‘Canada’s Drag Race’ Season 6, Episode 3 recap: Pick your drag poison

You could’ve given me 100 guesses as to what would open this week’s episode of Canada’s Drag Race, and I would never have gotten to “a black screen telling us a blackout occurred six minutes after Paolo Perfección left the werk room after her elimination.” Because: what? Leave it to CDR: they’re always innovating, including in how to approach power outages.

“As she left, girl, she took the energy, too!” Dulce says as the queens return to the werk room the following week to finally see Paolo’s mirror message and get the third episode started. While it’s true that Paolo was a bright light, I didn’t expect her to literally take the light with her! The mourning of Paolo’s elimination online has been vast, but like Canada’s Drag Race picking up filming after the blackout, we too must find a way to move on. Luckily, we have 11 other talented queens to entertain us—and this week, they get thrown a massive curveball when it comes to the maxi challenge. Or should I say: maxi challenges.

Yes, in a first that I can recall on Drag Race, Brooke Lynn Hytes presents the queens a choice in challenge this week: would they rather complete a design challenge, or play the Snatch Game? The choice is framed between two of the notoriously harder tasks in the Drag Race format, although it’s worth noting that in a regular US season, there are multiple design challenges, including the final round of a ball. There’s only one Snatch Game, and it has sent some real heavy-hitter queens home over the years. (A better parallel for Snatch Game is probably the Rusical.) 

This makes me assume that queens will be avoiding Snatch Game like the plague when it comes to picking their poison. (Literally, in this case: the queens must pick bottles of either purple liquid for Snatch Game or green for a design challenge.) But no, in fact, the choices are basically even across the board—to the point that only one queen doesn’t get a choice. PM, who feels snubbed by her sister Hazel not picking her to choose after her, gets stuck with a design challenge. Mya Foxx, meanwhile, is last to pick, and gets to choose whichever she likes. (I had hoped for a moment that she might be made to do both, but maybe that’s too twisted even for CDR.)

Snatch Game is first up, with Mya joined by Sami Landri, Eboni La’Belle, Karamilk, Velma Jones and last week’s maxi-challenge winner, Saltina Shaker. Their character choices range from the political (Justin Trudeau for Velma, Marjorie Taylor Greene for Sami), to the new for Drag Race (Albert Einstein for Saltina, Keke Palmer for Eboni), to the repeats (Flavor Flav for Karamilk, Long Island Medium star Theresa Caputo for Mya). One thing I will happily celebrate: all real people! Almost all people with video material that can be used for comparison! This is the heart of Snatch Game, and I appreciate the return to norms.

All in all, it’s a fairly low-key Snatch Game—not a disaster, but not stellar. Mya stands out as the one most effectively using the format of the game, grabbing every opportunity she can to tell a joke and keeping the medium humour going. It’s a funny bit! I actually like her take a bit better than Phi Phi O’Hara’s in All Stars 2, which mostly focused on the idea that Theresa was a charlatan. Mya instead uses her connection to the spirit world to drag Paolo in absentia, plus Season 4 fan favourite Melinda Verga. It’s fun! Not reinventing the wheel, but a solid Snatch Game.

Another queen repeating a character falters: Karamilk’s Flavor Flav falls far short of Shea Couleé’s on All Stars 5. Shea’s take on Flav has long been relegated as an undeserving winning performance, since fans have always been fond of Jujubee’s Eartha Kitt. I hope seeing Karamilk’s uninspired take, all about Flav’s clock and with no inventiveness, puts more respect on Shea’s performance in retrospect. Hers was inventive, unique, funny—all the things Karamilk’s is not.

Joining Karamilk in the bottom two is Velma as Trudeau, which is an exemplary case of overpreparing for Snatch Game. Velma has so many bits that she feels the need to get through that she fails to actually engage with what’s happening in the game. She attempts to bulldoze through with unfunny gags, and Velma’s performance never gets off the ground. Really disappointing work from a queen who has otherwise been on fire in this competition—and as we’ll see shortly, it comes at a terrible time.

The design challenge queens—Hazel, Van Goth, Star Doll, Dulce and the unwilling PM—get to watch Snatch Game, but otherwise spend their time quietly working in the werk room on their Scene Stealer category presentations. The one most obviously in trouble is PM, who prepares a “frontless dress” (what a concept!) in a material with no give. They nearly get themselves stuck in a headpiece! They crack under the pressure a bit, and I do feel for them as the literal only queen not to get their choice of challenge. But still, you’d have hoped they’d be better prepared for a design challenge coming into Drag Race.

Something interesting happens between the Snatch Game and the runway, though: the queens get strategic. Much has been made over time of the potential for alliances and strategic play on Drag Race, but very little of it has come to fruition. Sure, cliques have made their way to the end together (everyone say “Rolaskatox” together), and the Golden Beaver has given us flashes of strategic play in recent Canada’s Drag Race seasons. But this is not Survivor or Big Brother, and the talk of strategy has always been secondary to the actual art of drag. In many ways, that’s how it should be on Drag Race.

But from the jump, this group has seemed more willing to lean into alliances, especially with the Golden Beaver in play for another season. This week, we learn that Van and Eboni have made multiple side alliances that they have no allegiance to—and are actually in a final two themselves, called the Scissor Sisters. And unlike other alliances that made no strategic plays (hello, Twinners from All Stars 7), they immediately get to work on a plan: targeting Velma this week. Basically, Velma’s faltering in Snatch Game means that she will likely be up for elimination, and the winners not saving her with the Golden Beaver might make her vulnerable for a surprisingly early exit.

Eboni is the primary one pushing this, even going to Mya (at this point the likely Snatch Game winner) to plant the seed. Surprisingly, Mya says she’s already been thinking about this, and even before we hit the runway, it’s looking bad for Velma.

The Scene Stealer designed garments are mostly just okay—if you couldn’t already tell, I don’t think a design challenge was the right counterbalance to Snatch Game for dueling maxi-challenges—but Van really turns out something spectacular. Her look is a head-to-toe look; not just a dress, but a whole concept. She looks stunning, and has no less than Brooke Lynn wanting to wear her garment. She wins the design challenge, and as expected, Mya takes the win for Snatch Game.

Karamilk and Velma are joined in the bottom by Star, whose mermaid gown has a lot going on with the appliqués, and PM, whose “confused beauty realness” is indeed confused. PM’s look is the worst of the lot by far, while Star’s is more misguided. But instead of lip syncing against each other, they’ll be pleading their cases: Brooke Lynn reveals that there are two Golden Beavers this week, one for Mya and one for Van. Each queen gets to save one of the bottom two from their maxi-challenge—meaning Mya can only save Karamilk or Velma, while Van can only save PM or Star.

Mini-Untucked sees lots of tears—“There’s no challenge win for the person who sheds the most tears,” Van says in a confessional—and passionate cases from the bottom four in terms of who should be saved. By the looks of things, it’s bad news for Velma: Karamilk is a friend of Mya’s, and while she says she doesn’t want to be saved just because of their friendship, Karamilk getting the Beaver gets a lot of support from the other queens as well. (Including, interestingly, Velma’s sister Saltina, whose betrayal upsets Velma in confessional.) Meanwhile, the other group seems in agreement that Star was not the worst, and thus should receive the Beaver. Plus, as Star notes in her confessional, she and Van have an alliance with Hazel! This should be a no-brainer.

The first real signal of trouble, though, comes when Van admits in private that she feels for PM being the only one forced to do a challenge they didn’t want to. Plus, as we know, that alliance doesn’t matter to Van—but surely Van won’t turn against it needlessly this early. Not for PM, whom she has no allegiance to and who performed worst in the challenge … right?

The queens come back to the runway, and Mya kicks things off by saving Kar—wait, VELMA?! This is a shocker, for both us in the audience and the queens in the room. There was not even a hint that Mya might not save Karamilk, either before or after MIni-Untucked. I’m personally thrilled as a big fan of Velma’s, but I imagine Karamilk feels a great deal of whiplash in the moment. Mya bailing on the plan to target Velma comes out of nowhere, seems like a strategic misfire and I imagine her fellow queens are going to have a lot of questions for her. Meanwhile, Van chooses to save PM, a decision that is not as shocking in comparison, but may be even messier strategically. Not saving Star burns Van’s relationship with Hazel, and I imagine Hazel will be happy to tell the other queens that Van blew up their alliance. Suddenly, the Scissor Sisters’ plan to play the middle looks a lot harder to pull off. Poor Eboni!

Considering the bonkers circumstances, the lip sync could’ve felt like an afterthought—but it’s to Karamilk and Star’s credit that it’s an absolute banger instead. The two face off to Carly Rae Jepsen’s “Tonight I’m Getting Over You,” and they both bring the party. This is a remarkably evenly matched pairing, both bringing out stunts and dancing their asses off. Karamilk ultimately wins the lip sync, and I do agree, but as Brooke Lynn says, it’s a close one. Star is devastated by the decision, leading Brooke Lynn to get out of her seat to go comfort the young queen. After she composes herself, she sashays away, despite delivering what was probably only the fourth-worst performance of the week. Such is what happens when a plan goes awry.

Despite the just-okay challenge results, this is a barn-burner of an episode, one that keeps Canada’s Drag Race’s hot streak going. Seeing Mya and Van bail on the plan suddenly is shocking, and it actually makes me all the more excited to see the fallout next week. Strategy and Drag Race might not usually mix, but failed strategy mixes just fine—and stirs the pot for the rest of the season.

Untucking our final thoughts

✨ Sami explains in the werk room why she struggled to fight for the Beaver—she just didn’t feel she deserved it—but talks about how galvanized she is to win now. Her Snatch Game performance … doesn’t exactly sell me that she’s got a fire under her, but maybe it’s just a time-delayed fire!

✨ We learn this week that Van made some of Aurora Matrix’s looks on CDR Season 4! I love when the world of the seamstress queens gets made known to us—finding out that Suki Doll is as involved in other queens’ looks as she is really helped me grow a new respect for her, and an excitement to watch her kill it on Slaysian Royale.

✨ Eboni’s fake alliances include a Black queens’ alliance with Karamilk and a girls’ alliance with Velma. I wonder how Velma will react if she finds out Eboni was the main one pushing the target onto her this week?

✨ Canada’s Drag Race champion Icesis Couture is this week’s guest judge, and her Season 2 sister Pythia joins her for the challenges as well! They play Snatch Game as their All Stars Snatch Game characters, Donatella Versace and Zeus. Then, they come into the werk room to dispense advice to the queens competing in the design challenge. These two are among CDR’s most legendary alumni, and it’s a real treat to see them again. Glad to see there’s no real bad blood between Icesis and the show after the whole situation with her Canada vs. The World quit.

✨ Really good move to have Carson Kressley on the panel for this week. Not only is he always the best judge to have on hand for design challenges, but he’s also very familiar with Snatch Game at this point in his Drag Race judging tenure.

✨ CARSON: “What is the concept?”

STAR: “I really wanted to give, like, a star in the night sky, and a little bit of, like, Crazy Rich Gaysian. That’s very much my vibe.”

CARSON: “I would pick one of those!”

✨ Mya notes she’s the first east coast queen on Canada’s Drag Race to so much as win a challenge. And she won the Snatch Game at that! Good for her!

✨ I can’t possibly end this recap without spelling out one more time just how bonkers these Golden Beaver choices are. Van pisses a bunch of people off needlessly, and Mya keeps a big threat still in the game against nearly everyone’s advice. Unless this was just a deceptive edit, and we get a moment in next week’s episode showing something else went down, I don’t see how you can call all this anything but a blunder on both queens’ part. And I’m living for it. To quote Marie Kondo, “I love mess!”

The next episode of Canada’s Drag Race will be available to stream on Thursday, Dec. 11, at 9 p.m. EST on WOW Presents Plus in the U.S. and on Crave in Canada. You can subscribe to our drag newsletter, Wig!, for exclusive Drag Race content delivered straight to your inbox every month.