You may be surprised to know that the start of a new season of RuPaul’s Drag Race and the insurrection actually have so much in common. Now, stay with me here: Both events have made straight, white conservatives spiral into a rage; both instances have happened in January; and both have seen Lady Gaga use her deductive sleuthing powers to get to the bottom of things. I’m only inclined to make this comparison because Season 16 of Drag Race aired Jan. 5 on MTV, just one day before the third anniversary of the insurrection. Unfortunately, that means that we can’t hear RuPaul say the pun that we all deserve to hear: “This season, we’re doing a major overhaul. That’s right ladies, it’s time for a drag InsurRUction!”
And a revamp is exactly what Season 16 is aiming for. After a fabulous Season 15, which boasted one of the most consistently entertaining casts in years and ended with a history-making winner, Season 16 was facing a bar set sky-high. And while it’s still a bit too early to tell whether this new cast will be able to reach those heights, Drag Race itself is up to the challenge, throwing new season-long twists and gameplay changes into the mix for an electrifying premiere.
The premiere episode—or the “big opening,” as I still like to call it, but apparently didn’t make the cut this year—is split into two parts, the second of which will air next week. I’m typically not a fan of these split premieres, mostly because I like to be drowned in drag, suffocating in sequins, bathed in breastplates, and other quasi-annoying gay alliterations. Drag Race works best when all of its queens are at one another’s throats from the start; everyone has to scramble to get to know each other while memorizing a boatload of drag names and contending with a room full of shady personalities. But on the other hand, splitting the premiere makes my job trying to do these same things a little bit easier, so I can’t fault it entirely.
The first queen in the Season 16 workroom is Q, who looks exactly like viral YouTuber HRH Collection—both in and out of drag. But unlike her doppelganger, Q doesn’t come quite as cocked-and-loaded with hostility, which ultimately works in her favor by the episode’s end. Next is Xunami Muse (drag daughter of Kandy Muse), who immediately describes her drag as looking like she “stepped straight off a runway.” As much as I love Drag Race, there are certain phrases that queens need to retire, and “looking like I just stepped off a runway” is one of them. We’ve been doing this for 16 seasons, and I’m almost certain this phrase has fallen from a queen’s perfectly glossed lips sometime during each and every one.
Following those two are Amanda Tori Meeting (a fantastic pun name; if you’re struggling to figure it out, just think back to that time your boss called you into their office to fire you from your first retail job) and Morphine Love Dion. Amanda’s drag is a bit messy but loads of fun, while Morphine’s is much more composed and beautiful, if a little too fussy—though I do love her entrance look’s reference to that meme photo of Kali Uchis. Then it’s Sapphira Cristál and Mirage, who both give high-energy entrances that don’t quite match their personalities, but the season is still young! And finally, there’s Dawn, “the ethereal elf of Brooklyn,” who looks a bit like Season 14’s winner Willow Pill in drag and any twink you’d see on the L Train on a Saturday night out of drag.
For the season’s first mini-challenge, the girls have to pose on a set styled to look like a front porch, while Ru directs them through a Ring camera—or, sorry, a generic home security camera definitely not sponsored by Amazon. As far as the initial photoshoot challenge goes, it’s pretty conventional, though we do get some good cracks from the queens. When Ru asks Dawn if she’s vegan, Dawn replies by saying, “I actually think we should let animals vote.” And when Ru replies wondering who they’d vote for, Dawn quickly cracks, “Not you!” The joke elicits Season 16’s first RuPaul cackle, which means Dawn may be one to watch.
Back in the workroom, Ru announces this season’s two big twists. The first is that, for the first time since Season 5, the winner of the week’s main challenge will receive immunity to save them from the chopping block during a future elimination. The second coil in the formula is that—at least for the first two episodes—the judges won’t decide who wins. Rather, the queens will rate each other on a peer evaluation system called Rate-A-Queen. The way this is employed at the end of the episode seems too thought-out for this peer evaluation to only be used in the premiere episodes, but only time will tell if another wrench is thrown into the machine by the season’s end.
The premiere episode’s main challenge is—what else?—a talent show. At the very least, this round-’em-up of each queen’s special skills isn’t solely comprised of death dropping to a deluge of original electro pop songs. Most of the girls who came to the stage with performances to original music brought something unique to their numbers. Amanda Tori Meeting is high-energy out the gate, hitting a breathless string of moves that no one could keep up with. Maybe that’s why Morphine Love Dion says Amanda’s performance wasn’t that great, given that Morphine’s lip sync to a Rosalía song is, itself, pretty conventional. Mirage’s performance would be routine as well, if it weren’t for her delightful, heel-clacking stripper powers on full display.
The most disappointing of the group if Xunami Muse. For a member of the high-energy House of Muse, her performance is all but completely lifeless. Xunami performs her own original bitch track, but sort of just gallops up and down the stage the whole time. There are no splits, no death drops, nothing that can even be considered choreography. She never leaves a standing position! By that measure, it’s easy to see how Q and Sapphira Cristál earned this week’s top two spots. Q’s nightmarish puppet show is the kind of wanton silliness that Ru adores, and Sapphira’s self-penned opera was sheer stupidity in the very best way, like a very horny Andrea Bocelli yearning from the bell towers of Venice.
Using the Rate-A-Queen system, the group confirms that Sapphira and Q are this week’s top two queens, who will lip sync to compete for the win and for the privilege of immunity. To no one’s surprise, the stakes get yanked out from under us when Ru announces that nobody who fell into the bottom of the group’s ranking will be going home. I’ll try not to groan, I really will. I suppose the return of immunity was a good enough way to keep us all on our toes this week. But this is still a competition show, and I want to watch it knowing that, when I finish the episode, I won’t be returning in two weeks to the same number of queens. If that makes me an enemy to the woo-woo, we’re-all-besties spirit of modern Drag Race, then so be it!
But ultimately, I will survive, because there was one more shock in store: the queens lip syncing to Beyoncé’s “Break My Soul.” Beyoncé really said, “Please do not forget, my latest album was made in the spirit of the ballroom (and that Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncé is in theaters now nationwide.)” Things start off a tad low energy, but quickly pick up as the song continues. Q’s insect horns from the runway don’t necessarily lend themselves to a song like this, but she does a good job keeping up with Beyoncé’s vigor. But Sapphira comes comes out swinging…her two-sizes-too-small fake titties. After Michelle Visage noted that Sapphira’s breastplate looked a bit snug on her, Sapphira put those boobs to use, letting them fully come undone from her drag and out of her corset. By the end of the number, they were bobbing up and down to the beat and dragging on the floor, and Sapphira clinched her win right between those knockers.
Sapphira’s lip sync—and her and Q’s winning talent show numbers—prove that Drag Race is always the best when it’s tuck-to-the-wall wild. Fashion is great, sure. And maybe, just maybe, there’s a lot to be said for a decent mug and some sculpted cheekbones. But though couture and a shot of juvéderm might make a queen look the part, the performance element is what makes a Drag Race winner. This half of the cast is by and large a group of capital “P” performers, and if the other half that we meet next week can measure up, we’ll be in for another treat of a season.
