The first bracket limped to the semi-finals on a lazy-as-hell challenge and the producers relied on drama and points shenanigans to fill out the episode because it feels like everyone involved in the producing of this show has checked out for the summer. May as well be blunt about it! Let’s get into this. We’re gonna rant a little.
So this is kind of all that All-Stars is anymore. It’s really not about the challenges, but about watching a bunch of drag queens snipe and work and get mildly upset with each other. The work itself is an afterthought. To everyone’s credit (except one that we’ll get to in a second), they’re just not having it. And if the producers were doing their job with any sort of energy, they’d see that these scenes aren’t producing much drama so the long time spent on them is deadly dull to the audience. We want to see drag queens doing the best they can do at what they do and US Drag Race seems much less interested in that than it used to be.
A bunch of low-rated queens handing the top queen more points is something that never would have happened in the show’s nastier days, but this is a group of queens working off the sisterhood model of drag because they all know that being cunts to each other onscreen doesn’t pay off. Let’s be clear, though: this is not a complaint or a criticism. If the girls want to support each other and not get into nasty slapfights, then the producers need to stop prioritizing this sort of tom(andlorenzo)foolery.
Mystique has been increasingly in her feelings all season, and on the one hand, we have to give her some sort of credit for tamping down on her insecurities and not blowing up at anyone, but on the other hand, she was starting to become a real drag (no pun intended) by the end of this episode, with her constant eyebrow-raising and pointed comments. It started becoming a bit strange, because there’s no real bitchery happening with this group; no shady alliances or scheming or trash talk. Everyone’s just trying to do their best and they’re all fairly supportive of each other onscreen. It could be that Mystique’s old school and doesn’t quite grasp that the show just isn’t as full of grudges and vendettas as it once was, largely because the queens understand that nasty attitudes and constant blowups actually hurt their careers. But this also tends to highlight the limitations of this bracket approach (which is also an indication of producer laziness because it’s much easier to wrangle six queens for three episodes than trying to whittle down sixteen of them over the course of a season) because we’re not likely to get much payoff for the fact that Mystique turned on her partner in the middle of a challenge. Mystique and Lucky are both out and they’re not likely to be asked back by the judges.
As an aside — we’ve been saying this for years and we’ve never once received much in the way of support for the idea, but we’re gonna keep saying it like it matters — we think there should be some sort of “no cute looks in the Werk Room” rule for the show. This might seem like a strange thing to get hung up on, but Drag Race was originally all about the transformative quality of drag. The scenes in front of the makeup mirror that we all take for granted at this point were revelatory when they first appeared, and in the early seasons of the show, several notable drag queens refused to participate because they didn’t believe drag queens should be seen out of drag. The show used to prioritize the differences between the queens in and out of drag. Not that Morgan’s cunty little hat equals drag, but there’s more and more makeup being worn in the Werk Room every season, not to mention the occasional appearance of heels and skirts, and we think the queens should be asked to show up for werk in work clothes and leave the cute looks for the main stage. They’re more vulnerable when they don’t have some sort of armor to rely on. Honestly, it would be kind of funny to hand them all some sort of branded werk uniform like scrubs or overalls.
Unfortunately, the queens were handed an improv challenge and told to pair off. The improv challenges tend to be the most excruciating to sit through and not coincidentally, they also appear to be the easiest for the show to pull off. There are no production numbers, no music, no choreo and not even any writing except for an outline. All the show has to do is create a scenario, throw together a basic set, and sit back to let the queens figure it out.
Come up with fun challenges! Give these bitches a chance to be sickening for us instead of constantly handing them challenges that they’re each just hoping to survive. When people list the most entertaining or iconic moments in Drag Race herstory, it’s always about a queen doing an amazing job at being a queen (or about delivering an eyelash-singeing read, but that amounts to the same thing). To be fair, sometimes that means watching a queen fail spectacularly, but that’s still more entertaining than watching queens just run down the clock on a challenge and hoping to get through it.
We’re not really assessing these efforts because they were all rather even, with seasoned queens like Morgan and A’keria standing out for their smoothness and professionalism. No one was a disaster and no one delivered a laugh-out-loud performance. How could they? It’s a decent challenge for separating the wheat from the chaff, with Morgan, A’keria and Dawn rightly making it to the top, but we keep returning to the same question: Does anyone else remember when the challenges were fun to sit through?
Category is: Paris, France 🇫🇷 Which runway has you saying ooh la la? ✨ #AllStars11 pic.twitter.com/LBITbKSxNh
— RuPaul’s Drag Race (@RuPaulsDragRace) May 15, 2026
We laughed out loud at the category. Just throw a city at them and call it a day.
But these queens are good at their jobs and the results were the best part of the episode. The runway usually is, because it relies entirely on what the queens brought with them instead of on Ru or the producers.
Dawn’s Parisian rat was a cute, clever, and very Dawn-specific way of interpreting the category. Morphine’s been unpacking some absolutely stunning costumes and her take on the catacombs was an all-timer in terms of originality.
It was gratifying to see Ru gushing over Lucky’s work after referring to it as cosplay last week. This was an amazing look and her artistry is almost too much for Drag Race to handle. Like a lot of Lucky’s designs, it could have benefitted from a clarifying edit, but it’s fantastic work nonetheless.
Mystique looked very pretty, but this is All-Stars and pretty lady drag is not going to get you to the end.
These two are so clearly above the other queens in terms of their polish and professionalism. Both looks are amazing, although we continue to disagree with Morgan on what wigs work best for her face.
Morgan and Dawn faced off for the lip sync. There’s a good argument that A’Keria should’ve been in there, but she was so far ahead of the other queens in terms of points that it kind of made sense to have these two slug it out. They were pretty evenly matched for the song, but we think Morgan probably edged Dawn’s performance out slightly.
The judges didn’t agree with us. Still, we’re happy to see Dawn make it to the finals. The points-awarding went in some fairly unexpected directions, with A’Keria and Morgan tied for the number two spot, leaving Ru to break the tie without having to explain her reasoning. It’s not that we think the results are shady so much as they’re the result of the production not really doing its job and producing a smooth reality competition.
But whatever. Condragulations to A’Keria, who certainly can’t be seen as undeserving. Morgan will probably get called back by the judges for the finale. Now line up the next bracket.
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: Paramount Plus]
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