Watching this episode of Drag Race, I felt like a proud parent. They finally figured out the top four episode! And all it took was treating it like a normal episode. Seriously, this was the best final challenge episode since, what? Season five? It’s been years now of penultimate episodes that completely deflate the momentum of the season, giving us saccharine plots that remove all the stakes and result in terrible work from the queens (because the challenges are bad to begin with). The Rumix has had diminishing returns for years now — particularly since the introduction of the girl group challenges — as has the presumption of a top four going into the finale. The challenges never feel ramped up, and the queens largely treat them as formalities.
This season, inspired by the need to hawk RuPaul’s new book, the final challenge gets a complete overhaul. You can feel the queens’ apprehension upon realizing their final episode isn’t what they thought it would be. They’re thrown off, forced to figure out how to contend with a challenge that hasn’t appeared since season two, and it makes for great TV. Combine that with a themed runway (“finale eleganza†hasn’t produced any actual best looks since maybe All-Stars 5) and, thank God, a real elimination that is based on the queens’ performances for the week, and you get a fitting capstone on the pre-filmed portion of the season.
And the challenge really works, too. The queens have to come up with a memoir idea, shoot a cover, write stories for the book, and do an interview with Matt Rogers about it. Except the stories, which we obviously cannot read and have to be told about, this all works. It’s long been a subtextual requirement of the show for the queens to get vulnerable, and they’ve gone about it in various, largely cringeworthy, ways. (Baby photos, I will not miss you.) Technically, a queen could choose to not be vulnerable, but it is implied that doing so throws away their shot at winning. By setting up a memoir interview, the vulnerability requirement moves from subtext to text.
(There’s an argument out there that the queens shouldn’t have to be vulnerable at all, which I don’t agree with. The winner of the season will represent not only herself, but the Drag Race brand for a year’s time, thrust into publicity situations where she will have to be funny, open, and well-spoken. Last year, I spoke to Sasha Colby for an hour over Zoom the day after she won, and her openness is what made that interview worth any reader’s time. You don’t have to be vulnerable to be a good drag queen, but you do in order to win Drag Race, and that’s okay.)
The episode starts with some pleasant sniping among the girls, with Q on the attack. It’s clear that she hasn’t gotten quite the success that she wanted (expected?) this season, despite multiple wins and making the top four. I’ve been hard on Q — and I take nothing back — but now looking in the rearview, she’s got a great arc. She’s a talented queen who doesn’t quite know herself as a performer yet and is confounded by those further along in their development winning over her. Part of my frustration with her this season has been that I wasn’t sure the show was going to do anything with that tension; once it became clear she was a top four queen, it felt like Drag Race was going to Drag Race and bring her into the finale, then unceremoniously eliminate her before a final lip sync. That’s not satisfying, but it’s de rigueur on this show. But with the final elimination, Q, the reality TV contestant, becomes a fully formed character.
We then get a delightfully stupid mini-challenge where the girls have to lightly waterboard themselves and (even worse) lip sync to a RuPaul song. Good stuff. Truly, where did Sapphira get that new breastplate from? I must know.
The challenge is then revealed, and Nymphia is expected to go into a state of panic. Surprisingly, she does not. She’s another one whose arc fully falls into place this episode. Watching her figure out what her voice is makes her whole “I can’t write†thing worthwhile. Yes, it was a problem, but suddenly we understand who Nymphia, the speaker, is. A challenge where queens must speak seriously is the only type that’s going to bring that out of them, and we wouldn’t have gotten that with even a RuPaul interview.
I did love watching Ru direct the girls in a photoshoot. She continues to be the show’s greatest director. Nymphia’s photoshoot is fantastic, the best by far. Her outfit is graphic, feels like her, and plays well in pictures. Q’s is the opposite. I knew she was in the bottom the moment she walked out in a (gag) tiered beige babydoll dress with hair to match, rendering her entire look, head to toe, a tan nightmare. Sapphira does great, no surprise. Plane does fine but her hair is simply too small.
The interviews are conducted by Matt Rogers, another former holder of my job. (I demand to be on this show in three years, tops!) They are, again, good. Plane goes first and botches it in exactly the way you knew she might botch it. Matt, who doesn’t know these girls, is a savvy enough interviewer to sniff out where she’ll give an answer that she shouldn’t, and Plane is not savvy enough to go the other way. Sapphira is great — extremely charming and open. If I had one note, coming from someone who regularly does interviews (insert plug here), it’s that you can sometimes feel that Sapphira is very on. Q does a great job being vulnerable, but I didn’t find her as charming as some of the other queens; she has a touching story, but her charisma could be bumped up a bit. Nymphia is just fantastic. She isn’t as polished as Sapphira, but that’s a good thing. She comes across extremely honest and personable, and she’s able to quickly move from a funny, charming story into something more serious. When Ru later says she fell in love with Nymphia over the course of the interview, I wasn’t surprised.
Gotta say: Watching the girls read each other while getting ready to go on stage one last time was great fun. Q’s best line of the episode (of the season?) is her response when Nymphia tries to say they’re both being read. Great stuff, laughed out loud.
There’s a runway category this week! Everybody cheer! It’s fans!
Q’s look is really beautiful, one of my favorite Q looks of the season. The orange color is great, the detailed folding is great, I was blown away. One note, because I love to nitpick: The sculpted center of her wig doesn’t flow with the tiered sides, which move in what I found to be quite a pleasing manner. These sculpted wigs may just be the death of me. I hate them. Sapphira looks great, with her reveal the centerpiece of the look. Before the reveal, however, the look is a long column of blue, and Sapphira wears a lot of overwhelmingly blue looks. If Nymphia’s getting critiques for it, maybe she should too. Nymphia looks great, although, like Michelle, I could take or leave Marie Antoinette as a concept on the runway at this point. Nobody’s ever done it better than Raja. Yes, that includes international seasons. Her nails are a great detail. I like Plane’s look, but it doesn’t inspire. Glad to see her in a gown.
On the book covers: Q’s is hideous, though I suppose the graphic design isn’t her fault. Still, what else were they going to do with Alphabet Soup? Sapphira’s is great, and Slew Foot is exactly the kind of Ru-focused strategic play she’s shown herself to be very adept at. Nymphia’s is perfect. No notes. Would actually buy a book with that cover. Plane’s is cheesy and it doesn’t appear that either of her required stories actually addresses the theme of her title, which is “walking away from disaster.â€
Ultimately, Nymphia wins the challenge. Do I think Nymphia could win the season with this momentum? Maybe! It’s still an uphill battle, though I think Plane knocked herself out of the running this week. It feels like Nymphia’s arc is pretty much complete with this win — if this revelation had come earlier in the season, she’d have a better shot. If she really turns out the final lip sync, I could see it.
Plane and Q rightly lip sync, and Plane wins it outright. It’s not an epic lip sync, but it’s good enough. So Q goes home, and Drag Race commits to its first top three since season eight. It’s not really fair, but this isn’t about fairness. It’s about good TV.
Also on Untucked…
• On a season with few fights, we get no Untucked fight.
• I’m all aboard the Sapphira train for my winner pick. Still, I was reminded again how much I love Nymphia this week. She’s my fave of the season, but her blindspots are just too big for me to predict a win.
• While I’m very high on this episode (clearly), I’m not sure that doing this exact challenge every season would work. The interviews would start feeling canned, the book titles would be pre-planned, etc. Maybe just… do a new challenge every year?
• Production should put the stories these girls wrote online. Let me judge them!
• I read RuPaul’s book, The House of Hidden Meanings, for work. My review: Too serious, cuts off before the juicy stuff we might actually want to read, generally too short.
• Gay thoughts from gay people: My coworker Reanna Cruz, certified pop music genius, was kind enough to give their perspective on some stuff that stuck out to them earlier in the season:
“This season had a lot to love when it came to my very specific subset of interests: Becky G was a guest judge, we got a ‘Bloody Mary’ TikTok version lip sync, and Xunami Muse’s lackluster Snatch Game as the ‘gold tooth fairy’ was redeemed partly by a B.A.P.S.-inspired hairdo. However, perhaps the moment that gagged me the most came in a throwaway sentence by Sapphira Cristal. During the challenge where the contestants had to design a gender-neutral bathroom, the Werk Room conversation naturally drifts to bathroom anxieties, particularly in regards to gender presentation. While talking to Morphine, Sapphira chimes in to mention that she has frustrations with the anti-trans bathroom laws, stemming from the fact that ‘most of [her] partners have been transmasculine.’ That line was such a non-moment in the episode — the conversation moved by so quickly — but as soon as she said it, me and my also-transmasculine partner both sat up straight in our seats, looked at each other, and did the bashful Debby Ryan hair-behind-ear move. I don’t think anything else this season has gagged me as much as that did, and I think this tweet sums it up better than I ever could. Sapphira, if you’re looking to be a third, HML.â€
• UK Vs. the World Report: Happy for Tia, sorry people have been such bitches to her online lately. Overall: The season was cute! Not my favorite by a long shot, but clearly the best Vs. The World we’ve had yet. Shows how the format could work, eventually.