‘RuPaul’s Drag Race’ Season 18, Episode 3 recap: RDR Live again and again

Looking back, you can see some RuPaul’s Drag Race challenges that were loathed before they were loved. Few really looked forward to the Rusicals every season until “Madonna: The Unauthorized Rusical” proved how good they could be. All lip sync episodes were largely divisive until they settled into being reunion battles for the eliminated queens (or were better structured, like we see on Canada’s Drag Race with the Lip Sync Slay-Offs). Sometimes it just takes a challenge format some time to cook before we really grow to love it.

But we’ve just completed our fourth run of RDR Live, and reader? It’s not growing. We’re not loving it. The Saturday Night Live parody challenge has its moments, but is overall not a successful structure for queens to stand out. There are too many nothing parts that you cannot imagine someone turning into a winning performance, and the writing of the sketches is usually at bad-acting-challenge levels. Drag Race YouTuber JackFed put it well on Twitter: There are a lot of reasons why you can imagine production likes this challenge format, but unfortunately, we’re the ones stuck watching it.

Really, this challenge is won in role selection: Can you get one of the few decent characters that could help you shine? I think that’s why Athena Dion struggles so much with picking her part this week. We get a little bit of foreshadowing in the cold open, with Briar Blush irritating Athena as they de-drag from last week’s challenge. Briar and Athena have a curious relationship (albeit one that seems quite close post-show), and I think Briar’s little drags of Athena are her sign of respect and love. But Athena, at least in this moment, does not need that. She just narrowly avoided the bottom two, and here’s someone seemingly purposefully picking at her.

By and large, the role selection largely proceeds without issue. Kenya Pleaser, Vita VonTesse Starr and Nini Coco get the Turner Classic Movies parody “Lipstick Lovers”; Briar and Ciara Myst are QNN News Update co-anchors; Darlene Mitchell, Mandy Mango, Discord Addams and Mia Starr make up the cold open sketch and Myki Meeks and a nervous Juicy Love Dion take “Young Michelle,” a sketch about Michelle Visage’s origin story. (More on the younger Dion in a minute.) The last two roles open are a scene-stealing mom part in QNN News Update, and the host of the show. Athena and Jane Don’t both want the mom part, but Athena’s reputation as a hostess precedes her. The problem is that this year’s host role includes being bothered by an “inner saboteur”—which just so happens to be the second character for QNN News Update: Anchor #2, aka Briar.

Briar—once again out of what I think is true affection for Athena—wants to work together very badly. Athena would very much like not to do that. But this is a two-versus-one battle, as Jane’s eye is on the plum mom role prize. When Briar makes the argument that Athena getting disco like she wanted last week didn’t pan out, and maybe it would be better to lean into what she doesn’t initially want, Jane is more than happy to hop on the bandwagon. “Wake that up!” Jane says. “Shake that table!”

Athena, for her part, feels like she’s constantly being pushed into having to prove herself. “Turn this straw into gold, Athena!” she says in confessional. “Show us you’re magical!” Ultimately, she acquiesces, and the hostess with the mostest follows in the footsteps of previous RDR hosts like Kandy Muse and Mirage.

At least the elder Dion gets something she’s comfortable with; Juicy, meanwhile, is like a deer in headlights from the jump. She has no acting or comedy experience, and is very worried about how this challenge will go. But Myki, her scene partner who needs her to do well for her own sake, does a really nice job helping to coach Juicy. They go through the references and jokes in their segment together, and they work on Juicy’s accent to not make it exactly Michelle, but close enough in a distinctly Juicy way. By the time we actually get to RDR Live, Juicy turns in a quite solid performance. It’s not the best of the week, necessarily, but there’s a surprise factor in seeing her do as well as she does.

“Young Michelle,” thanks to Juicy and Myki’s efforts, is one of the better sketches of RDR Live. My personal favourite is Lipstick Lovers, a parody of an old movie where Sapphic themes weren’t permitted in film, so the filmmakers had to use the metaphor of lipsticks falling for a “Butch”—the character’s name, of course. It’s a more clever sketch than I expect of RDR Live, and Nini and Kenya really kill their parts. Unfortunately, Vita is basically DOA as Butch, with one-note deliveries throughout that keep the rising tide from lifting all boats.

The sketch is still worlds better than the opening butter-churning sketch. Darlene’s the only one who’s really funny here, getting a lot of great physical comedy in and being able to lean into her favoured white trash character. Discord and Mia are relegated to wooden, uninteresting commentator parts, while Mandy is stuck between a rock and a hard place with her Amish churning competitor character. She goes way too over-the-top with it—I never thought I’d see an Amish butter-churner titty-fuck her churning stick—but going subtle would also not have worked. See, this is what I mean about this challenge being won or lost in role selection: Mandy has no real way to win in this part.

The host’s monologue is fine enough, but Briar doesn’t take her inner saboteur part up to 11 the way she needs to. Athena, for all her worries about the role and working with Briar, looks a lot better by comparison. But where Briar really falls apart this week is in the QNN News Update. This segment is always the worst part of RDR Live, with none of the strong punchlines or wit that go into what it is parodying, Weekend Update. Honestly, even saying it’s parodying Weekend Update feels wrong. It’s just a bad Weekend Update. Ciara at least gets the benefit of interacting with the scene-stealing Jane as a too-eager PFLAG mom, but Briar is just stuck badly reciting bad material.

The next day, as the queens prepare for an Animal Attraction runway, Jane has a … strange reaction to doing well. She fears that she’s putting too much of a target on her back by doing too well, even saying she feels “guilty.” I am confused by this reaction. It’s a terrible look, but I almost wonder if it’s about something bigger than just the other queens’ reactions. Lord knows the fandom loves to turn on a queen who gets too much shine too early; maybe that’s what she’s actually saying, but it’s too meta to say that on the show? For what it’s worth, Jane is sticking to the story of it just being a weird moment of fearing losing friends on Twitter. At least it gives Briar and Juicy a nice moment comforting her.

One thing I didn’t mention earlier, but is now relevant, is that Myki came out of filming hers and Juicy’s scene thinking she would be in the top. Juicy herself thinks this, too! So it’s a gag when, for no reason, Ru calls just a handful of queens safe first, then calls a second group of queens safe, this one including Myki. They give Myki just enough hope that she might be in the top before snatching it away. A nasty troll! But ultimately a quite funny one, I must admit.

Our tops this week are Darlene, Jane (much to her chagrin, I guess?) and Juicy. Going into critiques, I’m assuming Darlene wins this for the biggest performance of the three, but Ru knocks her cow hooves on her Animal Attraction runway look for being flats. It feels nitpicky, but the fact that it’s included is a good sign that Ru’s looking for reasons to give someone else the win. Jane does get pretty much unanimous praise—could it be her? Would actually winning again inspire a full-scale panic attack?

Luckily, Jane needs not worry: This is Juicy’s week. The judges are very impressed with her work in “Young Michelle,” and are also (rightfully) in love with her pangolin runway look. She earns an unexpected victory, one that she herself admits she didn’t see coming. I personally might’ve gone Darlene here, but I like that Juicy gets this vote of confidence on a challenge she did not think she would do well in. That kind of boost early in the competition can really give a queen the fire she needs to pick it up for the rest of the season. Plus, Darlene simply managing to land in the top after her low placement last week is Rudemption enough for now.

Vita gets critiques for her flat delivery in the challenge, but this is pretty clearly a Briar-Mandy bottom two. Briar was the actual worst this week, and for whatever reason, Mandy is just not the judges’ flavour of choice. Mandy once again tears up the lip sync, and Briar actually fumbles it a bit. She doesn’t really know the words, and her mask from her swan runway look blocks her vision, so she accidentally runs into Mandy. For a second, I fear that Briar is going home. But despite delivering a performance even she doesn’t think was the winning one in the lip sync, she shantays, and Mandy sashays away.

Every so often, there’s a queen that the show just can’t seem to gel with. Mandy was definitely that queen this season. I’m bummed to see such a sweet queen go so soon, but I also don’t think she was ever going to really win the panel over. With her out of the way after occupying one of the bottom two slots in the first three weeks, it’ll be interesting to see who starts to falter now. We’ll get a chance to see the queens under new pressure next week, as they team up for a design challenge in duos. A second design challenge this early? What is this, Canada’s Drag Race Season 6? (I miss her already.)

Untucking our final thoughts

✨ Kenya appreciates what an IJBOL queen Mia is, shouting her out for always making her smile with her laughter. Cute moment! Honestly the only moment of focus Mia gets this whole episode!

✨ Vita says “Girl, this is Season 30,” once again referencing the maturity of the cast. And I will once again say: Drag Race, we hear you, we promise. Thank you for casting more queens over 30. We get it.

✨ Ru Rule #53: “In comedy, timing is everything. Without it, you’re just another queen talking too much.” Mmmkay! (Can you tell I kinda hate these?)

✨ When first pulling out her script, Kenya exclaims, “My libretto is so large!” I love her so much.

✨ Saturday Night Live’s Sarah Sherman is our guest judge this week, and she joins Ru in the werk room for the walkthrough. I will keep my opinions on modern SNL to myself, to spare you all a rant, but I generally like Sarah and think she brings the right energy to her guest appearance. She’s the one who finally unlocks for Juicy that her role is a Michelle homage, which allows Myki’s coaching to take root. I could’ve done without Sarah’s puppet on the main stage, though.

✨ During role selection, Ciara says the host role is one where “you either succeed or you flop.” Accordingly, the edit shows Onya Nurve and Mirage, in that order. I laughed!

✨ Ru finally brings up Discord’s walk to her, saying that it’s wildly entertaining. “Historians will look back on that runway walk, and they will wonder: What was wrong with her?” he jokes. Discord, while confused, doesn’t push back, and goes along with Ru’s love of it. Later on the runway, you can tell she even amps it up for Ru’s pleasure. Good on Discord for rolling with the punches!

✨ Myki being a theatre queen who cries over being able to do RDR Live, then being faked out by a double save call just to give her hope that she’s in the top … shades of Jan happening here.

✨ During RDR Live, Ru lip syncs his song “The Queendom.” It’s a cute setup, what with him at the mic and a Pit Crew band, but ultimately it’s the same thing as all of Ru’s performances: a lot of swaying back and forth. However, the song selection gives me the opportunity to once again plug Brigiding and Viñas Deluxe’s excellent lip sync of it on Slaysian Royale. It’s one of the best lip syncs of 2025!

✨ Ciara has worked for the Secret Service? And no one has a follow-up question?

✨ Vita looks wild with clown white base on for her zebra runway makeup, inspiring someone in the room to yell “White face?!” Nini picks up on this for a great joke: “Vita! My culture is not a costume!”

✨ You gotta imagine producers thought about switching out the lip sync song when they realized Kenya, literal Lizzo impersonator, was going to be safe.

The next episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race will air Friday, January 23, 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.