Sometimes God, the universe, the Fates or just some really savvy publicists and reality show producers align to produce a perfect challenge, if not a perfect episode of Drag Race All-Stars. We’ll be honest: this is the least interesting bracket to us, for various reasons. If the challenge, the guest judges and the lip sync weren’t all as fantastic as they turned out to be, we’d likely have found it all a bit annoying to sit through. The vibes are off with this group, although that may yield more interesting results in the long run.
DENALI
Maybe it felt like too many – if not all – of them seemed to have something to prove. That’s not unusual in an All-Stars season, but the vibes seemed more defensive than usual. This is a cute look but we hate the wig.
ACID BETTY
We don’t have a problem with any of these queens individually and we’re genuinely happy to see some of them back in the fold. Acid Betty seems pretty driven to changing her image and we love the creativity she brings, but we get the sense she’s a little overwhelmed by the competition at the moment.
ALYSSA HUNTER
This is an okay look, but we hate the all the strings and straps and we think Alyssa only has one face to serve.
CYNTHIA LEE FONTAINE
As we’ve said before, this is essentially a variety show/alumnae reunion so we never mind if queens want to get on the merry-go-round over and over again. But again, we have to be honest: we think Cynthia and Ginger are going to have to work extra hard to prove why they should be back in the game again. This look, like a lot of Cynthia’s drag, is confusing to us.
DAYA BETTY
On the one hand, it’s refreshing to have a bitch come back and not be all that repentant about having been a bitch. On the other hand, we think Daya’s brand of meanness isn’t going to go over well with a bunch of All-Stars. This look is trying to do too much, but we get the impulse to want to go big.
GINGER MINJ
Listen, we love Ginger. She’s actually one of the few queens who responded to us when we first reached out about our book, so she’ll always have a place in our hearts. On the other hand, we found this opening look a little disappointing and expected. If you’re coming back, you have to show us why you’re there and a look like this just doesn’t do it.
As we said, the vibes feel kind of off with this group, although we’re not sure why that is. It’s possibly a temporary situation that’ll resolve itself once everyone settles down a bit. Having said that, the distribution of points should be an interesting conversation. Once again, we’ll have to give it up to the producers for the bracket idea. It’s freshened up the proceedings considerably, allowing a maximum number of queens screen time and refreshing itself completely every three episodes. Even if this turns out to be the least interesting of the brackets, it’ll all be over in two more episodes.
It’s possible that things felt off for us because the queens all paired themselves off into duos that were either too expected (Alyssa and Cynthia, although they were kind of forced to) or too counterintuitive (Ginger/Daya, Denali/Acid). They’re all talented and none of the results of the challenge were terrible — or even bad — but they weren’t very interesting either.
We’re sounding way more negative than we mean to about this episode. The bracket and the challenge pairings felt a little off to us, but the challenge itself was honestly one of the best the franchise has had in a long time.
Any Wicked-themed challenge is a no-brainer for a bunch of drag queens, but to get Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande on board just leveled it up considerably. It was very smart to have them announce themselves by video, then reveal that they were going to be the judges, then show up in the Werk Room. The gay squeals of delight got higher with each subsequent reveal.
Category Is: Good Witch & Wicked Witch Which witch had you under her spell? #AllStars10 @wickedmovie pic.twitter.com/OZ1Ja8E7gX
— RuPaul’s Drag Race (@RuPaulsDragRace) June 14, 2025
We admit we found the voiceover for each duo a little goofy and sometimes hard to follow, in the sense that their costumes and what they were saying about themselves didn’t always seem to line up.
These were surprisingly gorgeous, character-specific costumes that didn’t lapse into cliche. That latter part is almost certainly what got them the win. We love how different each of them look, but how unified they are as a duo. It’s not a drag family challenge, so resemblances weren’t required, but it was smart of them to do this rather than simply applying an Elphaba/Glinda model of competing color stories.
These were cute and well-constructed, but they were undeniably craftsy-looking. Alyssa managed to save hers with some very aggressive styling but it was hard to ignore the cardboard situation on both of them.
We thought Law was making too big of a deal out of Acid Betty’s pinned skirt, but looking at the screenshot, it’s all we can see. He has a point. Very good character work in terms of the design, but they’re so far apart in aesthetic that they don’t quite come across as characters in the same story. Someone in that Werk Room should have course-corrected after it was obvious that two teams were doing a fire/ice theme, because the similarities didn’t actually help any of them. Denali looks very pretty, though.
If you’d told us that Ginger Minj and Daya Betty would deliver a lip sync so epic it was going to get us all misty, we’d have considered the prospect unlikely right up until the moment it happened. Of course it helped to hand them a song practically grown in a lab for drag queens to perform. And as we mentioned in the lip sync chapter of our book, there’s a special charge that comes when queens are lip syncing in front of the artist who sings the song.
But what made this such a lovely, layered, super-gay sort of moment was that they were lip syncing to the Broadway version while the film version witches were brought to tears watching them. It was a lovely reminder of how wonderful drag can be when all of the right elements are in place. And while we expected Ginger to know how to interpret the song, we were impressed by how well Daya delivered it.
In fact, we were kind of thinking Ru was going to split the win between them, although we’re not mad to see Ginger have this moment. It’s definitely going to be interesting when the pins get handed out next week.
Come see us in DALLAS this month for Pride, where we’ll be giving a talk on the drag and trans legends who changed the world and we’ll be handing out signed copies of our book! Details here!
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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