As Drag Race U.K. approaches its final leg of the season, only five indefatigable queens remain after Thursday’s drama-packed episode.
Only A’Whora, Tayce, Bimini Bon Boulash, Ellie Diamond, and Lawrence Chaney remain on the main stage after a challenge that showed not all sheroes wear capes. Thursday’s installment wasted no time in getting off to a rousing start: Bimini Bon Boulash, high off of her richly deserved Snatch Game win as Katie Price, rolled in ready to “keep the winning streak up.” As the girls dished about Tia Kofi’s elimination, Lawrence noted how empty the backstage area suddenly looked, saying that she misses COVID-disqualified Veronica Green to a chorus of crickets. The shade of it all!
Things kicked off in earnest with a Paris Is Burning-inspired reading challenge (because reading is fundamental) that saw the queens dragging each other in wholly unnecessary 3D glasses. The challenge saw Lawrence Chaney, our resident insult comedy queen, calling Ellie Diamond “so stupid, she had to study for her COVID test.” But it was Sister Sister who gathered her fellow queens by telling Tayce to “slip into something long and flowing… like the Thames.” (That’s a river, saved you a google!) Her savagery put her in good stead by the end of the mini-challenge. “Being hateful pays off,” Sister quipped. Mother Ru agreed wholeheartedly, handing her the win.
Then came the main challenge: Queen Ru instructed the girls to transform themselves into “Lockdown Sheroes” by creating superhero couture out of nothing but “lockdown loot.” Sister Sister got a 15-second start on the challenge, leading to her bogart all the pillows, drapes, and basically everything else that the other queens would have wanted to snag for themselves. Drag Race O.G. Raven, the second season runner-up of the show’s U.S. edition, showed up to guide the girls along the way.
On the mainstage, Tayce failed to impress after turning herself into a living loofah (aka “Exfoliana Bolt”), causing Michelle Visage to shout, “I don’t want no scrubs” as she walked down the runway. Lawrence became Lawrence of A’Chainia in an outfit made of tarp, complete with a phallic orange duster. A’Whora, a clear favorite for the win from the get-go, stunned as COVID-Nine-Tina (those shoulders!), and Bimini paid tribute to Vivian Westwood in a chicly repurposed curtain. Ellie Diamond became “Exuberant Ellie” in a candy-striper uniform that served shades of Jojo Siwa, and Sister Sister became a giant flower blob named Garden of Sh-Eden.
At the end of the challenge, all the girls were praised, but Bimini and Tayce received gentle lashings from the panel for trying to make full dresses out of scanty material. Guest judge Graham Norton reserved the most damning critique for Sister Sister’s Kate Bush tribute gone too literal, telling her that she “looks like a children’s entertainer who hates children.” It was the latex-covered A’Whora who walked away with the crown and the Rupeter Badge, as if there were any doubt. She didn’t go to fashion school to come in second, honey.
With Lawrence, Ellie, and Bimini declared safe, that left Sister Sister and Tayce at the bottom of the barrel. In an ironic touch, they were tasked with lipsyncing for their lives to Jess Glynne’s “Don’t Be So Hard on Yourself.” By the end, only Tayce lived to see another week, serving gorgeous face during a serviceable performance.
That left Sister Sister to sashay away, who lovingly called competing on Drag Race “the stupidest experience” of her life in a thank you to the judges.
After a truly insane season, not even a Sister Sister shanking could surprise a Drag Race U.K. audience that has grown accustomed to twists and turns. There was Ginny Lemon’s unexpected self-elimination, Joe Black’s H&M faceoff with Ru, and this episode’s literally bloody showdown in which Tayce cut himself in the service of making steel wool body art.
Although so many memorable queens have already sashayed away this season, it won’t be the last time we hear from them, including the late-lamented Liverpudlian Sister Sister, who recently published a painfully heartfelt essay in The Guardian about her past experiences being cyberbullied. Other contestants Joe Black and Veronica Green, meanwhile, are already making plans for the future, with Black creating her own brand of gin and Green set to release a new “theatrical-sounding” track that’s soon to drop.
It just goes to show you can’t keep a good queen down.
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