit for the style of track. She sends Arrietty packing, ending their friends-to-enemies storyline here.
Wow, what a rush. I went a full 500 words over my usual recap length simply because there was that much to talk about. Like with the Season 12 episode I mentioned in the intro, this episode is invigorating. It makes this season feel like it still has some unpredictability in it, and that the queens are gonna give us one hell of a show in these last few weeks. I know Season 17 has been a bit of a roller coaster competition-wise, but I’ve loved the ride—and I can’t wait to see how it ends.