Huzzah! A genuinely great episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race happened! Huzzah, we say! Sorry, we’ve been writing about this show for a long-ass time and we’re more than aware that a sense of ennui threatens to permeate every recap (in our defense, the show has been running on fumes for a while), so it’s kind of thrilling to report that we literally laughed and clapped our way through this episode. A huzzah or two is warranted, we think.
We feel we have to point out that this episode managed to be a fun one despite having all of the late-stage markers we tend to complain about the most: no mini-challenge, no Pit Crew, shenanigans and rigor morris in order to produce maximum drama, and an almost literally checked-out judging panel handing over the fate of the queens to the queens themselves. By all rights, we should be ranting about how much we hate this one.
When Ru announced the twist that the talent show would be split over two weeks and that the queens would be voting on their own performances AND that they had to decide which set of queens would perform each week and who would be tasked with voting on who, we didn’t really grasp the implications of that right away. The show has a history of taking stale challenges and inserting a lot of needless drama into them in order to make them seem less stale and to be fair, that was almost certainly the plan here. We just figured it would be another episode that would be about personalities and drama rather than talent.
But it was genuinely entertaining watching the queens game out the implications of this setup and almost immediately begin strategizing. The various overlapping alliances and grudges became too much for us to keep track of. We’re not even sure the queens themselves could keep track of them. So kudos to the producers for coming up with a twist that made a stale challenge more interesting to watch.
Having said all THAT, the reason this twist was entertaining to watch and didn’t collapse into a confusing jumble of grudges and arguments comes down to two things, neither of which are attributable to the show’s producers. The first is that the cast, perhaps aware of the downsides of all this plotting and scheming after seventeen seasons of it, refused to get all that upset about everyone’s plans. Sure, there was a lot of side-eyeing, and we haven’t yet seen the implications of how this all shook out. But it was kind of refreshing to see almost everyone shrug and say “It’s a game. I’m just playing it” and no one started screaming about integrity or whatever. Maybe we’re too cynical after so many years of recapping reality competitions, but at this point, we tend to roll our eyes whenever someone gets too dramatic about ethics or fairness or whatever. If everyone’s mostly on the same page, then it’s fun watching it play out. The second part of the equation that made this episode work? It turned out to be about talent after all.
Ciara spent a lot of time gaming out the alliances and we half-wonder if she was so adamant about it because she was worried about the weakness of her performance. We actually liked it. It was very self-serious and we think she would have been much better off reading the poem live, but it was bold and interesting to watch, with one of her best costumes yet. The problem is that Drag Race tends to make a terrible showcase for the artier forms of drag and when you put something like this up against some of the other girls’ efforts, it’s never going to go well.
Insanely good. A gorgeous look and choreography for the gods. She was amazing.
Very good, but we can see why she was so unsure about which week she wanted to perform. It’s quite possible she’d have been in the top in a group that didn’t have Mia and Juicy in it. Loved the costume.
HUGE disappointment. As a number and as drag, it just seemed basic as hell. The choreography was nothing to write home about and she flubbed her own lip sync.
Even though her fate wasn’t up to the judges, we think Darlene’s drag makes a perfect counterpoint to Ciara’s in terms of which kind of performance is well-received and which kinds aren’t. If it were up to us, she’d have been in the bottom. It was a cute number that reeked of amateurism. There was no polish to the choreo or the lip sync and the drag was basic. The whole “I’m a tacky southern gal” thing has been done to death by MUCH more polished queens than this and we don’t think it’s helping her. She did better than Ciara in the ratings, though.
Like Juicy’s number, there was no question that Mia was going to wind up in the top this week. This was a frenetic, energetic, butch-as-hell performance that didn’t just dominate that stage, it attacked it like it was going to war. Fierce as fuck.
Category Is: Not Today, Satin! Which lewk is pure satin-faction? #DragRace pic.twitter.com/uEudaAQCX4
— RuPaul’s Drag Race (@RuPaulsDragRace) January 31, 2026
Ciara’s look was great from the neck up, but we thought the costume was a little basic. Juicy Love Dion’s plant gown was a stunner. Nini’s look was also gorgeous, although we felt like it could have used a bit of editing. Vita served pure pageant gorgeousness, but we hated the naked bodice. Darlene should’ve been sent home for that cheap drag. Mia’s big bow was a big nothing. Myki looked beautiful but the ribbon effect looked craftsy. Athena’s look was cute. Kenya’s was stylish and flattering. Jane’s look was kind of amazing, but also kind of too much. Discord’s dress was a rehash of better designs.
We guess people mostly stuck with their alliances, but the ratings turned out to be pretty fair. Juicy and Mia were clearly the top girls and Nini was clearly safe in third place. When the acts are that good, alliances and shenanigans matter less.
We’d have put Darlene in the bottom, but Broadway doesn’t go for booze and dope, and Drag Race doesn’t go for the arty queens. It was ever thus. So we lied earlier. It turns out there weren’t just two factors that made this a fantastic episode. There was a third thing.
An epic motherfucking lip sync the likes of which this show hasn’t seen in years. There are two kinds of epic LSFYLs on Drag Race: The kind where two bitches who hate each other go into deep battle to save their lives, or this kind: the kind where two queens are so in sync that you’d swear they spent days practicing the number together.
This moment, when everything synced up so well that they were matching each other step for step was when you knew these bitches had it. They were so in the zone together that they produced magic.
In the end, despite the usual riggory, the episode achieved greatness not through grudges and drama, but through talent and sisterhood.
Girl, if you ever thought we were going to stop plugging our book, you weren’t paying attention: 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 (like at this link)! It’s also available in Italian and Spanish language editions, darlings! Because we’re fabulous on an INTERNATIONAL level.
[Still Credit: MTV]
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