‘Canada’s Drag Race’ Season 3 premiere recap: up to the North we go again

Ah, Canada’s Drag Race. Having returned to us earlier than expected—likely to make way for Canada’s Drag Race: Canada vs. The World later this year—the scrappy northern sister of the primary Drag Race franchise has a lot to prove. While I was a massive, vocal fan of Canada’s Drag Race’s second season, airing alongside the (vastly inferior but admittedly more popular) RuPaul’s Drag Race UK Season 3 made it difficult for the season to break into the discourse. And when there are approximately eight billion Drag Race seasons airing each year, making an impression counts.

I have a feeling this season of CDR will face a similar issue, with its premiere likely to be eclipsed by the final weeks of RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars 7. That season has been a buzzy triumph for Drag Race, reuniting eight former winners and having them compete in a non-elimination format that has emphasized good vibes and positive critiques above all else. Overwhelmingly, the response to this format has been positive; AS7 queen Trinity the Tuck even suggested that Drag Race as a whole adopt the non-elimination style moving forward.

This has underlined an already existing tension this year, one that was most starkly drawn when RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 14 was airing against UK vs. The World. In the United States, you had a season with an enormously popular cast—one that it could barely stand to let go of, as the momentum of the season repeatedly stopped-and-started across multiple non-elimination weeks. Meanwhile, the first-ever international All Stars battle was bitterly divisive, as strategy was rewarded over drag excellence when queens eliminated their biggest competition at every turn. While acknowledging that Season 14 was better by almost every real metric, I had to admit that part of me missed the competitive aspect of Drag Race, and appreciated that UK vs. The World, for better or worse, embraced it.

So this conflict arises again with All Stars 7, a gorgeously produced season that has sacrificed peaks and valleys for consistency and good times, and Canada’s Drag Race Season 3. While we’re just a premiere episode in, I can already sense the conflict will be in high supply this season, while the critiques are back in full force. (How refreshing to hear Drag Race judges offer negative criticism once again!) CDR is the gritty David to AS7’s well-funded Goliath, and while both can exist in their own lanes, I can’t help but feel like CDR deserves more of the All Stars series’ shine.

This premiere is a breath of fresh air not just for its critiques, but for the rougher edges that CDR embraces. These 12 queens are an excited, energetic cast, ready for the next phases of their drag careers, far away from reaching the veteran status of All Stars competitors. We’ve got a great geographic mix of queens this season as well, both in home countries—Halal Bae is Egyptian-born, while Jada Shada Hudson is from Barbados—as well as current cities and provinces. Chelazon Leroux makes herstory as our first Saskatoon queen, while we also meet Quebecois queens Lady Boom Boom and Gisèle Lullaby.

This week’s mini- and maxi-challenges are inherently related: first, the queens must walk the runway in streetwear looks that relate to their hometowns. Bombae, an Indian queen currently living in Toronto (and Halal’s drag daughter!), wins with a puffy jacket dress that she reveals into a party look, and it’s a well-deserved victory. She gets $2,500—courtesy of the Werq the World Tour, no less—and makes the clear first impression on the judges’ panel. Notably, Brooke Lynn Hytes has led the judging to focus more and more on runway and fashion across Canada’s Drag Race’s first two seasons, so starting strong in a look challenge is a great first step.

But no matter how much Bombae loves that look, she’ll have to part with it quickly: the maxi-challenge is to take the streetwear outfit the queens just wore and fashion it into a runway-ready garment. This is a classic Project Runway task—the first proper Season 2 challenge saw the designers take their own clothes and turn them into new looks—but it’s far more of a task when the looks are already designed garments for drag queens. How do you take the fabric of something that’s meant to deliver one character, aesthetic, impression, etc. and transform it entirely?

Luckily for the queens, the judges give them a pretty big cheat: they’re allowed to use additional fabric from the fabric wall. I must cast Canada’s Drag Race a pretty hearty disappointed glance for this, because without limitation, it basically allows the queens to only use their given material as an accent. That’s what queens like Vivian Vanderpuss and Miss Fiercalicious do with their garments, to varying effect: Vivian wisely only uses the green of her streetwear look as a pop of colour, while Fierce effectively fully discards her original garment. The judging of this is inconsistent at best, which makes this challenge a bit less exciting than originally pitched.

On the runway, the queens walk to the tune of RuPaul’s absolute banger, “Just What They Want.” Colour me surprised Ru gave this song to Canada’s Drag Race! I would’ve bet good money it was being saved for the Season 15 runway. But the American series’ loss is Canada’s gain, as it proves a great runway theme right out of the box. There’s something so appropriate about Ru singing “Boom, check it, boom, we opening the doors” for this premiere.

Among the top-scoring queens this week, Boom Boom and Jada go with looks primarily rendered in new fabrics, using their original fabrics as accents. Ultimately, I think they both benefit from this approach: Jada has a loud, black-and-white fabric that expertly contrasts with a simpler red. She looks stunning, and even has a moment in which she’s brought to tears over how beautiful she feels. “You better cry ’cause you feel pretty! I do that every morning!” Brooke Lynn Hytes says, empathizing with her fellow Canadian queen.

Boom Boom is ultimately the winner of the challenge, however, and I totally understand why. She takes a Y2K-inspired, Angelyne-esque streetwear look—complete with visible panties—and turns it into a sharp, dark, dramatic runway garment. How she manages to shape her shoulders alone is worthy of praise; her use of pink to contrast against her new black fabrics is all the more impressive. Granted, she doesn’t use much of the original look, but the judges actually cite that as a positive: she comes out in a silhouette and aesthetic so drastically different from her first that she introduces them to two sides of her in one episode.

With all the proper praise for Lady Boom Boom, I will admit that I’d have given the win to Kaos this week. The Calgary queen’s streetwear garment doesn’t work for me: it’s a lot of plaid without much shape. But what’s so impressive is how she takes that and refashions it into a fashion-forward, highly editorial runway look. She mostly keeps to her original fabrics, and styles herself with a makeup look that perfectly matches the colours in her garment. It’s a remarkable rework, and for her innovation, I’d have awarded her the first maxi-challenge victory. Alas, she instead just barely misses.

In the bottom three are Fierce, for a too-simple dress that barely uses her streetwear garment, as well as Halal and Miss Moço. The latter’s placement I completely understand: her initial look, while simple, is cute enough, and Moço somehow transforms it into a shapeless, unflattering garment rendered in too-bright green and pink. Halal’s bottom placement perplexes me, however. She takes her initial racoon-inspired streetwear look, and keeps that same spirit while reworking the garment into something distinctly different. Granted, she doesn’t properly paint her face for her signature mustache—the lip colour she uses is too similar to her hair colour. But still, in a design challenge, she has a complex, interesting garment, which is more than Fierce can say.

But Fierce is also a firecracker of a queen, and her styling is much more striking. You can see Brooke Lynn’s wheels turning as the critiques begin: yes, Fierce’s look is too simple, but the hair and makeup! She looks better than some of the safe queens do! It’s pretty obvious that Fierce is just going to be scared with a low placement, and Halal and Moço will have to lip sync. It’s a far cry from the Season 2 premiere, in which Gia Metric underperformed and was swiftly sent to the lip sync despite being a character with long-term potential.

But alas, it’s Halal versus Moço in the lip sync, and the song is Justin Bieber and Nicki Minaj’s “Beauty and a Beat.” Listen: many a time in these recaps I have said that I don’t love straight male artists’ songs being used in lip syncs. And while Justin is Canadian, this feels like a real stretch. On the other hand, “Beauty and a Beat” is a goddamn bop. And after “Get Down” was used last season, truly all bets are off.

Unfortunately, the lip sync is underwhelming, although I do think it’s a clear win for Halal. But surprisingly, the judges disagree, and keep Moço around. Halal, a unique queen who proves to be a fun, engaging character this episode, is asked to sashay away. This is a bummer note to the end of what’s otherwise a very fun premiere, but I’m hopeful it’s forgotten as we get to know the rest of this cast. They seem like a remarkably good crop, and if Canada’s Drag Race has proven anything, it’s that it knows how to feature its cast. They may not be legends now, but the joy will be in showing how they’re legends in the making.

Untucking our final thoughts

✨ Bombae gets off a remarkably simple, perfect entrance line: “Hi, bottoms!” This is a group that isn’t afraid to get blue with their humour—clock Jada calling herself “the original throat goat” as well.

✨ Lady Boom Boom has multiple goals for her time in the competition: “I’m here to prove that hard work can make your dreams come true? Is that a sentence? I’m also here to learn English.” This is a very quick-witted group, but this line is my favourite of the episode.

✨ I’m admittedly sad that neither Stacey McKenzie nor TV’s Amanda Brugel will be rejoining the judges’ panel this season, although I will admit that Traci Melchor has her best showing yet in this premiere. I hope she’s taken the critiques of her sometimes-wooden line deliveries from the past two seasons and worked to be more natural, because that kind of free-flowing vibe is what works so well about the Canada’s Drag Race panel. Thrilled, of course, that last season’s standout Brad Goreski is back—he remains terrific.

✨ Huge kudos to the Canada’s Drag Race casting team for once again assembling a group of queens who have such disparate, triumphant journeys to the show. Jada talks to the queens about being a refugee from Barbados, while Bombae got her permanent residency just one week before coming to film the show. Halal, meanwhile, was born in Egypt, moved to Kuwait, then immigrated to Canada at 18. There’s lots of talk about the importance of diversity on reality TV, but I think Canada’s Drag Race consistently walks the walk in terms of exploring how these unique experiences can inform not just queens’ life stories, but also their work.

✨ Okay, so I’m going to follow Bombae’s lead and refer to Miss Fiercalicious as “Fierce” moving forward. Love her ridiculous name, but typing it out every single time I reference her this season would get a bit tiring!

✨ Huge applause for Brooke Lynn Hytes, who looks positively stunning on the runway this week. And speaking of stunning models: I have to admit I wasn’t familiar with Monika Schnarre coming into this episode, but she’s both a ton of fun on the panel and has a hell of a career. She covered Vogue when she was 14!

✨ “It’s 2022: drag can be different. I impersonate women who don’t have breasts. Fierce impersonates women who don’t have talent.” Man, Bombae just drags Fierce out of nowhere, and it is incredible.

✨ I may not be Canadian myself, but I gotta admit, it feels so great to be recapping Canada’s Drag Race once again. Last season was an under-seen triumph, and with Canada vs. The World coming later this year, it’s safe to say all eyes are on the show to prove it can compete with the bigger Drag Race franchises. I’m rooting for you, CDR!

The next episode of Canada’s Drag Race will be available to stream Thursday, July 21, at 9 p.m. EDT 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 Tuesday afternoon.