The first bracket of queens reach the end of the beginning as Drag Race All-Stars hands them what may just have been the easiest challenge in the history of Drag Race. But first…
INTERPERSONAL DRAMA. As always, the entire reason for the overly complicated points system is to generate exactly the kind of drama we saw here. Alliances! Grudges! Heel turns! It’s all on the table, but after Olivia disappointed Aja by giving her pin to Deja, and after everyone offended poor Phoenix by giving her nothing, the drama mostly came to an end.
Aja was annoyed by Olivia’s reasoning, and we can’t really tell if the latter queen was just feeding her a line or if she really was attempting to make sure all of the queens of color were on equal footing. We’re not sure if anyone was ever quite so open about rewarding fellow contestants based on their race, although it was clearly always a factor any time the queens were allowed to help another queen out. But Phoenix must feel some kind of way about it, with everyone mentioning it so openly. It’s to her credit that she didn’t make an issue of it.
To be fair, the format of the season doesn’t really allow for this kind of drama to fester. Most of the queens are too self-aware at this point to fuck up their image by getting into fights and half of them are exiting the competition at the end of this challenge. It’s to everyone’s benefit to just sashay past all of it.
This week the speedrun-through-a-season format handed the queens the makeover challenge. We wonder which challenges they’re saving for the semi-finals. We’re thinking Snatch Game and the roast. Anyway, while the concept of making over women athletes was a cute one, there’s not a lot of drama or interest in “making over” young, beautiful women.
There’s just not much of a challenge there, although it was funny how the girls’ naturally competitive natures tended to super-charge the vibe. We laughed out loud when the one immediately agreed to having her eyebrows shaved off. Anything to win the trophy.
There was a performing component to the challenge, but we spent very little time on the preparations or rehearsals. We guess there’s an argument to be made that there’s little interest in showing these aspects of the challenge after so many years of fairly repetitive moments, but we still think Drag Race works best when it focuses on the work.
But makeovers tend to be one of the most personality-based challenges on Drag Race so the focus was mostly on girl-bonding time. Which is fine, of course, but it doesn’t tend to produce the kind of tension when it’s, for instance, straight men or older women in those makeup chairs.
The number was cute and fun to watch, but in an All Stars season, the queens tend to be on a bit more of a level playing field and these things tend to be shot and edited in such a way that you can’t really get a handle on who’s doing better and who’s doing worse.
We’re seeing double! ♀️
Who had your fave Drag Family Resemblance lewk? #AllStars10 pic.twitter.com/48BvCNbgAo
— RuPaul’s Drag Race (@RuPaulsDragRace) May 17, 2025
Everybody did great, because making over conventionally beautiful young women is pretty much no challenge at all. We should point out that Irene won the hoops mini-challenge and when she paired the girls up, she seemed to be basing her choices on facial similarities. In other words, she leveled the playing field, which is a huge credit to her. She’s clearly here to rehab her rep and has no interest in gamesmanship.
We laughed when Kate Beckinsale (a great guest judge) noted that she knows a lot of sisters who look like these two. We’re sure you do, girl. Even so, they were easily the worst of the lot. The costumes didn’t coordinate and weren’t flattering. The makeup matches, but she would have been much better off if the wigs had as well.
Gorgeous work. You really can’t tell which one is the professional drag queen. In the entire history of Drag Race we think Irene’s initial elimination might go down as one of the show’s biggest mistakes. The bitch clearly has it.
Michelle tends to get one thing stuck in her craw and then beats it into the ground, so this time, she was obsessed with “matching but not twinning,” which is one of those ephemeral, impossible-to-define criteria the judges love to trade in. Anyway, she felt like this was great and we felt like they were one of the more mismatched duos. Sure, they both look gorgeous in their own way, and the aesthetic is clearly the same, but they look like two women at the same event rather than sisters.
Phoenix was perhaps a little too keen on recreating a Drag Race moment that isn’t quite as iconic as she makes it out to be. On a technical level, this was fine, but she didn’t exactly make her girl look or feel fabulous. It has to be said: Phoenix should have waited for his fillers to settle before attempting a return because when he puts makeup on, it instantly adds thirty years to the face. He’s in his early forties and he looks like a 70-year-old in drag.
Absolutely gorgeous looks and it really is hard to tell them apart. This should have been in the top over Bosco’s effort.
We’re with Michelle on this one: cute costumes, but that’s about it.
Bosco and Irene faced off for the lip sync, which was entertaining across the board, but we thought the winner was clear. Bosco has a wry elegance that plays well with Ru, but Irene brought more energy and a better understanding of how to interpret the song. When she was mimicking someone who wanted to throw a punch, it was hilarious.
In the space of three episodes, she managed one of the most dramatic reputation turnarounds in the show’s history. She’s been great fun to watch and whoever winds up facing off against her in the semi-finals is in for a shock.
The eliminated queens (who, it turns out, are not entirely eliminated yet, to no one’s surprise) handed off most of their points to Aja, in a moment that felt a little pre-ordained. Not that we have a problem with Aja advancing, but we kinda felt her sanguine reaction to the earlier drama was coming from a place of serene confidence that it didn’t matter in the long run. So these three advance, Olivia, Deja and Phoenix can go untuck for a while, and the second shift is up as of next week.
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 The Year by NPR is on sale wherever fine books are sold! It’s also available in Italian and Spanish language editions, darlings! Because we’re fabulous on an INTERNATIONAL level.
[Photo Credit: Paramount Plus via Tom and Lorenzo]
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