‘RuPaul’s Drag Race Global All Stars’ Episode 4 recap: International pop girls

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Though it’s become as integral a challenge on Drag Race variants across the world as stalwarts like Snatch Game and the ball, it wasn’t that long ago that the girl groups challenge didn’t exist. Sure, back in RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 1, there was a version of what we’d eventually see—but considering the queens were lip-syncing to Destiny’s Child songs, that task doesn’t resemble the girl groups challenge we know now. Really, the challenge came about in Drag Race UK’s first season, when “Break Up (Bye Bye)” broke through in a way few Drag Race songs ever had.

The UK following up with the unbelievable RuRuVision challenge—and “UK Hun?” along with it—cemented the girl groups task as a permanent feature on the British series. The rest of the world would largely follow suit shortly after. But our storyline this week actually starts back on Drag Race UK, one season after “UK Hun?” Kitty Scott-Claus, a lover of girl groups and a member of one alongside UK Season 1’s Cheryl (called Gals Aloud), fell into the exact same position that her bandmate did. Like Cheryl, she did well in her season’s girl group challenge, but she was in the wrong group. Until UK Season 5, the challenge was judged in groups, meaning they didn’t score the win.

Now, Kitty is back on Drag Race, competing for the Brits on Global All Stars. She’s reached the girl groups task once again, and unlike last time, the queens are not judged in teams. Can she secure the win she so deeply wanted back in her original season? Or will someone else snatch the victory? That is, theoretically, the story of this episode.

But out of nowhere, a new story emerges: Drag Race Italia’s Nehellenia finds herself at odds with a great portion of the cast. Details of exactly why things reach this point are sketchy, with Nehellenia reportedly alleging on Instagram Live that some pertinent scenes in previous episodes were edited out. But the end result is the same regardless: it’s Nehellenia vs. the world in Mini-Untucked, and it’s a fascinating development for the season.

We start this episode with some sadness from Soa De Muse, having sent her friend Athena Likis home, while Pythia is basking in the glow of her maxi-challenge win. It’s a short-lived honeymoon, though, as Pythia is confronted with one of the challenges she struggled with most in Canada’s Drag Race Season 2. Her performance in “Bye, Flop!”—the country-fried bop that has a special place in my heart—was one of the weakest of the episode. (She was saved thanks to the group-judging format.) She’s not the only one who struggled in her original season: Miranda Lebrão scored low for hers on Drag Race Brasil, while Alyssa Edwards’ only performance challenge in her Drag Race career was “Can I Get An Amen?”—very different from a girl group.

Meanwhile, Vanity Vain did well in Drag Race Sverige’s challenge but did not win, while Kween Kong actually won hers in Down Under Season 2, alongside eventual champion Spankie Jackzon and UK vs. The World runner-up Hannah Conda. (Talk about a power group!) The stronger and weaker performers are well-distributed across the three groups, making this a genuine battle. If any group has an advantage, it’s Vanity’s group—including Kitty, Nehellenia and Gala Varo. But as we’ll soon see, that can’t keep at least one of them out of danger.

The teams are actually chosen in a cute exercise: the queens must guess their country’s population. The three queens who are closest without going over get to be team captains. Vanity gets closest, just underestimating by 512,000, while Alyssa is over by 99.7 billion people. To borrow a phrase from her All Stars 2 sister Katya, she didn’t go to fucking school for math.

In addition to Vanity’s team, getting assigned a EuroPop mix of the song and calling themselves the “Backdoor Girls,” we have Kween, Soa and Pythia making up “D’VYBE” and performing a “Latinx mix” of the song, while Miranda, Alyssa, Tessa Testicle and Eva Le Queen form “Fresh M.E.A.T.” and get a Kpop mix. The mixes, to my ears, mostly sound equivalent, although the EuroPop version feels like the truest to the vibe of the song.

After segments featuring the queens writing verses and coming up with their choreography, we get back to the werk room, and this is the first hint that something’s up with Nehellenia. She indicates she believes one of the other queens doesn’t think she’s a good drag queen, and alludes to it being either Alyssa or Kween. She’s saying this to Kitty, seemingly indicating that Kitty is not who she’s talking about—though it’s worth noting that some of the most dismissive confessionals about Nehellenia have come from Kitty, including in this episode.

We get to the performances, and I think a lot of these queens are running into a problem that’s both entirely not their fault and incredibly predictable. Let’s start with D’VYBE. Soa is, in my mind, the standout performer of this group. Kween is okay, while Pythia isn’t great, leaning into comedy to cover her foibles. But Soa decides, like she did with her premiere cabaret act, to write an entirely French language verse. This is obviously how she’s most comfortable writing and performing, so it makes sense. However, I can’t see a world where Ru would declare a performance he doesn’t literally understand to be the winner.

A lot of other queens perform partially non-English verses: Vanity, Nehellenia and Gala of the Backdoor Girls all do it, for instance, leaving Kitty’s as the only fully English verse. I think both Nehellenia and Gala are excellent in the challenge, and deserving of top spots, if not the win. But I as a viewer at home get the benefit of subtitles to understand what they’re saying. I can enjoy their dancing and how they perform their verses, and I can appreciate the content of what they’ve written. How is Ru receiving that information? Are they giving him translations? I can’t imagine a format in which that would be helpful versus distracting.

This is, to be frank, an obvious fault with this format that it seems World of Wonder didn’t properly prepare for. Yes, every queen cast from another country speaks English, but they obviously were never going to want to perform all the time in English. That’s not the language they typically perform in as drag artists. Wouldn’t production want to make accommodations for this? It’s hard to tell just how much it affects the judging, although I’d say Kween making it in the top for a decent-but-unspectacular all-English verse over Gala’s is suspect, and Nehellenia’s not winning is even more so.

But let’s get back to Nehellenia for Mini-Untucked. After Alyssa is surprised to hear that the Italian queen is in the top, not the bottom, Nehellenia expresses the feeling that people don’t respect her. When pressed for names, she won’t say any, leading Vanity to get angry and Soa to walk away dramatically. Soa says she doesn’t get why Nehellenia is “looking for love” in the competition, while Kween actually takes it far further, calling her “a bit of a cunt” in her confessional.

I’m of two minds here: I do believe that this is reality television, and if you’re going to spill tea, you need to stand behind your dish. On two separate occasions in this episode, Nehellenia alludes to not feeling supported, but won’t say names. I understand Vanity’s frustration that Nehellenia is saying she’s feeling this from “everyone” in some form, especially since earlier in the episode, Nehellenia clearly said there was “a queen” who disrespected her. So if there is a particular culprit, call them out—or don’t bring it up in the bigger group.

On the other hand, perhaps Nehellenia didn’t feel like she had to say a name, because it was blatantly obvious. Alyssa had just said they didn’t think she’d be in the top, literally minutes earlier. And Kween’s end-of-fight confessional is so pointed that her feelings about Nehellenia should be clear to herself—they’re certainly clear to the rest of us. I could see a world in which Nehellenia is uncomfortable calling out two of the more popular girls in the cast directly (RuGirls, at that), and thus merely alludes to how she’s feeling.

Regardless, after all that, and for delivering what I think is the best performance of the week, you’d think Nehellenia would wind up with the challenge win to cap off a strong narrative. But no, instead we return to the past, as Kitty gets the girl group win that eluded her on her season. It’s a satisfying conclusion to that arc, but by the time we get to the decision, Nehellenia’s story is just so much more interesting. It reminds me of All Stars 6, when Jan won the Rusical to cap off her Season 12 story arc—but Trinity K. Bonet was far superior, and the win just looked like a reaction to what came before, not what was happening in the moment.

Pythia, Vanity and Miranda all land in the bottom three, and that’s gotta be a bad feeling for Miranda. You never want to be in the bottom with two maxi-challenge winners when you’ve only got a low-scoring placement to your name. Pythia is saved by the virtue of her runway, while Vanity delivers the right girl group energy to the lip sync of the Spice Girls’ “Spice Up Your Life.” (In a funny full-circle moment, this song was first used as a LSFYL song in UK Season 1—in the episode before the girl groups challenge.) Miranda tries a campy clown performance, but she just can’t keep up, and she sashays away.

This isn’t a bad episode, but I think it’s a bit of a missed opportunity. All these queens have stories from their original seasons coming in, yes. But they are all together for the first time now. The best television would be letting them duke it out, with thumbs off the scales, and see the drama that unfolds. Regrettably, that’s not really what we’re getting here—and judging by some fan response, that may doom this new format to just one season if things don’t change course.

Untucking our final thoughts

✨ This episode is 54 minutes, which indicates the more variable runtime we assumed we’d get based on the two premieres is indeed in play. But that just makes me question why last week’s ball episode was so short. I did appreciate the tight storytelling, but it could’ve probably used at least 50 minutes, even to just extend the runway presentations a bit.

✨ On the subject of tight storytelling, though: I love the short cold opens. Just a little flash from the end of last week to get us settled, then right into the action. I wouldn’t mind at all if other Drag Race franchises adopted this model.

✨ The lack of lipstick messages is pretty disappointing. That’s been a tradition ever since Shangela got it started in the Season 2 premiere, and it makes the eliminations feel underwhelming. Give them the chance to share a last message, Ru!

✨ Meanwhile, we are consistently getting RuMail messages, which is great. The main American series and All Stars always seem just about ready to abandon them at a moment’s notice, but I like them as a table-setter.

✨ There’s some confusion as to what exactly this song is called. Ru insistently says it’s “Say Love,” but the chyrons for the songs’ introductions is “Everybody Say Love.” But that is also a variant of a girl group song from All Stars 4, “Errybody Say Love.” So maybe Ru just didn’t want to get them mixed up? Whatever the case, it’s a strange inconsistency.

✨ The Hilarious Ross Mathews is our guest judge this week, which makes the panel quite American. I wouldn’t mind this, considering the first two judges were non-Americans … except Matt Rogers was here just last week, and the preview for next week shows Carson Kressley is next. I felt like the premieres gave the impression that the guest judges would bring more international presence, so I don’t love that we’ll be on a three-week run of white, American gay men in the guest slot. (I realize I’m saying this as a white, American gay man—but hey, I’m not asking to be a guest judge!)

✨ I really enjoy the “Colour My World” runway this week, with the queens having to not just pull off reveals, but reveals in distinct, bright colours. There are a lot of cute concepts here, from Disney villains (Eva’s) to Finding Nemo (Nehellenia’s) to a monster-under-the-bed reveal (Pythia). That said, there’s still a bit too much just-removing-clothes—Kween is a particular offender in this regard, and it alone should’ve kept her out of the top three.

✨ Vanity keeping a list of the various queer community flags she represented in her runway, and pulling said list out of her wig when Ru asks, is very funny.

✨ I’m still missing deliberations, especially with a longer episode. Some fans (and even alumni!) have been very critical of the judging of this season, and without deliberations to flesh out why these decisions are being made, I’m finding it difficult to defend the panel.

✨ Not sure we’ve seen a sadder sight in a lip sync in a while than Miranda’s clown nose falling off. To quote Mo’Nique, the clown came back to bite.

The next episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race Global All Stars will be available to stream next Friday at 3 a.m. EST on Paramount+ in the U.S. and on Crave in Canada. We’ll be publishing recaps all season long, exclusively here first in our drag newsletter Wig!, and then on Xtra every week.