‘RuPaul’s Drag Race’ Season 15, Episode 9 recap: Happy birthday, ‘Drag Race’!

I’ll admit: I never conceptualized, way back in Season 8, when RuPaul’s Drag Race celebrated its 100th episode in extraordinary fashion, what a 200th episode of the show might look like. Part of that is because that was when the brand was starting to expand, so keeping count of how many “episodes” there are became harder. If you include All Stars and the various international franchises, the count is more than double this 200-episode milestone. (I myself have recapped over 350 episodes, and it boggles the mind to think I’ve written literally hundreds of thousands of words about this show.)

But while I enjoyed this week’s episode of Drag Race quite a bit, it does feel underwhelming as a culmination of these past 200 episodes. There’s an anniversary-themed challenge, yes—a Crystal Ball, since the gift for 15 years is traditionally a crystal—and there are historical references made throughout. However, this is a group of queens (looking especially at Luxx Noir London here) that constantly makes Drag Race references. It’s hard for these references to feel special when they’re already so prevalent.

And while there is a category in the ball for presenting a look that would’ve been at home in one of the previous ball challenges, the narrow scope of former balls that the queens choose (most go for the very recent Bag Ball and Ball Ball) limits how much of a celebration it feels like. Honestly, the media coverage of the 200th episode has felt like more of a celebration than this episode is.

Still, as I said, it’s a very good episode on its own, with some of the strongest results in a ball challenge we’ve seen in years. The fact that the show has reduced the number of participants in the ball challenge is helpful as well—I’m actually able to keep track of everyone’s looks this season! And while I may quibble with the show’s choice of winner, and wonder if the eliminated queen was actually the worst this week, the episode overall is one of the best of the season.

The three categories for this season’s ball challenge are Start Your Engines (a new interpretation of Ru’s classic racing-suit look), My Favorite Ball (as mentioned, a look inspired by the eleganza prompt in another ball challenge) and Crystallized Eleganza. As usual, the final category is the look that must be made on the spot, out of crystalline materials provided for the queens. It’s not the hardest eleganza category we’ve ever seen—there’s a lot of fabric included—but it does produce some pretty stunning results.

Our top queens of the week are Anetra, Mistress Isabelle Brooks and Sasha Colby, once again all landing high praise from the judges. These three have consistently been at the top of the pack this season, with Marcia Marcia Marcia and Luxx keeping pace with them most. (Loosey LaDuca, who started off the season strong, has wilted a bit in recent weeks—we’ll talk more about her performance in a second.) Here, they all earn their praise, turning out stunning looks in the final category.

Anetra’s final look is a particular knockout. She constructs a remarkable gown in such a short time, with all sorts of fascinating details. It’s a shame that she wears an unflattering wig with the look, because otherwise, it alone might’ve been enough to give her the win. (Her other two looks fall short of expectations, with her take on Season 5’s Sugar Ball being particularly disappointing.) Mistress performs far better across all three categories, including a very cute racing suit that includes quotes from previous Drag Race big girls stitched onto it. Considering her overall output, including a gorgeous final dress, I would’ve personally given Mistress the win.

Ru goes another way, though, giving it to Sasha. Her looks are all great—I especially love her elegant, sexy take on the racing suit—but her final garment is more a feat of styling than construction. Still, she’s very strong across the board. It’s interesting: Sasha is the kind of polished, professional performer whom Ru often acts a bit cold toward, but he seems really dazzled by Sasha. He even gives her the chance to open up about her experience as a part of the House of Colby, calling her a credit to the house system. It’s been quite some time since we saw a legend like Sasha walk away with the crown (arguably since Bianca Del Rio), but more and more her victory at season’s end feels inevitable.

On the less impressive side of things, Loosey falls into the bottom three once again (but is spared from lip syncing). Her Start Your Engines look is a bit of a cartoon, with too much design to it—you can’t take it all in. Her Bag Ball look is a real whiff, effectively being a simple white dress with doggie bags glued on to it. And her final look, which she presents in character as a disgruntled runner-up—not a huge stretch from her current edit on the show—is nice, but unremarkable.

I might’ve put Loosey in the bottom two instead of Spice, who has a decent outing that is nonetheless not up to this cast’s standard. None of her looks are bad—although the skirt on her self-made look is incomplete—but none of them really feel like a push forward for Spice’s drag. She serves the same kind of character every single time, whether or not she’s doing Michelle Visage’s loathed trot. It’s all a bit boring, even if Spice herself is dynamic. The judges push her this week to put that same personality they see in her into her drag, but I don’t think there’s a reasonable way for Spice to do that when she’s still in the competition. If anything, I hope it helps her develop her own sense of her drag, separate from her sister’s, post-show.

Salina EsTitties is the clear worst this week, though. Her fly girl look for the Start Your Engines category is a bit too far from the racing-suit inspiration, but it’s her best outfit of the night, full of personality and charm. Her entry in Season 3’s Money Ball category, however, is a disaster. It’s a cute idea to use bills marked with her own face, but the look itself is so poorly designed. It actually makes her eleganza look a bit better by comparison, though that ill-fitting dress is just as much of a problem.

She and Spice lip sync to Lil Nas X’s “That’s What I Want,” and neither performer seems to know what to do with the song. Salina goes for an emotional interpretation, seemingly performing to some unseen force that she keeps staring at, and it falls flat. Spice, however, doesn’t know her words, so she sashays away. The fan and queen favourite is no doubt beloved, but she really should’ve been toast last week in the LaLaPaRuZa. Anetra granted her a one-week stay of execution.

If I may take this conclusion to reflect: it is never lost on me that, for all the ways Drag Race can frustrate me, I owe it a great debt. Being able to write these recaps and power rankings not only brings me joy, but it also has literally given me a livelihood at times when I desperately needed one. I have been able to build a life doing this that I value as much as I do my main career.

And I know full well that it’s thanks to you, the readers, why that’s been possible. Whether you first started reading me here at Xtra, or you’ve followed me as I hopped from Mic to INTO to here, or you subscribed to my Patreon when I was recapping all the old seasons, I cannot express my gratitude enough for your readership. My love for doing this comes from the kindness that readers have shown me, and it’s my tremendous pleasure to continue to recap and rank queen after queen, episode after episode and season after season for you.

Here’s to the first 200 episodes of RuPaul’s Drag Race’s flagship series, and to many hundreds more. Between all the international franchises, we’ll be at 1,000 before we know it—and hopefully that milestone gets the pomp and circumstance it deserves. Until then, we’ll take it one episode at a time. Our next stop on that journey is a 20/20 parody challenge; see you all next week to discuss!

Untucking our final thoughts

✨ A miracle: we get a mini-challenge! In honour of the 200th episode festivities, the queens photo-bomb different iconic moments in Drag Race herstory. (Some are more iconic than others, to say the least.) Anetra wins for doing a cannonball into Willow Pill’s talent show act bathtub, but Luxx also stands out for kicking Vivacious off the platform during the jumping photo shoot mini-challenge. Cute stuff all around!

✨ The Anetra Confessional Alert siren fully broke this week, because, wow, she’s basically the main character of an episode in which she does not win or lip sync! She wins the mini-challenge, as mentioned, and opens up about her relationship with her family during an extended mirror moment. Hers is a difficult story to hear: when her mom found her drag, Anetra thought her mother was accepting, but was kicked out of the house just a week later, with no opportunity to say goodbye to her siblings. She gets incredibly emotional both in a conversation with Salina and in a confessional, but it ends on a nice note: she was able to reconnect with her father, and now they’re quite close. It’s great to learn more about Anetra the person—even when the story is painful—especially since she’s faded into the background a bit after her stellar premier performance.

✨ Julia Garner is our guest judge this week, and she is fine! She just doesn’t get much to do, and she’s an odd fit for the 200th episode guest. Why not bring back, say, Bob Mackie, who was the judge of the very first episode? That said, she does get a cute bit in Untucked reciting Inventing Anna lines for the girls, and they’re clearly delighted.

✨One bit of ceremony for the big anniversary: Ru wears a leather ensemble on the runway that evokes her iconic ’94 MAC Viva Glam campaign look. Not quite a Drag Race reference, but a RuPaul one—and hey, we’ll take it!

✨Mistress is the star of Carson Kressley’s walk-through with the girls, joking that she’s actually the one teaching Loosey about a sewing machine, and referring to some of the other queens’ gowns as “gluttonous and gaudy.” What a phrase!

✨ In the werk room, the queens get some (very abbreviated!) time to reflect on iconic past moments. Kudos to Mistress for bringing up Ongina’s coming out as HIV-positive, which I would argue is the show’s first true signature moment. Also gotta give props to Spice for saying Rebecca Glasscock wearing jeans paved the way for her and Sugar. We need more Becky Glasscock references on our TV in 2023!

✨ “Time is definitely of the Jaida Essence Hall.” I will be stealing this quote from Anetra immediately.

✨ Speaking of time, the fact that we spend some of the very precious little we have of it this week on a RuPaul performance is a remarkable troll on production’s part.

✨ Adorable ending to the episode, as all the queens do Spice’s signature trot out on to the main stage. A fitting tribute to the eliminee, and a reminder that while she may not have broken out in the competition, she clearly endeared herself to the other queens many times over. She walks out with the respect and love of her peers—and considering the initial skepticism about her and Sugar from many of them, that’s a huge win.

The next episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race will air Friday, March 3, at 8 p.m. EST on MTV in the U.S. and on Crave in Canada. Check back every Monday after new episodes for our recaps and power rankings, and subscribe to our drag newsletter Wig! for exclusive Drag Race content delivered straight to your inbox every Tuesday afternoon.