‘RuPaul’s Drag Race’: Is ‘All-Stars 3’ A Bust?

Tonight, we’re approaching a crucial point in the current season of RuPaul’s Drag Race: All-Stars. With five queens remaining — campy BenDeLaCreme, mother of dramatic dragons Shangela, underperforming comedienne/country singer Trixie Mattel, sour grandma Kennedy Davenport, and queen regent Bebe Zahara Benet — the show is poised to repeat last season’s most gag-worthy episode. As you no doubt recall, Alyssa Edwards and Tatiana lip-synced to get back into the competition, they both slayed it, they both got back in, and they both gave the chop to villain Phi Phi O’Hara. It was phenomenal television, and it helped elevate All-Stars 2 to legendary status. Going into the same queens-return episode in All-Stars 3, though, there isn’t that same sense of excitement. There are a few reasons for that (by and large, the eliminated queens aren’t anybody the fans are clammoring to have back), but the bigger issue is that, slightly past the mid-season point, viewers are starting to wonder whether this is all that good of a season.

Compounding that impression was VH1’s announcement last week that season 10 of Drag Race will premiere the very next week after the All-Stars 3 finale. Which is damned exciting news, but also gives the impression that VH1 is looking to hustle AS3 out of the public consciousness as quickly as possible. It can’t help but take the wind out the the current season’s sails when, for example, last week’s episode was followed immediately after by the season 10 queens’ reveal in a Facebook Live event hosted by season 9 champ Sasha Velour.

So is All-Stars 3 officially a bust? Can a mega-gag tonight salvage things? Do things need to be salvaged? Let’s take a look under that hood.

What’s Worked So Far This Season?

• The Cast: Not everybody was sold on this cast when they were announced. No queens who had finished better than 4th place in their original seasons; a few real head-scratchers; none of the top-finishing queens from the wildly popular season 9. Skepticism was high. But these queens have really delivered. The theme of redemption has been strong, with queens like Aja completely turning things around from original-season disappointments and fan-faves like Trixie Mattel and Chi Chi DeVayne struggling in relatable ways. This was a season of hungry queens looking to right a historical wrong. The casting plan has paid off.
• The Conflict: If there was one complaint to be made about season 9, it’s that there wasn’t enough interpersonal conflict. Ever since LaShauwon Beyond uttered that famous “This ain’t ‘RuPaul’s Best Friend Race’!” in season 4, fans have been guarded against seasons where the queens were too diplomatic with one another. Not the case this time! While there haven’t been any out-and-out arguments between the queens, there has been plenty of bad blood boiled and shade thrown. All the better for fans to take sides!
• Bebe Zahara Benet: The addition of the season 1 champ as the secret 10th queen has added a touch of veteran regality to the season. Drag Race is a season whose fans sometimes struggle to honor its history. Streaming timetables and the fact that Millennials don’t pay for cable anymore have meant that the majority of Drag Race fans began watching sometime around season 5, and maybe they’ve watched older seasons, but Logo (and now VH1) have kept season 1 — with its charming/clever low-fi aesthetic that was part-budget necessity and part-campy parody of America’s Next Top Model — largely unavailable. Bringing Bebe back is teaching the children in a way that hasn’t been seen since Tammie Brown was walking them in nature.

What Hasn’t Worked This Season?

• The Cast: Despite the fact that the majority of the cast has worked out splendidly, a few bad apples have soured some fans. Season 6 queen Milk, in particular, came back with an attitude to match her tall frame, and given an edit that emphasized every self-aggrandizing comment she made, fans (who were already kind of dubious that the attractive-but-underwhelming queen was brought back at all) revolted. Every season needs a villain who goes away early, but the mood around Milk turned toxic quickly.
• The Challenges: Can we all agree that the challenges where the queens lip-sync to an original comedy musical where they neither write the lyrics, sing the songs, nor choose their characters have to go? They don’t give the queens nearly enough to contribute! “Kardashians: The Musical” was tedious in season 9; Divas Live was an inexcusable disappointment this year.
• Bebe Zahara Benet: As great as it’s been to have Bebe around this season, her presence has been unspectacular at best, distracting at worst. Until last week, Bebe had finished in the boring middle on every challenge, and despite utterly destroying the lip sync last week, fans (especially those who never watched her original season) were given to griping about the deference the judges have shown her. There’s also been the prevalence of a persistent rumor about Bebe that has kept Bebe’s performance this season in question.   RUMORS AREN’T SPOILERS ESPECIALLY IF THEY’RE FALSE BUT MOVE ON TO THE NEXT BULLET IF YOU’RE SCARED: Apparently, the rumor is that Bebe isn’t a contestant but a mole who will end up helping the judges decide who to eliminate/declare the winner at some point. This would have explained her permanent residence in the middle, as well as keep hope alive for the long-rumored All-Winners Season, which had better happen some day. Bebe winning last week and actively eliminating Aja put a damper on those rumors, however.
• The All-Stars “Lip Sync For Your Legacy” Format: This was introduced in All-Stars 2 as a means of upping the drama, forcing queens to eliminate each other and thus cranking up the interpersonal tension. Last year, it didn’t work all that well because the RoLaskaTox girls (Roxxy Andrews, Alaska, and Detox) refused to eliminate each other. This year, the queens have been more willing to cut each other without remorse … except for the reticent BenDeLaCreme, who has been in charge of half of the eliminations so far. Shangela has been more willing to look at the eliminations as a means to create alliances and reality TV drama, in the way the show likely hoped, but with only ten queens to start, Shangela (and the audience) are finding that opportunities to actually use alliances are few and far between. There just hasn’t been much in the way of payoff for this format, save for some sour-ass goodbye mentions from the eliminated queens. For All-Stars 4, maybe it’s time to come up with a new elimination game.

Ultimately, tonight’s episode is going to go a long way towards determining how All-Stars 3 is going to be remembered in Drag Race herstory. All is not quite lost, but there needs to be a major gag and soon.

Where to stream RuPaul's Drag Race: All-Stars