‘RuPaul’s Drag Race UK’ Season 2 Will Stand as a Testament to the Tenacity of Drag

Drag queens have always been tough and tenacious. Facts are facts, and the past 13 years of RuPaul’s Drag Race has clued the mainstream in on what the subculture’s always known. It takes real charisma, uniqueness, nerve, and talent to get into all that glitz, padding, and wig infrastructure and then entertain a sweaty crowd through a kaleidoscope of moves, jokes, and looks! But in over a dozen years of Drag Race, and even more seasons of its many international spinoffs, one season will forever stand as the most direct example of how drag queens persevere: RuPaul’s Drag Race UK Season 2.

The global panny d known as COVID-19 fully put a stop to all drag shenanigans all over the world—for a minute. As a certain documentary episode said, corona can’t keep a good queen down. Even with all the bars and venues closed and every queen in lockdown, drag found a way. From the jump, divas all across the globe organized digital drag shows from their own homes and spread everyone’s Venmo handles like they were the juiciest of gossips. This blew open the doors of the usually age-restricted clubs and let everyone, no matter their age or location, enjoy this art form. It was a renaissance for drag, at a time when the empire could have burnt down. Marvel at the resolve!

And then there’s RuPaul’s Drag Race UK Season 2. But first, to back up a sec—every RuPaul’s Drag Race season over the past year is a testament to this in one way or another. I’m not here to tear down other seasons to lift another one up. Believe it or not, every single Drag Race season can be treated as a winner! Let’s not forget that the RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 12 queens were pioneers at figuring out how to broadcast a reunion and grand finale via VH1’s fancy Zoom! And figure it out they did, delivering the best season finale since Sasha Velour’s rose petals fell. I mean, we wouldn’t have seen Crystal Methyd’s bizarre baby bird puppet act on a stage. Thank you, quarantine.

And I also have to take a detour to praise the queens of Drag Race Season 13, lest any viewer think I’m unfavorably comparing it to UK 2. I know the hard work—and honestly, bravery—it took for the production and queens to make this (fantastic!) season happen. These girls had to assemble a season’s worth of Drag Race looks, the looks that will stay with them for the rest of their lives, at the height of a pandemic! Marvel at the resourcefulness!

All that brings me, finally, to RuPaul’s Drag Race UK Season 2. There’s a reason why I’m singling out UK 2 for this post—and yes, it’s partly because it’s season finale time. But of all the Drag Race content that was impacted by the pandemic, RuPaul’s Drag Race UK is the one—the only one—that offers a clear, brutally honest depiction of what life was like before, during, and after the world fell apart and pieced itself back together. Season 12 had already wrapped filming save for the finale, and Season 13 picked up with COVID protocols in effect. But Drag Race UK was the show that was totally derailed by this unprecedented event.

RuPaul’s Drag Race UK Season 2: The Top 4 Queens Reflect on the Hardest Year Ever

RuPaul’s Drag Race is already a pressure cooker. It is the Olympics of drag, and it will remain so until the Summer Games add voguing to the rhythmic gymnastics category. We saw what that pressure cooker does to queens in the first four episodes of Drag Race UK Season 2. A’Whora and Tia Kofi came for each other, Lawrence Chaney had a breakdown over dancing, Veronica Green struggled to assert herself (and then maybe over asserted herself), and Ginny Lemon just full-on quit. It’s a beast of a show to perform in—and then the lights went out.

For seven months.

Imagine having your biggest dream come true, and then having a global catastrophe well beyond your control snuff it out midway (along with your entire livelihood and way of life). That’s why the Queens on Lockdown special, which covers the seven month gap in filming, is essential viewing, an unflinching time capsule of this harrowing moment in time. This cast goes through it, showing the kind of raw emotion that would even make Untucked! blush. Tayce and Ellie Diamond had to cope with housing issues. Lawrence was homebound the entire time due to Scotland’s even stricter quarantine. Bimini Bon-Boulash, who slyly cast herself as the season’s “blonde bimbo” at first, spoke out on behalf of everyone in the hospitality industry who were left to fend for themselves by the government… while also practicing her chair dancing. Cherry Valentine, a practicing mental health nurse, worked on the front lines of COVID and filmed her lockdown confessionals in her car while still wearing scrubs. This hero!

But it was Veronica Green’s lockdown experience that… can one even truly put into words what that footage means to this community? Veronica shut down, completely. After losing everything, or at least feeling like she lost everything, she didn’t leave her bed for weeks, weeks that turned to months. If not for the diligent, patient care of her partner…? This footage is, to be blunt, a life preserver. It normalizes mental illness and depression, especially at a time when it became impossible for anyone to move on as normal. This is the content we need, especially from Drag Race. Drag is partly about taking perceived weaknesses and turning them into armor. Don’t be ashamed, own it and share it. I hope Veronica Green knows that by letting us see this darkness, she’s made so many people’s loads a lot lighter. And then… she got COVID-19 because 2020 was just relentless.

And then—LOL—Drag Race started again!! Imagine it! Imagine having to go from zero to stunning with a moment’s notice after seven months in isolation! Not only that, imagine the first challenge back being the girl group challenge! These girls spent over half a year performing in their living rooms and eating junk food and now they have to write, record, choreograph, and perform a single that will be on their resume forever. The result? F’ing “UK, Hun?,” another Drag Race smash hit that somehow matched the runaway success of Season 1’s “Break Up (Bye Bye).”

Legendary.

This is what I’m talking about. Lockdown was hard. It made everyone punchy as hell. Do I need to remind you of RuPaul’s infamous H&M speech? These extreme circumstances got to the usually unflappable Ru! When you rewatch Drag Race UK Season 2, you will see a normal, hella stressful competition be blown apart by a pandemic, all of the queens deal with the fallout in their own drastically different ways, and then reassemble triumphantly with a thrilling stretch of episodes. And remember: they did Snatch Game like, barely a week out of total isolation.

Can you even? Because I can’t.

RuPaul’s Drag Race UK Season 2 will be remembered for all the right reasons. It’s a great season of Drag Race with a great group of queens. But it will also live on as firsthand, in-the-moment documentation of not only how hard the pandemic was in 2020 (and still is in 2021!), but how hard all these artists worked to keep entertaining and inspiring all of us. Thanks to them, we’re all ‘k, hun.

Stream RuPaul's Drag Race UK on WOW Presents Plus