‘RuPaul’s Drag Race’ Season 17 premiere recap: Hey Squirrel (Games) friend!

There’s nothing quite like original recipe RuPaul’s Drag Race. While I will always be most drawn to the pleasures of Canada’s Drag Race, and I have to give my 10s to the best Ru-hosted show that aired last year, RuPaul’s Drag Race UK Season 6, the flagship series is the one that the community really comes together for. Gone are the days of fans being able to keep up with the various international series; even All Stars seasons, now relegated to 3 a.m. ET releases on Paramount+ and other streamers, have struggled to keep the greater audience’s attention.

But OG RuPaul’s Drag Race can still pack the bars, drive a ton of online conversation and make gay group chats light up like it’s Oscar nomination morning. So it’s with joy that we return to MTV for Season 17 as we kick off with another split premiere, talent show maxi-challenge and the return of a big twist to shake up the game.

Yes, Rate-a-Queen is back for the premiere, but there’s an added wrinkle to make things interesting. Instead of the seven queens who perform in this week’s talent show being able to rate each other, it’s the seven who don’t perform this week who do the ranking. The two queens with the highest scores are given the chance to Lip Sync for the Win, while the lowest-ranking queen will be made to lip sync against next week’s lowest-ranked queen. One of them will have to sashay away, and we’ll move into Episode 3 with a merged, 13-queen cast.

Were that not enough to keep this episode lively, we also start with a touch of camp: a Squid Game “Red Light, Green Light” parody called Squirrel Games. Among the 14 queens of this season are a collection of LA-local performers and notable Drag Race alumni. Some bold-faced names I spotted in the crowd: first-ever eliminee Victoria “Porkchop” Parker; winners like Trinity the Tuck, Angeria Paris VanMicheals and Kylie Sonique Love; and All Stars contestants like Morgan McMichaels, Mayhem Miller, Jujubee and Jaymes Mansfield. There’s also Kerri Colby, who winds up with one of the more iconic eliminations of the mini-game, with a pie directly to her face.

As it turns out, that mini-game is actually a mini-challenge, with the queen who poses the best upon being stopped by the Lil Poundcake doll’s red light call earning the victory and $2,500. But before we can learn who that is, we have to actually see the queens enter! It’s a bit out-of-order, since the queens will have all seen each other during Squirrel Games, but the energy is the same as ever. First up is Lexi Love, a 13-year veteran performer who calls her style of drag “avant-stoopid.” That’s a winning combination on this show in the modern day, I gotta say. She is followed by Joella, “the slay-sian diva of Los Angeles” and Kori King, “the Black Barbie from Boston.” (Moving forward, please refer to me only as Kevin O’Keeffe, the Scintillating Scribe of Xtra.)

We then get a rush of young queens, in what is a sign that this is overall a very young cast. Lydia B Kollins (“the B stands for butthole”) is a spooky gal inspired by the works of Tim Burton, John Waters and David Lynch. Arrietty is an eccentric and conceptual Seattle queen who can claim Season 15 first-boot Irene “The Alien” Dubois as her drag mother. Jewels Sparkles, hailing from Tampa, cites Priscilla Presley as an inspiration, and declares herself not just a bitch but “that bitch.”

Arrietty isn’t the only queen related to Drag Race alumni: Lana Ja’Rae, whose name pun I didn’t understand until this very episode, is Luxx Noir London’s drag daughter. (She is also our surprise mini-challenge winner!) Sam Star, the self-described “supermodel of the south,” is Trinity the Tuck’s drag daughter. But only Hormona Lisa can lay claim to being pushed to do this show by Ru himself, as he invited her onto the cast during one of his memoir book tour stops. She is clearly very proud of this fact, and the other queens are clearly very annoyed by it.

Five more! God, 14 queens is a lot, isn’t it? Onya Nurve walks into the room giving ’70s vibes, and I am instantly drawn to her energy. She’s giving best confessional queen of the season. Suzie Toot calls herself a “cross-section between Betty Boop and Lucille Ball,” and got to open for Chappell Roan at one of her tour stops. Crystal Envy from Asbury Park, New Jersey is absolutely gorgeous—both in and out of drag. Acacia Forgot, a “country diva” who plays the guitar and other instruments, is the Amanda Tori Meating of this season, coming in for criticisms for her makeup and look the second she walks in. Finally, there’s Lucky Starzzz, who comes in looking like no one else in an ultra-creative paint look.

My overall impression of this cast is: we’ll see! I have some instant favourites, like Lexi, Onya and, after we see her performance later in the episode, Suzie. But a lot of them are blending together a bit for me. It doesn’t help that we have a Jewels Sparkles, a Lucky Starzzz and a Sam Star. Even Crystal Envy’s generic name gets mixed up in that pile in my mind. It also doesn’t help that, after Kori leads the queens in splitting into two groups—a task put on them to take care of by Ru himself—most of the lower-key queens wind up performing in this premiere. A lot of the biggest personalities (Lexi, Kori, Onya, Hormona) wind up in premiere #2, so I think I’ll wait to make any major judgments about the cast until then.

After a Masked4Masked Singer runway, we get to the newly redesigned main stage (it looks a great deal like the Season 16 finale and Secret Celebrity Drag Race Season 2 stages) for the maxi-challenge talent show. Immediately, of course, the common complaint arises: why do none or few of the queens do real talent performances anymore, the rest defaulting to lip syncs? To this I say to you whilst holding your hand to bring comfort: it’s because those performances win. I was loudly rooting for Ra’Jah O’Hara’s one-minute dress act to beat Yara Sofia’s performance in the All Stars 6 talent show, but that episode should’ve been a warning that the well-branded and just-stupid-enough lip syncs would always win out moving forward. Season 14, which saw Kornbread “The Snack” Jeté and Angeria Paris VanMichaels win with original song lip syncs and Willow Pill’s surreal, fascinating “self-care routine” lose, was the death knell.

More to the point, there seems to be some revisionist history happening around what kind of performances used to win at the talent shows. You’ll never find a bigger fan of “The Same Parts” than me, but a spoken-word piece about genitals is much closer to the kinds of acts that win now than, say, an earnest musical performance. Those never won, and in fact were pretty routinely punished with bottom placements. (Remember how close Silky Nutmeg Ganache got to the bottom two of that All Stars 6 talent show for her piano rendition of “This Little Light of Mine”?) 

So while I can empathize with Acacia’s frustrations as she is named the week’s worst performer, I can’t quite co-sign her belief that she should’ve been safe for performing an actual talent instead of a lip sync. Not only is the current “metagame” of Drag Race that you need to do a lip sync, something the judges could imagine seeing on a Werq the World tour or at RuPaul’s Drag Race Live!, but even in the old days, her guitar-and-vocal performance would’ve been called safe at best. Her melting snowman look for the runway doesn’t help matters, either.

We don’t know exactly how the rest of the queens place—though I have lots of thoughts to share in the power ranking this week—but Arrietty, Lydia, Lucky and Joella are all called safe. Arrietty owes a pretty big debt to Lana on this one: the two made a deal to rank each other #1, and I bet it’s that placement that keeps Arrietty out of the bottom slot. That leaves Suzie and Jewels as our top two, and they both give solid performances. Suzie’s routine is best-in-show for me, a tap number that’s witty (the Gettysburg Address in Morse code!) but not too smart for the show. Jewels’ milk number is silly and fun, although it does share a lot of spirit in common with recent winning performances, like Anetra’s and Plane Jane’s.

The same could be said for Lucky Starzzz’s lemon performance, but of the two, it’s my preferred choice for the top two. I do think the runway plays a factor here, though: Lucky’s pizza box look is fun, but the makeup isn’t my favourite. It’s close between them—I wouldn’t be surprised if Suzie was #1 by a pretty clear margin, with others closely bunched a ways after her.

Suzie and Jewels get to lip sync for the win. Unfortunately for them, they have to do it to Katy Perry’s “Woman’s World.” At first, this looks like a clear win for Jewels, since she’s dressed the part and is excited by the high-energy song. But Suzie pulls off something impressive here, twisting the song to fit her style instead of trying to match what Jewels is doing. At one point, she taps along to a verse instead of lip syncing to it (if that’s a style of protest against lip-syncing “Woman’s World,” I support it), and later fully breaks out into the Charleston. She seizes control of this one about halfway through and runs it home, and earns a deserved victory.

Overall, this premiere is solid. It does a good job of introducing us to the queens, it breaks up the talent shows nicely and it’s just twisty enough to keep things interesting. Were these legendary talent show performances? Not particularly. Do I think the runway featured any real jaw-droppers? Nah. But this season has plenty of time to ramp up. I’m okay with a soft launch.

Untucking our final thoughts

✨ Another face among those in the crowd of Squirrel Games: a clown dressed very much like the one who stood in for Bianca Del Rio in the Season 8 premiere photo shoot. Good to see him!

✨ The grand prize this season is powered by TodayTix, to which I must ask: what kind of operation is TodayTix running that they have an extra $200,000 to give to one of these gals? Is selling discount tickets really that profitable? Should I have gotten into niche theatre ticket sales app development instead of writing?

✨ The de-dragging segment this week is generally quite horny. (It is a very cute crop of queens, I will say.) Kori seems to be making eyes directly at Lydia; we’ll see if a Branjie-style romance develops there.

✨ The oldest queen on this cast, at time of filming, was 33: Lexi Love. I turned 33 in November, meaning for the first time, I am as old as the oldest queen in a Drag Race cast. I am processing this news in a normal and calm fashion.

✨ Related: I cheered when Lexi called the many queens related to Drag Race alumni “nepo babies.” Get ’em, Lexi!

✨ Lucky Starzzz gets the first big mirror moment of the season, admitting she hasn’t done her own makeup in a long time. Her stepfather lost his hand in an accident, so she had to step up as the breadwinner in non-drag work. I gotta say: for not having done drag in a year, Lucky’s work is pretty impressive. Hopefully Drag Race can help launch her to heights that will help her and her family—she’s certainly got the talent for it.

✨ Okay divas, let’s talk about Katy. Yes, Ms. Perry herself is the guest judge this week, toting “Woman’s World” along with her, and this must’ve seemed like a good idea at the time. Of course, Katy’s most recent album, 143, was a critical and commercial disaster, and her choice to work once again with the disgraced Dr. Luke drew an enormous amount of criticism her way. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Drag Race barely promoted her guest stint, in stark contrast to how whole marketing campaigns were built around season-opening guests like Lady Gaga, Miley Cyrus and Nicki Minaj. As someone who has loved Katy Perry’s music in the past (I went to the California Dreams Tour on my 20th birthday!), I am genuinely hoping she can make a real comeback. But media appearances like this one, in which Katy mostly just said gay slang, recognized Joella and dispensed generic advice, aren’t going to help her get there.

✨ Carson Kressley is first up of the rotating judges. I’ve heard a rumour that Law Roach is joining his, Ross Mathews’ and Ts Madison’s ranks this season, but nothing solid. If so, I hope the show is smart enough to make the rotation between the four of them a substantial one, and not just the spare Ts appearances we’ve gotten in seasons since she joined as a regular.

✨ A quick rundown of the non-participating queens’ runway looks, since they won’t be included in this week’s power ranking: Kori’s dark raven look that she admits is unusual for her is good, but it’s unfortunate for her that this runway category was literally first. Not ideal to start on a look that’s so far from your typical drag. Hormona’s skunk look is actually pretty great, but I hate the mask itself. Crystal’s face-crack look is very fun, I am obsessed with Lexi’s MTV Moonperson look, Lana’s baby cat look is cute and Sam’s rain-into-rainbows look is basic in concept but polished in execution. I suspect I’ll be the cheese standing alone on this one, but I’m actually very fond of Onya’s unconventional materials look. It looks home-crafted, sure, but that’s the point—and it has a big impact. I’m a fan!

✨ The deliberations this week are meaningless because Ru’s not the one judging. They’re truly just there to give a gut-check about how the judges are feeling, but there’s no real difference between their thoughts and the ultimate ranking.

✨ Lexi making a SheDevilByNight reference … that’s mother.

✨ On an incredibly somber note, I’m devastated by the news that The Vivienne died over the weekend. The winner of RuPaul’s Drag Race UK’s inaugural season and a highlight of RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars 7—the first Drag Race UK queen to compete on the American series—Viv was an incredible entertainer and artist. Her excellence on the show gives us much to fondly remember her by, but it was also getting to know who she was behind the makeup that made her such a tremendous presence on Drag Race. The Vivienne, like the other Drag Race stars we’ve lost (Sahara Davenport, Chi Chi DeVayne, Cherry Valentine and Bandit), was taken from us far too soon. Such a tragic loss. We’ll miss you dearly, Viv.

The next episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race will air Friday, January 10, 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 month.