Drag Race queens react to 'rotted' Rate-a-Queen twist and reveal 'dirty' votes

Warning: This article contains spoilers for RuPaul's Drag Race season 16.

You wanted a twist, eh? Well, RuPaul's Drag Race season 16 delivered two major swerves on its season premiere Friday night — including the return of elimination immunity for every week's challenge-winning queen for the first time since season 5, and the new Rate-a-Queen voting twist that sent the new cast of queens into a frenzy from the jump.

On the first episode of the show's two-part season premiere, seven new queens — Amanda Tori Meating, Dawn, Mirage, Morphine Love Dion, Q, Sapphira Cristál, and Xunami Muse — made their Werk Room debuts, only to find out that host and head judge RuPaul would not be deciding their fate at the end of the fan-favorite (and MTV Spring Break-themed) talent show challenge. Instead, Mama Ru told the queens that they'd be voting among themselves to determine the tops and bottoms of the week, with no specific rules on what to base their vote on.

At the end of the talent show — hosted by returning season 8 and All Stars 5 queen Derrick Barry in drag as Britney Spears — each queen was sequestered in front of a large TV screen and asked to rank their competitors (not unlike the technology seen on Netflix's The Circle). During the voting period, the queens took turns praising (and shading) their sisters, with notable reads including Morphine calling out Amanda's "rotten" runway and Dawn revealing that she thought Xunami's runway "outfit was a bit pedestrian."

Back on the Main Stage, RuPaul revealed (in front of guest judge Charlize Theron) that — luckily for Xunami and Amanda, who appeared to get the most number of low votes — no queen would be eliminated at the end of the episode. Meanwhile, Sapphira and Q were revealed as the queens with the most first-place votes, prompting a lip-sync (to Beyoncé's "Break My Soul") for the overall win.

In a preview interview with EW, the queens reflected on the new twist, with some queens savoring the drama of it all, and others feeling plucked by the gag.

"For the Rate-a-Queen twist, the only word is rotted. Why would you make us do that?" Megami tells EW with a laugh.

Mhi'ya Iman Le'Paige — who will make her season 16 entrance on next week's episode — speculates that there were definitely "alliances" going on with the voting.

"Some people decided that they knew how to vote," Sapphira says. Adds Q: "Some of the girls are dirty and some of the girls aren't. That's just the way it is."

Mirage offers herself up as one of the "dirty" players, telling us that she didn't vote "based off of merit at all," while Plane Jane suspects that some of her sisters said they'd do things in an honest manner, but didn't — and the season is all the better for it.

"I think some of these girls might've been a little dishonest and voted for somebody they didn't announce to the group," Plane explains, though the second part of her sentence makes some of her sisters in the room cackle in disbelief. "It wasn't me. I was always very honest and legitimate with my votes," she insists.

See how next week's Rate-a-Queen twist plays out when RuPaul's Drag Race season 16's two-part premiere continues Friday at 8 p.m. ET/PT on MTV.

Watch EW's group interview with the new cast of queens above.

Subscribe to EW's Quick Drag podcast for recaps of RuPaul's Drag Race, including reactions from the cast, special guests, and more.

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