Welcome to RuPaul’s Drag Race Power Rankings! Every week, we’re debriefing the week’s new episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 18 to determine which queens are riding high, and which need she-mergency care. The Rate-a-Queen Talent Show comes to an end, with one queen in this episode made to lip sync for her life—but another queen ultimately going home.
NOT COMPETING THIS WEEK: Darlene Mitchell, Juicy Love Dion, Mia Starr, Nini Coco, Vita VonTesse Starr
I don’t know what this group was thinking, especially after all their werk room talk, but their Rate-a-Queen judging was a whole mess. Vita putting Kenya Pleaser second with a messy performance, but then rating her good sis Discord Addams fourth? Darlene randomly tanking Myki Meeks with a fifth-place rating? (Did she know that Myki ranked her sixth last week?) Hilariously, the person whose rating makes the most sense with their stated alliances is Mia, who put Kenya first and Athena Dion second as promised. But her rating still comes out looking weird, as she likely put the near-indisputable best act of the episode, Jane Don’t, in fourth position!
One thing’s for certain, though: Nini is right that she would’ve won this week in a walk. The performances last week were, on average, far superior to this crew’s. On the runway, I loved Mia’s hauntingly gorgeous videotape look—kinda giving Blockbuster’s widow—while Vita and Juicy both go with looks that have strong upper halves and unresolved bottom halves. Darlene’s clowny fringe look is very different for her. Nini’s conceptual folds look is indeed strange, and I liked how it moved, but I was left confused about what exactly I was looking at. And for our final queen of last week’s group, we have …
6. Ciara Myst (last week: 6)—ELIMINATED
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Alas, poor Ciara. All that machinating over how to get an easy opponent in the Lip Sync for Your Life went nowhere—although based on her lip sync to “Toxic,” I’m not sure she would’ve even beaten Discord. Combine that with her underwhelming showgirl look on the runway this week, and I think the writing was on the wall for Ciara. It’s odd: While I don’t think she should’ve been in the bottom last week, I have no real quibbles with her elimination. A queen who wasn’t really standing out in the competition was sent home after a below-average performance and a bad lip sync. That’s kinda all you can ask for in terms of fairness in a competition.
5. Myki Meeks (last placement: 8)
I feel so badly for Myki. Not a single judge put her in their bottom two, and two of them (Michelle Visage and guest judge Amy Taylor) actually put her in their top two! Her Bride of Frankenstein burlesque act was genuinely fun and clever, and her zip-tie runway was unusual and cool. By no fair metric should she have been in the bottom slot for this week. Credit to her, though: She took the hit of knowing her fellow queens tanked her rating and kept on trucking, putting forth solid effort in the lip sync and edging out Ciara. I hope Myki comes storming into that werk room next week with a vengeance, because this was patently bullshit.
4. Discord Addams (last placement: 10)
I’m guessing Discord just barely missed out on having to lip sync, based on the ratings we saw. Even her sister Vita didn’t help her with her rating! Regarding her talent, I have some questions about how restrained Discord was by the format. For the past couple of regular and All Stars seasons, I’ve gotten the sense that the queens are being actively discouraged from singing live (and, in Acacia Forgot’s case, punished when they do). Like with Gottmik’s rock talent in All Stars 9, there’s no real reason Discord should’ve lip-synced this, particularly since she’s so proud of being a punk rock singer. Without the advantage of singing live, her performance of what was a genuinely catchy song just felt a little limp. Still, I’m liking Discord more every week, and I hope she can figure out the right kind of walk for the judges’ inconsistent critiques soon.
3. Kenya Pleaser (last placement: 11)
This is going to hurt to admit, so I’m going to type it really quickly: Kenyaabsolutelyshould’vebeeninthebottom OH GOD PAINFUL. I blame Michelle. Giving Kenya a targeted note about forgetting her words on “Lights, Camera, Action”—within earshot of the queens who would later be judging her in Rate-a-Queen!—felt so pointed. Where was that note for Vita, who forgot her words in both her “Enough (Miami)” lip sync and her own talent show? Granted, it was frustrating to see Kenya once again struggle with her words in her talent show, but I imagine she was quite in her head. Honestly, I minded the dropped words less than I did how distracted she seemed throughout her performance. As Kenya said in her confessional monologue, drag is hard, and I don’t discount that one bit. But I need my fave to perform at a higher level. I want her here for as long as we can keep her!
2. Jane Don’t (last placement: 2)
Well, that was a whole lot of catastrophising over nothing, wasn’t it? Jane spent weeks paranoid that her dominant performance in the first part of this season would come back to bite her in Rate-a-Queen, and the result was that her fellow queens gave her a top rating for her episode. There’s no denying that Jane is great at Drag Race as a competition, and there are many ways in which she is great at it as a TV show as well. (I think, besides Kenya, she is the top confessional queen of the season.) But I do think Jane may have overthought some things. Take, for example, her fear that the other queens won’t understand the Bette Midler reference in her talent show the way the judges would. Having now seen the performance … you don’t need to get the reference to enjoy it! I don’t get what she was stressed about!
Look, Jane is killing it. She’s been on the top every single week so far, tying Angeria Paris VanMicheals’ Season 14 record for most sequential high placements since the start of the season with five. If she scores high again next week, she’ll break the record. There’s no real argument that Jane isn’t our clear frontrunner. But paranoia will destroy ya, and there’s a reason the show is giving us as much of this side of Jane as they are. Don’t be shocked if, when Jane does finally fall into the bottom, it’s a big ol’ scene.
1. Athena Dion (last placement: 6)
I mean, all my applause for Athena’s strategy when it came to Rate-a-Queen. She needed to keep her alliance together—which didn’t just include family, but Kenya as well—and earn enough high rankings from other queens to bolster her position. I had the same thought as Nini regarding Athena’s variety show act: While it was a bit expected, she had just enough gags thrown in to keep it entertaining. And she had one of the better runways of the week; I agreed with Ross Mathews that it hit the intersection of camp and glamour quite perfectly. Then when it came to the lip sync, despite Jane’s complaints, I do think she won (although it was hardly a titanic battle).
So why, despite all that, do I still have a bit of a bad taste in my mouth about Athena’s win? I think it comes down to what Discord said about Athena in her confessional: “Athena’s like, I played fair. Asterisk!” She did a lot of whining this week, both about the Week 1 queens daring to think strategically and about Nini’s clearly lighthearted joking about the “Florida swing vote” in the rating that boosted Mia and Juicy. If you’re gonna play strategist and boldly admit you’re voting Juicy #1 no matter what, you shouldn’t be mad when people point that out, or try to be strategic themselves. It was a winning week for Athena regardless, but I’ll be honest and say I’m coming out of it a bit less enthused about rooting for the elder Dion.
