Welcome to RuPaul’s Drag Race Power Rankings! Every week, we’re debriefing the week’s new episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 18 to determine which queens are riding high, and which need she-mergency care. With half the cast now eliminated, let’s zoom out a bit from this particular week and look at the queens’ trajectories. Who’s best-positioned to win the crown at this point?

8. Athena Dion (last week: 5)—ELIMINATED

The second Ru announced the bottom two, I knew it was over for Athena. Say what you will about the mother of the House of Dion: she cares about her drag family more than anything. There’s no way she was going to really try to eliminate Juicy Love Dion. Her last move, kneeling and bringing Juicy close to affirm her love for her, felt like Athena’s version of stepping out of her daughter’s way. Granted, based on both this episode and the competition as a whole, I do think this was the right elimination decision. While Ru seems to have forgotten, Juicy does have two wins, while Athena’s one was mostly born of Rate-a-Queen strategy. If Juicy can get her groove back, she has a much better chance of going the distance than Athena did. Still, I’ll miss having Athena on the show. She brought both a motherly love and a strategic cunning that made her a compelling character. A future All Stars lock, I’d say, especially for a season format that favours strategic thinking.

7. Juicy Love Dion (last week: 7)

What a brutal couple of weeks for Juicy. First, she has to send Vita VonTesse Starr home. Then, her auntie Mia Starr is sent home. Now, she’s made to lip sync against her drag (grand)mother. All while Ru has—unintentionally, I would hope—triggered Juicy’s anxieties about her addiction recovery with her question about who Juicy is. The context that Athena helped Juicy get clean added a whole extra, heartbreaking dimension to this week’s bottom two, and I’m honestly very impressed Juicy held it together until the end and was able to perform. My hope is that, like young Ru fave Adore Delano before her, Juicy can shake off this slump and get her groove back, but I imagine it’ll be quite tough without her drag family there to support her.

6. Discord Addams (last week: 4)

I can’t quite parse out how the judges feel about Discord. It seems like Ru really likes her, while the others aren’t sold, and Ru doesn’t like her so much that he’s willing to flout their opinions. (Which, as we’ve seen in the past, he will! Spankie Jackzon won Down Under Season 2 with the worst runway package of a winner ever basically just because Ru liked her!) She definitely got generous praise this week for overcoming her typical struggles with movement, but she was probably closest to the bottom two of anyone besides the Dions. Judging by the preview for next week’s episode, some of the other queens think it actually should’ve been her who went home. I thought Discord’s biggest problem this week was her runway, which was just so strange—and not in an interesting way! I felt like her runway narration didn’t do nearly enough to explain what it was she was actually wearing. I’ll say this for Discord: even the times when I haven’t liked her looks in the past, I’ve understood what she was going for. This week, I’m not even sure she did. Oh well. At least she’s got Ru in her corner.

5. Darlene Mitchell (last week: 6)

I’m worried about the amount of time Darlene has left to regain her momentum in this competition—and if she might be closer to elimination than I’ve expected. True, there are five episodes left until the finale. And I’ll admit, I didn’t worry that much about Darlene screwing up the Snatch Game last week at the moment. But now that she’s also just been called safe for what was a pretty solid canine performance in the Rusical, especially in a week where two queens got called up for positive-but-mixed critiques, I’m wondering if Ru has just lost interest in Darlene. Was the political advertisements challenge actually Ru’s moment of shifting his focus to Myki Meeks instead? And say what you will about the “he loves me, he loves me not” thing Ru has going on with Discord Addams—at least he still seems invested in her! I do still think we lose Kenya Pleaser before Darlene, but I could easily see her being next out after that.

4. Nini Coco (last week: 1)

What a genuinely terrible episode in terms of the edit for Nini. Nini needlessly drags people for no reason! Nini overthinks everything! Nini drives her fellow competitors nuts with her indecision—and this isn’t the first time! Devastating for her chances of winning this competition, I’d say. You don’t edit a queen like this, especially after a moment of triumph like she had in Snatch Game, if you are taking her seriously as a contender. Nini was fine in the Rusical and typically strong on the runway (although I’ll admit, I liked the technique of her look more than I liked the look itself), but I think that’s hardly the point this week. If Nini looked like one of the strongest contenders for the crown last week, I think she now looks like a losing finalist; maybe even the last queen cut before the endgame.

3. Kenya Pleaser (last week: 8)

It feels like Kenya, even when she’s slaying, can’t quite get an unconditionally positive critique from the judges. She was pitch-perfect in the role of Grace Gautier, the emcee for the ball, and brought a real authenticity to the ball scenes that might’ve otherwise come off too Rusical-ized. Jamal Sims dinged her for lip sync struggles, but from my perspective, she didn’t really mess up—certainly not at the level we saw in her talent show, for instance. But I also find it problematic that, since Michelle Visage gave her critique, the only litmus test the show is seemingly using for Kenya’s success is tightness of a lip sync. Considering literally everything else, she was great! And she looked gorgeous on the runway, though I preferred her top half (including a genuinely stunning mug and hair) to the unresolved skirt. She deserved to be clearly in contention for the win, instead of floating in a critiqued-but-confusing middle ground.

2. Myki Meeks (last week: 3)

After her opening number, I was thinking Myki was sailing to her second maxi-challenge win. After her closing number … I understand why she didn’t get it. Make no mistake, she was very good in the Rusical, with by far the strongest voice in the cast. I assumed, like Plasma playing the Maria role in the Sound of Music-inspired Rusical two years ago, “Fannie” would be more prominent in the narrative. But she basically disappeared for the entirety of the Rusical until coming back to close the show, in a number that did not play to her strengths in the same way as the opening. Structured differently, with the ballad at the end and having her involved in more of the other numbers, this easily could’ve been Myki’s victory. As it stood, though, I thought the choice of actual winner was more than fair.

1. Jane Don’t (last week: 2)

Honestly, we may be overthinking this. Jane may just simply be unstoppable. Sometimes the obvious choice is the right one! Bianca Del Rio won Season 6 without so much as breaking a sweat. And we are in an era of the various Drag Race franchises crowning “never placed below the top” winners, a trend that started with Keiona on Drag Race France Season 2 and has since included Lemon in Canada vs. The World and Drag Sethlas in España All Stars. It makes sense that the flagship franchise would eventually have one as well. Is that level of dominance boring? To be honest, it doesn’t engage me the same way a Rudemption story (Kylie Sonique Love on All Stars 6) or a story with peaks and valleys (Symone on Season 13) does. But if Jane can actually pull it off, I’ll be the first one standing up to applaud. She is fucking good at Drag Race, and that deserves all the plaudits in the world.