RUPAUL’S DRAG RACE ALL STARS: Grand Finale

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The finale!

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All the queens (except Heidi) came back and stuck around!

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A whole bunch of time was spent just letting them sit around and kiki!

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Mama embarrassed herself again!

And that’s all we have to say about all that. Let’s get to the real meat of the matter, so to speak. Whatever else you can say about the shenanigans of a typical Drag Race All-Stars season, it’s still pretty great that they give every queen every opportunity to showcase her work and her art. So let’s skip all of the kiki-ing and embarrassingly mid song promotions and just let the girls do their drag:

Monica Beverly Hillz
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Pure stunning. Monica never quite got the chance to show how polished and beautiful her drag can be, but she definitely took this moment and ran with it.

Naysha Lopez
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These aren’t the best screencaps because these sequences are so wildly edited, but this was easily the best she’s ever looked on the main stage. The gown was nice, but the beat was flawless.

Mrs. Kasha Davis
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We had to laugh when MKD said she was taking inspiration from Ann Miller. Her references are always a generation or two older than she is, so when she said she was paying tribute to her own grandmother, a former vaudevillian, suddenly her whole approach to drag made more sense to us. There’s an old apocryphal line attributed to a whole range of mid-century drag queens: “In the end, we all wound up dressing as our mothers.”

Darienne Lake
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We didn’t love this at all. Darienne’s drag hasn’t quite adjusted to Darienne’s new body.

Jaymes Mansfield
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This was a genuinely pleasant surprise. We didn’t think she had it in her to do showgirl drag. We think the gown is only okay, but the headpiece makes the look.

Kahanna Montrese
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Her explanation for her costume lent it a lot of importance and even granted it a certain beauty, but from a purely technical perspective, it’s overdesigned and in need of some clarity. Her face looks absolutely amazing.

LaLa Ri
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We’re a little surprised by how pageanty so many of the looks were. This is a gorgeous gown, but we don’t think the wig is the right choice for it.

Alexis Michelle
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Perfection. We’re going to be a little cunty and suggest that the wig color wasn’t the best choice for it. Still, that is probably one of the most couture-looking gowns we’ve ever seen on this show. It could walk the Oscars or Met Gala red carpet.

Jessica Wild
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We thought this was a bit of a letdown. It’s pretty and we can’t find any flaws with it, but it’s not giving that wow moment a finale gown needs.

Jimbo
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Our first thought was relief that he didn’t come out wearing his signature pair of mega-tits. Jimbo’s a smart competitor and he knew he’d have to deliver his own version of pure glamour for this moment. The clownery was ditched for more of a rock-and-roll vibe and she never looked so amazing.

Kandy Muse
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We’ll say it again: There are plenty of arguments as to why Kandy should never have made it this far (we don’t agree with most of them), but you can’t deny that, from the neck up, her drag is flawless. This gown is a better effort than the string of bodysuits she insisted on wearing all season, but it’s basically another body suit, with a rather shapeless towel of a skirt attached to it. We think Jimbo’s talent won this for him, but we also think Kandy shot herself in the foot with all of her costumes this episode.

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The musical numbers were cute. Jimbo’s was well-suited to him, with exactly the surreal quality his drag requires. The dancing was impressive given how bad he tends to be at picking up choreo, but you could see how hard he was working. We’re not sure if we agree with the choice of wearing a variation on the first costume he ever wore on Drag Race, but it fit the tone of the number.

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First, this costume was hideous. That crotch situation is simply bizarre and the bustier is too tight on him. Plus the color looks awful on him. He worked his ass off through this number and he deserves credit for mostly pulling it off, but the vocals didn’t suit him (which wasn’t his fault) and there was a certain “checking off the moves” feeling that made the number look like too much work.

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Congratulations to Lala Ri for winning the Fame Games. We’re sure she didn’t mind the $60,000 but this was a contest without much point to it. You can’t even claim it was a popularity contest since she almost certainly won it because of that wheel spin.

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For the final lip sync, the girls came out in absolutely terrible costumes.

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Seriously, bitches. What happened here? Did your budgets run out?

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Jimbo’s had the benefit of being funny and part of his drag clown approach, but look at how awful the butt looks on those pants.

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Kandy wore a cheap-looking and unflattering body suit, over which she threw a blanket with padded shoulders, and then topped it off with a wig that looks terrible on her. Everything about the look was a failure. She also failed the lip sync, because she kept on trying to do a serious/fierce version of “Do You Want to Funk?” when Jimbo was mopping the floor with her by cracking the judges up.

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So condragulations to Jimbo. We’re glad he won it, but the final number of the season wasn’t the best showcase for her. Ru mentioned how much she enjoys Jimbo’s punk drag clown persona and noted how much it reminded her of the queens she came up with back in the day. That affection plus Jimbo’s clear dominance throughout the season made this choice an obvious one.

Legendary Children: The First Decade of RuPaul’s Drag Race and the Last Century of Queer Life, a New York Times “New and Notable” pick, praised by The Washington Post “because the world needs authenticity in its stories,” and chosen as one of the Best Books of 2020 by NPR is on sale wherever fine books are sold!

[Photo Credit: Paramount Plus via Tom and Lorenzo]

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