‘Canada’s Drag Race All Stars’ premiere recap: I need to talk to a slay person

Forget Canada vs. The World—Canada’s Drag Race is back with its own All Stars.

Before we dive into the Canada All Stars season premiere, let’s flash back a bit to how we got here. When Drag Race began expanding internationally in a significant way, the desire to see queens from different franchises battle grew quickly. RuPaul’s Drag Race UK vs. The World was the first remedy to that desire, although it was an imperfect one. The fact that it wasn’t a truly international season—rather, one hosted by a single country—led to an assumed bias for the host country’s queens in the competition. This got particularly contentious when Tia Kofi beat out Marina Summers in the show’s second season. (Notably, the third season saw a non-UK queen win out, and was probably the best-received season of the spin-off so far.)

Canada’s Drag Race adopted the vs. The World format, even charging forward with a second season after Global All Stars was announced (a decision that surprised me at the time), and Drag Race España had greenlit its own All Stars. As more and more international returning queens seasons were announced—France getting an All Stars as well, while Down Under got a vs. The World and both Philippines and Mexico went for new, ethnicity-specific Royale variants—the question remained as to how Canada’s Drag Race would move forward. The second vs. The World cast had not exactly been the most international, and more and more CDR seasons meant more and more queens chomping at the bit for another chance at the crown.

And so we arrive at Canada’s Drag Race All Stars, with eight veterans of the program returning for Round 2—or Round 3 in Pythia’s case, as she comes home after a strong but cut short run on the aforementioned Global All Stars. But perhaps not quite ready to shed the vestiges of vs. The World, this season also features RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 12’s Jackie Cox, a Canadian by birth who, in an alternate world where she was cast a season before Brooke Lynn Hytes, might’ve been the host of this very program.

She and Pythia make for a couple of gaggy casting choices—ones that immediately put the other queens on edge. Make no mistake: this is a cutthroat group of girls, and they’re hungry for the win. As we’ll see by episode’s end, they’re not inclined to let a RuGirl get in their way of $100,000.

After a cute fake-out intro with our new judges—Canada’s Drag Race Season 1 vets Priyanka and Jimbo—pretending to be contestants, we meet the queens actually competing. Joining Pythia and Jackie are Season 1 Porkchop Juice Boxx, Season 3 runner-up Jada Shada Hudson (alerting any horny ghosts to her presence), Season 4 finalists Aurora Matrix and Nearah Nuff, Season 5 runner-up Makayla Couture and early-out Tiffany Ann Co. and Season 6 finalist and fan favourite Sami Landri. Nearah gets my vote for best entrance back into the werk room: “I heard you ordered a fucking bitch.” I missed her rampant antagonism! I love a villain who can back it up in a lip sync.

Already, you can see the looks have elevated significantly. Jada, Aurora and Tiffany all get my votes for strong entrance looks, while Makayla’s might be the best of the bunch. Although it hasn’t been that long since we’ve seen Makayla, throughout this episode she demonstrates that she’s grown a lot from her season. I do get the sense that Canada’s Drag Race still has a lot invested in her prom-queen-to-crowned-queen narrative; might she be our frontrunner for the crown? She’s got stiff competition all around her, particularly from Sami, who took the critiques from Season 6 and immediately applied them. If Sami’s original run was mostly about her goofing around, this one is serious business.

Everyone among these seven, from former finalists to first-out Juice, is taking this quite seriously—which is why their reaction to the RuGirls is so interesting. If Jackie is greeted with a kind of muted skepticism (Jada in particular openly questions her presence in confessional), then they greet Pythia with a mix of fear and frustration, almost to the point of anger. The perpetually sweet Aurora taking a swipe at her entrance look in confessional feels emblematic of this: while they can love and respect Pythia, she’s a huge threat coming into this competition. It’s natural to be wary of what her being there means for them.

It takes very little time for the queens to start scheming. Makayla posits an alliance to her Season 5 sister Tiffany, but later admits that’s just a smokescreen for the real alliance she wants with Pythia. (Perhaps she’s thinking: if you can’t beat her, join her!) Pythia, meanwhile, also forges a deal with Sami and Nearah, while Nearah and Aurora pledge to stick together as Season 4 sisters. These bonds are notable because, for about half of this cast, they’ve never dealt with the Golden Beaver twist. (The four who haven’t are Jackie, Jada, Juice and Pythia.) CDR’s signature twist, which gives the winning queen the opportunity to save one of the bottom three, debuted in Season 4, and later made its way onto Canada vs. The World Season 2—not to mention UK vs. The World Season 3 as the Chippy Tea. It’s quite likely to return here, so alliances are the name of the game.

The first maxi-challenge is the “Miss CUNT-intental Pageant,” featuring three categories: swimsuit, talent and elegant evening wear. The way this works out in practice is basically merging the little dance numbers they used to do at the start of ball challenges, an abbreviated talent show and a runway. It’s cute new branding on familiar elements, and it comes with one truly major change: lip syncing is banned in the talent portion. This is something fans have been clamouring for from the American series, and while it is fun to see what other talents the queens have … by the end, I’m afraid to say I do think there’s a reason the lip sync numbers haven’t been banned internationally yet.

The swimsuit portion involves a choreographed dance to RuPaul’s song “Charisma, Uniqueness, Nerve & Talent,” and it’s okay! No one totally flops, and Jada and Aurora in particular both look gorgeous. I love Pythia’s muscle suit look, too—feels like a perfectly Pythia way to address the prompt. If anyone struggles here, it’s Juice, who just seems way too in her head.

For the talent show, we get a couple of cultural dance numbers from Jada, Aurora and Pythia, the latter of whom adds to her act by balancing a bottle on her head and carrying a table with her teeth. It’s incredibly gaggy! Also kinda gaggy is Tiffany’s floating lightsaber routine, while Sami’s clogging act is hilarious and perfectly Sami. Jackie and Makayla both go for cabaret-style acts, and while Jackie sounds good on her original song about tariffs, Makayla gets more praise from her fellow queens for doing something unexpected. The two strangest acts are Juice dead-lifting a man named Jake—Jake is cute, hi Jake!—and Nearah doing a cup-stacking act. My major criticism of both is that they’re just not very draggy. If we’re not going to do lip sync acts, we still have to find ways to bring a true drag spirit to these talents. These two fail the most at that aspect.

Onto the runway, where absolute Ru bop “Queendom” plays, and the best looks of the night are Pythia’s Hera-inspired peacock gown, Aurora’s empress robe reveal and Sami’s elevated leopard print look. A couple queens suffer for going with good, but expected, looks, including Makayla and especially Jackie. While I understand wanting to call back to her genie look from Season 12, it can’t help but feel like Jackie is stuck in that same mode from six years ago, rather than really presenting something new. If I’m going to knock her for that, though, then I really have to knock Juice for using a revamped look from her planned package for Season 1.

Overall, Juice feels like she’s not ready to move past Season 1. Seeing that Jimbo and Priyanka are her judges makes her spiral, and Brooke Lynn has to have a come-to-Jesus moment with her in critiques, telling her that she’s not letting herself enjoy the experience. I get that being the first-ever queen eliminated from this franchise can build up expectations in your head in a big way, but unless Juice can snap out of it, I don’t see her making it very far.

The top three are Aurora, Pythia and Sami, while the bottom three are Nearah, Jackie and Juice. Honestly, no complaints from me on these—Jada and Makayla are both generally strong in the pageant, and while Tiffany is definitely getting graded on a curve a bit, I do think she overperformed expectations in a way Jackie did not. But before the queens can head backstage, Brooke Lynn pulls out the big twist of All Stars: who the Golden Beaver saves is not chosen by the challenge winner. Instead, it is decided by group vote. (While the fact of what happens if there’s a tie does not come up, I have to imagine the winner would have the deciding vote in that case.)

This instantly reverses everyone’s strategic thinking: individual alliances aren’t going to work as well. You need the numbers, which means you need everyone. Moreover, it allows for a lot of room for keeping in shields ahead of you: queens who are more likely to wind up in the bottom again. That’s explicitly why Makayla wants to save Juice, for instance.

For Nearah, on the other hand, it makes her apparently blow a gasket.

Here’s why you cast Nearah Nuff on your television program: she will stew in the corner, then suddenly make grand threats to the other two queens in the bottom that she will “rip you to shreds” in the lip sync, declare herself the Lip Sync Assassin of Canada’s Drag Race and then blow up all her alliances in a way that infuriates her allies so much that none of them vote to save her. And then she’ll insult Juice right before they might have to lip sync against each other just for the hell of it. She is TV. She is drama. She is, to put it mildly, e-nuff.

The queens vote, and it is, of course, terrible news for Nearah. She gets not one vote to save, while we see Makayla and Aurora vote to save Juice, and Jada and Sami (who is pissed at Nearah) vote to save Jackie. We don’t see Tiffany or Pythia’s votes—though we do see that Pythia is also absolutely furious with Nearah—but the final count makes clear that both of them voted to save Juice. She gets the Golden Beaver, and suddenly poor Jackie is up against the furious tornado that is Nearah Nuff.

Also, Pythia wins! She gets $10,000. Hilariously, her victory feels almost like a footnote thanks to this format—it’s great to see her come out on top, but all eyes are on the voting results and lip sync at this point.

Nearah vs. Jackie is set to RAYE’s absolute bop “WHERE IS MY HUSBAND!”, a song I’m gagged Canada’s Drag Race got to first. I thought for sure this would be a Drag Race UK lip sync in this upcoming season. Jackie goes for comedy, which isn’t a bad strategy—do what your opponent will not, basically. Unfortunately, Nearah is unbelievably puss in this number, and it’s a perfect fit for the song. It’s a TKO, and the American goes home first.

Absolutely brutal that a fifth-placer on one of the strongest RuPaul’s Drag Race seasons ever is our Canada All Stars first out, but that should be a warning shot of sorts: this group came to play, and the new Golden Beaver format gives them plenty of room to do so. Woe to any queen—finalist, three-timer, American, what have you—who finds herself in the crosshairs, because this group will not hesitate to take the shot.

Untucking our final thoughts

✨ Jada going from being skeptical of Jackie’s presence to having a crush on her—relatable!

✨ Thank god the judges are bringing back the telepathic nods this season. We’ve missed them!

✨ Kathy Griffin is our guest judge for this premiere, and like Paula Abdul in the Season 6 opener, she gets a chance to come in and bond with the queens a bit in the werk room. Having grown up on Kathy’s Bravo presence, particularly her stand-up specials, seeing her recreate her “I need to talk to a gay person” meme from My Life on the D-List is nothing short of delightful.

✨ Jackie opens up to the other queens about being nervous about the Trump administration in the U.S. as a green card holder. She says that while she’s thought about moving back to Canada, spending more than six months outside the U.S. would cause her to lose her working capability in America, and with family still there, that’s not really an option for her. It’s pretty heartbreaking to hear, and honestly makes her being the first boot sting even more.

✨ Pythia has made every part of her runway package for this season. That is, of course, incredibly rare these days, and it makes me very excited to see what else she has to offer.

✨ JUICE: “No panic attack today!”

PRIYANKA: “Not yeeeeet!”

✨ Jada not realizing she’s been dragging a stool out with her from Mini-Untucked had me cracking up laughing. God, I’ve missed the Turn-Up Queen.

The next episode of Canada’s Drag Race All Stars will be available to stream on Thursday, July 16, 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.