Canada's Drag Race Season 6, Episode 6
"Slayoffs"
Showrunner: Trevor Boris
Director: Shelagh O'Brien
Host: Brooke Lynn Hytes
Cast: Eboni La'Belle, Karamilk, Mya Foxx, PM, Saltina Shaker, Sami Landri, Van Goth, Velma Jones
We're in a weird space right now, temporally. It's the last week of the year and Canada's Drag Race's release schedule means we got a new episode on Christmas. Instead of doing a full-blown recap of an episode that dropped almost a week ago, one you've likely seen analyzed a few times over if you're as invested in Canada's Drag Race as I am, I want to instead take a step back and think about this season in the macro sense. Because y'all, now that we're two-thirds of the way through the season, I think it's safe to say that we have an all-timer of a season on our hands. Not just for Canada, but for the entire franchise.
Canada's Drag Race is now, as far as I'm concerned, the flagship series.
This isn't just because this is a killer crop of queens, although the cast is full of assassins of varying skillsets. Actually, let's look at the queens, because I think every single one of them has pulled off a personality twist at some point — meaning, my assumptions about them have been totally flip, turned upside-down. Like, remember how Paolo Perfeccion left me confused as to whether she was a genius or a dumb dumb? That's this entire cast.
Van Goth is a surprisingly good mover, which is not always true of the avant-garde queens, and had the most vulnerable moment of the season. PM and Dulce both bared raw nerves, doing a bit of unexpected rabble-rousing in Untucked. Hazel came in hella prepared in every way except for the interpersonal game, which doomed her. Karamilk, who could easily have received the "lip sync assassin goes home" edit this week, instead received (earned) praise for keeping the judges guessing during every one of her performances.
Saltina Shaker and Velma Jones both ended up being way more cerebral, more intentional, both artsy and smartsy. Based on her entrance lewk and rep as a TikTok queen, I thought Saltina was going to be ... I mean, is it mean to say "dumb"? But she's a legit scientist (or engineer or something — I'm not smart enough to know the difference!). And, I hate to say "hilariously," but her own worst enemy is the conviction with which she sells the "I'm my own worst enemy" narrative.
And it's not that Velma isn't funny, I just think there's not an insincere bone in Velma's body. Her runways were so stupid at times (her playing a maple syrup thief for the same runway category wherein Van Goth disclosed her HIV status was wild), and the physicality she brought to them — the Johnny Jones werewolf moment! — often turned them into even greater works of art. But while Velma is without a doubt one of my top choices for Canada's Drag Race Season 6 queen to take on a Palm Spring vacation (after Sami Landri), I don't think her humor translated to TV all that well. However, controversially, I still think she could have won the reading battle.
If we're looking for a point of comparison, Star Doll and Eboni La'Belle were/remain emblematic of traditional Drag Race edit archetypes. Star Doll gave big early-out energy in retrospect. She was charming as hell and gave great talking head, but didn't get the screentime to reveal a deeper side of herself. And Eboni, honestly, has been given the Winner's Edit. Vulnerable and cocky from the jump (a winning combination), she's the undisputed narrator of the season and has the challenge wins to back it up. After seeing her in multiple lip syncs this week, after seeing her win, she low-key feels unstoppable.
But I need to talk a little more about Mya Foxx and Sami Landri, though, because they are the most surprising queens of the season. Mya Foxx — who I think absolutely could have gone to the final four had this hiccup not hit her — showed up every single week and did the damn thing. No shade, because clearly I'm in the middle of complimenting her down, but Mya Foxx entered the season as the archetypal "filler queen" (which is a term used to describe a queen's edit, given to her by a TV show, and not a queen herself). Her aesthetic wasn't clear, the name felt generic, she wasn't a 21-year-old bedroom queen, etc. With so many divas and weirdos in this season, she felt destined to be overshadowed. And Mya Foxx not only persisted, I'd say she thrived. She delivered a solid opening verse, was a stand out in the overall best group in the commercial challenge, won Snatch Game, more than held her own against Eboni in the reading battle, and nailed that impossible morning talk show segment. Mya also got some jabs in when no one was expecting them (see: her clocking the group dysfunction before her in the commercial challenge), yet always remained unflappably professional, polite, and just a good time gal in confessionals. She's even a great lip syncer! Mya's personality isn't the charisma hurricane of Eboni, and she's not making our jaws drop with her runways like Van or Velma, but she's a damn great drag queen and I'd love to see her on any vs. the World spinoff.
And then, last but not least, there's Sami Landri, who is the most Bimini Bon-Boulash queen since Bimini Bon-Boulash, which means that list of queens contains exactly two names. It's very, very rare that a queen who lip syncs in the first elimination episode of a season makes it to a finale, but like Bimini, Sami's on an upward trajectory. And also like Bimini, I previously thought Sami was a silly dum dum. Now I realize that she's a genius. She knows her cigarette-smell-coated, mom-in-Wet Seal circa 2003 drag so well, and she knows how to apply it to Drag Race; the judges only clocked her once, early on, for not elevating her looks enough. And that Celine Dion lip sync? Come on. To go up against PM after watching what she did to Hazel, and to not flinch, to hunker down in that frizzed-out wig, to lick those barely-there lips with attitude, to hit every syllable of Celine's kooky onstage banter — Sami Landri is a treasure.
So that's just the queens — and LOL I didn't mean to go that long on just the queens. We're freestyling here! But a season lives and dies by its queens, and it also lives and dies by how it treats its queens. Because a great cast is going to be a great cast, which is why it sucks to watch a great cast get chucked in the meat grinder of production (see: UK Season 7). Canada's Drag Race remains a joy to watch because, whatever production rigor morris is going on, I don't clock it.
Not only does Canada's Drag Race come up with delicious twists on old challenges (next week is the return of the design for Brooke Lynn challenge!), but it doesn't play favorites in judging. If you do poorly in a challenge, you do poorly in a challenge. In a whole episode full of lip syncs — lip syncs that are presented almost entirely in full with no cutaways to hide behind — I don't think one was called incorrectly. A lot of them were close.
The existence of the Golden Beaver alone says everything you need to know about Canada's Drag Race. The most important part of an episode, who goes home, is determined in part by the queens. And this week, Eboni very easily could have thrown a major monkeywrench in the season by not giving it to Van Goth. Van Goth is clearly a finalist, in any version of the season wherein the producers maintained a vice grip on the story. Eboni could have given the Beaver to Mya Foxx or Velma Jones, and set Van Goth up against PM in a lip sync where two queens get the chop. And, in that case, Van Goth could have (would have?) gone home. That's how important the Beaver is.
And just to bring this meandering treatise on the season so far back to its logical linear conclusion: that fucking lip sync. Canada's Drag Race is out here making queens lip sync to fucking Sarah McLachlan's "Sweet Surrender," a song that I still know every single word to, a song etched into the souls of every dedicated, late '90s VH1 viewer. No other franchise would be brave enough to drop a contemplative, plaintive, haunted mid-tempo whisper of an anthem like this at the tail end of something called a "Slayoff." It's chaotic and it's fucking brilliant, because when a truly bonkers song choice like this — the third or fourth most popular Sarah McLachlan song, depending on where "Building a Mystery" falls for you — meets a truly singular queen like PM, Drag Race magic happens.
PM ends up giving a lip sync performance that stands up to the best the franchise has ever given us, one so narratively fucking perfect following PM's own emotional breakdown in Untucked. It's almost as if PM couldn't have connected to this song so ferociously if she hadn't lost all hope just minutes prior. She gives herself up to the song, she surrenders herself, she — the most skilled dancer in the cast — doesn't fucking move for minutes. As Mya Foxx and Velma Jones try to, I don't know, I love this song and I honestly don't know how you translate this Lilith Fair energy to the Main Stage, as they just try, PM remains Planted, Mama. It's gut-wrenching and cathartic and ultimately beautiful.
And nothing about this moment, one of the best moments of any Drag Race of 2025, coming in on Christmas Day no less, works if the queens aren't giving it their all for a show that is determined to show all of them in the most honest light possible, to give them actual challenges and then show all of the tenacity that goes into being a drag artist. Because when my trust is earned, week in and out, it results in me crying to a mustachioed Whoville Weirdo emoting to the second single from Sarah McLachlan's 1997 album Surfacing.
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