‘Canada’s Drag Race’ Season 5, Episode 7 recap: Fit for a Queen of the North

One of the challenges Canada’s Drag Race has faced from its very inception has been how to position Brooke Lynn Hytes. She was the first RuPaul’s Drag Race alum to host an international spin-off, and while she was the only real choice as the show’s only Canadian representation, she made for an odd fit. Most notably, she did not win—meaning her crowning other queens would inherently feel awkward. As a judge, she made sense; as a host, she lacked the qualifications to fill Ru’s shoes.

In Season 1, the show tried to circumvent the issue entirely by bringing in “guest hosts”—having them do the runway walk to “Cover Girl” and deliver the “good luck, and don’t fuck it up” message pre-Lip Sync For Your Life. The whole panel would vote on who to send home, in stark contrast to the Ru-hosted seasons’ host-decides-all approach. While the guest host concept was quickly discarded, and Brooke now walks the runway to “Cover Girl,” she’s still not quite the host, with her fellow judges Brad Goreski and Traci Melchor taking on hosting segments in various episodes.

But we’re now in Season 5, and Brooke has the most experience of any host besides Ru himself. (The next closest is Supremme de Luxe from España, who has hosted five seasons to Brooke’s seven—or six, if we want to discount Season 1.) Last season, CDR took its first step to solidify the show’s image of Brooke in a special Rusical episode all about her. It felt like an acknowledgement, if a small one, that as the drag queen on the panel, Brooke is the face of the show—and that in the wake of other non-winners like Nicky Doll and Rita Baga joining other spin-offs as hosts, her role is no longer a strange fit.

If Brooke were simply replicating the Ru playbook, however, she wouldn’t be in the position she is now. She’s a much looser host, willing to lean into her past experiences on the show to inform her approach. She projects regality, but is comfortable chatting with the queens as peers. She actually feels more like a pageant host and judge than anything else—something Ra’Jah O’Hara noted when she was on Canada vs. The World.

But this week, we get a challenge that shows us just how different Brooke is to Mama Ru: she models the queens’ designs on the runway.

The challenge this week is “The Devil Wears Custom,” a task that asks the final six to design a garment for Brooke to wear. This isn’t about creating a Brooke-specific look, necessarily; in fact, Brooke encourages them to make their own drag sensibility clear in their garments. But it is an intimidating task considering Brooke’s prowess on the runway. In fact, next to her lip-syncing skills, I would argue that her runway presentation ability is one of her greatest strengths. If she can’t make your garment work, it’s not worth its salt.

Our top six has become Xana vs. Toronto, as the Vancouver queen notes in the cold open, and the design experience among them varies greatly. Makayla Couture was in the bottom three for her last design look, while Minhi Wang and Helena Poison were in the top and Perla, The Virgo Queen and Xana were all safe. But there’s a twist that might help the girls with less garment-making experience: Season 2 Miss Congeniality and designer extraordinaire Suki Doll is in the house! She’s there to not only consult on designs, but actually do some construction work for each of the queens.

This serves as the biggest boon to Makayla, who has an ambitious idea for a gown that she can now execute. While it’s not perfectly made—there’s some real wonkiness with the zipper in the back—it’s overall dramatic and impressive, and she wins credit for being the most improved. Unfortunately, a failure in the queens’ own runway category, Wardrobe Malfunction, proves her downfall: she has an actual wardrobe malfunction, not a planned one, when her dress splits in the back. Worse, she admits it on the runway, and the judges basically dismiss any chance of her winning because of it.

That leaves the previous design challenge’s top two fighting for the win, and Minhi once again triumphs over Helena. If the judges wanted to spread the wealth, Helena would be a fine winner: she creates a punk rock-inspired look for Brooke that she models the hell out of (honestly, Brooke is fantastic as a model this week), and her lingerie look for her own runway walk is cute and surprising. I can tell the judges don’t really like her freaky wig reveal, but I’m all for it.

But Minhi does deserve this win, especially for her Brooke look. The dress is gorgeous, the jeweling details create the illusion of a slimmer figure for Brooke, and she uses red fabric “sleeves” of sorts to give the host something extra to play with while modeling. The overall presentation is fab, and after Minhi nails her own Wardrobe Malfunction look, there’s really no arguing with the result. Minhi takes her second win, suddenly making her our clear frontrunner.

Whither our other two-time challenge winner, Virgo? Unfortunately, she lands in the bottom two once again, and there’s really no arguing with this. Her idea for Brooke’s look is a decent one, and I love the use of the trans pride flag colours. But the look itself is a mess, one that even Brooke’s fabulous modeling can’t save. The only outfit she looks worse in is Xana’s, a disaster of a garment that Brooke can’t help but continually step on. (Perla does fine—Brooke has a wardrobe malfunction, but the overall look is enough to keep her safe.)

In Mini-Untucked, it is perfectly obvious who the top and bottom two will be, which is why what happens next is absolutely batshit. When Makayla simply says she’s proud of herself and her look—not arguing that she’s going to win or anything, just that she’s happy with the results and no one could take away her joy—Xana seems to take that as a challenge to make Makayla feel as shitty as possible. She says that Brooke tripped on Makayla’s look (rich, considering Brooke definitely tripped on Xana’s), and when pressed on it, doubles down and says she’s just “enlightening the facts” of what happened.

Makayla, who has been growing increasingly sick of Xana’s negative shit all season long in confessionals, but supporting her to her face, finally has enough. She rips into Xana for constantly putting her down, storming out and shouting about how she’s done. (It’s loud enough for the judges to hear: “Someone just quit? Makayla?” Brooke asks.) When she does come back in, she calls Xana a small person and disgusting—which Minhi warns her to think twice about in an act I would call kind but misguided—and insists on changing the subject before Xana can apologize.

It should surprise no one that I’m Team Makayla here. Xana clearly came into this season with a mission to be the villain at every turn, and while I can admire that kind of commitment to archness, she never backed it up with anything but boring smack talk. Where was the messy gaslighting of someone like Mistress Isabelle Brooks, or the wittiness of someone like Plane Jane? Just being a jerk doesn’t make you an iconic villain, it makes you a jerk. And while I admired the vulnerable moments in which Xana opened up to us, she almost seemed to use them as justification for her worst behavior. Moreover, Makayla was one of the most supportive cast members in those moments, yet Xana constantly felt the need to drag Makayla down.

At the end of the day, the two are both professionals, and I’ve no doubt we’ll see resolution between them either in the finale or off the show. But at this moment, I think Makayla’s anger is justified, and I think Xana’s inability to actually stand her ground and fight shows just how weak-sauce she is as a villain. Usual disclaimers about queens’ portrayals on the show being the product of editing and production, of course, but it’s pretty clear even in her exit message that Xana was an active and willing participant in playing the villain this season.

I said “exit message” because it is indeed Xana going home this week. Virgo beats her in a lip sync to Celine Dion’s “Taking Chances,” a song I probably would’ve saved for a finale lip sync. Neither is great, both pretty restricted by the outfits they’re wearing, but Virgo clearly out-performs her. Besides, Virgo has two wins and this is yet another bottom three/two appearance for Xana. It would’ve taken a miraculous performance from Xana to keep her in.

And with that, we are down to our final five! One more queen will go home after next week’s Watch What Happens Live-inspired talk show challenge, leaving us a final four for the finale. Will it be Helena, the only queen without a win, who goes home? Perhaps Virgo lands in the bottom an untenable third time? Or might Perla face the music after an up-and-down season? The only two I’d pencil in for the finale guaranteed are Makayla and Minhi—and with her latest win, Minhi’s looking like a new threat to win it all.

Untucking our final thoughts

✨ We get a very interesting conflict at the start of the episode, in which the queens break down how the Wooden Beaver got used last week. Virgo gets mad when the group moves on without wanting to hear from her, saying she feels “really disrespected,” and accuses the safe queens of using the Beaver strategically to try and get her and Makayla out of the competition. There’s some mention of the other queens being cliqued up, and Virgo feeling alone since Sanjina Dabish Queen left, but it ultimately just ends in Helena offering an apology for the group. I’m not quite sure what to make of it since it resolves so easily, but it is notable as Virgo’s first major moment in the narrative all season.

✨ That’s some major beard stubble growth from Xana—must’ve been a long break since the last episode’s filming.

✨ The mini-challenge this week features Brooke “interviewing” the queens to be her new assistant in quick drag. It’s just an excuse for another improv challenge, although we do get the delicious lie from Brooke that she’s also doing quick drag—only to show up in a perfect face and wig. Classic Brooke. Minhi wins the mini (heh), and $2,500 to boot.

✨ Helena hates improv: “Just like all of you, I really like PrEP.”

✨ Suki’s appearance inspires the queens to talk about careers in and out of drag, considering she’s made such a name for herself as a drag designer. Makayla admits she’s been full-time in drag since she started, while Minhi talks about having health care and physio jobs outside of drag. It’s an interesting discussion, one I’d like to hear about more on the flagship series—which often doesn’t do a great job of presenting drag as part of its contestants’ lives, not the whole of it.

✨ I couldn’t help but fixate on the timing of production while watching this episode’s runway. Brooke wears the same wig in all her The Devil Wears Custom presentations, so it’s possible she just changes out of each quickly backstage … but does that mean she changes in and out of her main look before and after as well? That feels slightly complicated from a production perspective. Or perhaps the Devil Wears Custom runway was shot first and just reordered for continuity—but then were the queens’ runway looks spoiled for the judges before they presented them? You know I’ve been watching this show for too long when these are the questions that keep me guessing.

✨ Sarain Fox is back! This time, she’s specifically there as our guest judge. Which is, of course, interesting, because she’s been serving as a substitute judge for the last several seasons. I renew my call for her to just be put on the panel full-time—clearly Brad and Traci are absent enough that she could be added without disrupting their positions too much.

✨ Cannot believe Makayla made her Wardrobe Malfunction look into a reference to Asia O’Hara’s butterfly disaster from the Season 10 finale. Brooke really skips past that without commentary, but that is wild.

✨ The judges use deliberations this week as a bit of a chance to talk about the queens’ trajectories as a whole—since the Golden Beaver has been in play, they haven’t really been able to this season. Notably, Brooke frames Minhi’s journey as a surprising one, coming from being a former Pit Crew member on Season 1. If we’re looking at who has the narrative to win it all, don’t sleep on Minhi’s.

✨ Makayla doesn’t applaud as Xana leaves the main stage. Good for her: if she doesn’t feel it, it would be disingenuous to do it just for the sake of sportsmanship. If Xana wants to say it’s not personal, it’s drag, then this is the same thing.

✨ “The judges will deliberate. Because apparently, we have to work now.” Brooke already misses the Beaver.

The next episode of Canada’s Drag Race will be available to stream on Thursday, Jan. 9, 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.