Hateful. Rotted. Vindictive. Torturous. I have never experienced an episode of RuPaul's Drag Race that made me feel uneasy for the entire time. It was like if Pangina Heals' elimination was stretched out to 60 full minutes. This was like if Possession was an episode of Drag Race: a sweaty, brutal, fevered, nightmare from hell that made me question my sanity.
Anyway — [Sam Star voice] It's a new week in the Werk Room!
Y'all, no, I truly don't know what I just experienced. It's fitting that the first Villains Roast would in fact be the first episode of RuPaul's Drag Race that itself feels like an antagonist. I think this episode hated me? I feel very attacked.
I should have known that things were off when Michelle Visage entered the Werk Room instead of RuPaul. That's not in and of itself a bad thing; Drag Race Down Under Season 4 was very, very, very good! Please watch it! But Michelle crossing over like that, it pierced some sort of barrier between dimensions. Bitch, we in the Hellmouth now — and Hell looks like the return of the Badonka-Dunk Tank as part of a pointless, unfunny, and bizarre cross promotion with ... EW's Drag Race coverage...
And that brings us to the meat of the episode: roast. As the winner of last week's challenge, Jewels Sparkles is handed the monkey's paw that is choosing the running order. What follows is thirty-three of the most harrowing minutes of Drag Race I've ever seen. It's like if Isabelle Adjani's subway scene from Possession were just spliced into this episode, with advice from Whitney Cummings inserted at the halfway point.
Not for nothing, the funniest roast joke of the episode occurs during the coaching session. Sam Star: "Now Miss Ts Madison: We all know you've dabbled in sex work. Bitch, I think you've fucked more rich white men than cryptocurrency."
Sam Star, you are America's Next Drag Superstar.
Now ... after that ... I don't know how to properly convey just how extremely much none of this ever even done had to have happened. Actually, Suzie says it perfectly: "Here's the real tea: Where you are placed in the roast does not matter that much. How you personally are affected by where you're placed in the roast matters a lot."
Onya Nurve is more succinct, turning to Jewels and saying, "You have officially wrecked these bitches."
Y'all know that this whole kerfuffle is serious because literally no one makes a "Roast-gate" joke at any point. The girls are too fucking shook. Everything starts out with the best of intentions, and it seems like we're going to get the normal "I didn't get the placement I wanted" edit that we see in every season. But right out the gate, Arrietty and Lexi Love are hurt deeper than feels justified.
Lexi: You said you wanted to go last. Jewels put you last. She put you after Suzie — who, mind you, didn't say she wanted to go sixth, so Jewels messed with Suzie and not you. But Lexi has had what's revealed to be a one-sided rivalry with Suzie ever since these two won their talent shows in Episodes 1 and 2. Suzie is Lexi's inner saboteur made outer, and Lexi knows Jewels knows that.
Arrietty: You weren't going to do well no matter where you were placed. You know that. There's nothing Jewels could have done here! Yes, it is shady that Jewels — your Chismosa Sister — put herself after you, thus banking on you tanking so Jewels looks better by comparison. Jewels could have easily put herself after Lana Ja'Rae, the other queen that everyone was hella worried about. Even though Lana ends up slaying this challenge, Jewels would have probably fared better after Lana — because Lana would not have stolen her jokes.
The excruciating stretch of time between Arrietty realizing she can steal Jewels' jokes and perform them first and her actually doing it on stage — it's like every scene in Alien not featuring the xenomorph. There's no way around it. You know something bad is coming. But before that, there's yet another Werk Room fight to endure — and it's one for the ages.
Any one segment of this twisted mirror chat would be enough to set social media ablaze in any other episode of any other season. Arrietty moving makeup stations, that would be enough. Lexi breaking down why she's so plucked plays out like it's Toni Collette's Hereditary monologue. Sam tries to reason with Lexi, but the damage is done. Jewels apologizes sincerely to Arrietty, not knowing what Arrietty still has planned. And Arrietty tells Jewels that she wouldn't play Jewels like that were she picking the order, but Arrietty also knows what she still has planned — which is something even worse than what Jewels did! Even Suzie trying to play nice and remind everyone that they're at the roast, this is supposed to be fun, she hopes there's good vibes, sets Arrietty off: "Shut up! Let a bitch be mad!" And between all of these moments, the queens sit in hellish silence. Jesus Christ.
One would think that the commercial break would be a mood reset, but ... nope. The roast itself offers no respite, for there is no outrunning death. We want to laugh, dammit, but ... Onya Nurve opens it up and barely gets the plane off the runway. And before we can reach cruising altitude, Arrietty crashes the damn thing. Hard. By performing Jewels' jokes. Poorly. In front of Jewels. On television. It's so bad that Sam Star compares Arrietty to a starving dog that you don't know if you should bring it inside or shoot in the head.
The tea is: Jewels did not screw over Arrietty. How Jewels performs does not retroactively make Arrietty look better or worse. It may make Jewels look better, but it's not a competition between the two of them. There are still a million girls left in this cast. All Arrietty had to do was be better than two of them — and if she focused all her attention on that, maybe stolen some jokes from girls on previous seasons, she might've been successful. What Arrietty did do was all but guarantee that Jewels would bomb, hard. Wild. Wild, wild shit.
We've now endured a pointless "mini challenge," an extended Werk Room melee, two bad roasts, and one of the shadiest backstabs in Drag Race herstory — and now it would be great to see Jewels do a Sasha Colby and chuck her cards and slay. She does not. Like 2025, things just keep being terrible.
Things pick up with Lana Ja'Rae, of all queens, who comes out of nowhere with big swings that all connect. She does it. Even if you put her next to some all-timers like Jinkx Monsoon and Jimbo, I think she still comes out safe. The best back and forth of the night comes when Lana introduces Sam Star as a queen who "owns the stage the way her ancestors owned mine," and Sam then calls Lana an old "family friend." Sam does great, even if we only see like three of her jokes. And then Lydia Butthole Kollins, who ultimately wins the challenge with a set that ... would be safe in any other season. Then there's Suzie, whose "beating a dead horse is Raven's job description" was a solid joke in an otherwise fine roast. And Lexi — like Jewels — has decent material with terrible timing. It's a bummer!
Is there even a runway in this episode? There is? Sure. Everyone looks stunning, I think — my nerves are too shot to evaluate anything properly. I know I heard someone say "the skin shorts are made out of a tulle fabric." Which brings us to the lip sync against — you guessed it — Arrietty and Jewels. Friends turned foes, fighting for their life to one of Beyoncé's more explosive, chaotic (and surely expensive) tunes, "Ya Ya." Jewels absolutely floats whereas Arrietty is absolutely frantic. The right queen wins.
Arrietty gave the best looks of the season and she brought back a raw nerve the likes of which we haven't seen on the show in a while. I just hope that, with age — oh, I was going to say, "She's young," but she's 28. The attitude is good TV but it comes from a place of hurt and not a place of confidence. I want a fully confident Arrietty on All Stars. That being said, her exit was fully unhinged.
We survived another week.
