Welcome to Canada’s Drag Race Power Rankings! Every week, we’ll debrief the week’s new episode of Canada’s Drag Race Season 6 to determine which queens are riding high, and which need she-mergency care. Two queens go home, leaving us with our final six—and so soon! Which two leave us, and who’s our new frontrunner?
8. Mya Foxx (last week: 4)—ELIMINATED
Not only did Mya go home this week, but I think she was the most certain to go home once we knew all the Round 1 lip sync outcomes. There was no universe in which Eboni La’Belle used the Golden Beaver on her, and I thought her loss in her first lip sync was the result not of Saltina Shaker blowing her away, but of her missing the mark in her lip sync. (PM was actually worse in their Round 1 battle, but we’ve seen what PM can do at their best.) By the time she landed in the bottom three, her elimination was effectively inevitable. Mya should feel very proud of her performance this season—she won Snatch Game, for god’s sake!—but I can’t deny that this feels like a natural end point for her.
7. Velma Jones (last week: 6)—ELIMINATED
Well, this sucks. Velma got screwed over in a couple different ways, both being picked last and having to deal with PM’s nonsensical decision to pick a song they were wholly unsuited for versus a dance-y track they would’ve nailed. Velma had, in my opinion, the hardest task in the first round: Karamilk was born to perform, and got a track right in her wheelhouse. And Velma kept up pretty well! She was easily the strongest of the losers, both matching the Tate McRae song’s energy and bringing in enough of her own personality to make her performance her own. Alas, Karamilk was simply better, and once Eboni beat Saltina in the final lip sync to earn the Golden Beaver, there was no real question as to who was going to be saved. Velma’s last chance was PM continuing to be in their head, but unfortunately for her, they pulled out one of the most compelling performances of the whole episode. No doubt in my mind that if it weren’t for the double-elimination, Velma would still be in the competition—but that’s how the cookie crumbles sometimes. Nicky Doll, don’t be shy, cast Velma on a future Drag Race France!
6. PM (last week: 3)
I didn’t expect PM to lose their first round in a lip sync tournament, but I chalk that failure up to a poor strategic decision more than anything else. Going up against Sami Landri to “I’m Alive” was never going to end well, but they seemed to fear such an early battle against Karamilk to a dance-heavy song. This backfired in a big way, and PM went into Mini-Untucked quite shaken up. Smartly, they were able to channel their feelings into their “Sweet Surrender” lip sync, staying quite still and emoting like mad for most of the performance before finally exploding into a surge of dance. It was a layered performance that fit their narrative perfectly, and it wasn’t a surprise when Brooke Lynn Hytes ultimately declared them the final survivor of the Slay-Offs. Still, it’s starting to feel like PM is living on borrowed time, no? Now that we know they can be beaten in a lip sync, I think it’s only a matter of time before they are—and a design challenge on the horizon doesn’t bode well.
5. Van Goth (last week: 5)
While I was wildly entertained by Van’s antics this week, I also think she may have sunken her chances at the crown. As I mentioned in last week’s power rankings, Canada’s Drag Race hasn’t really named villains as winners, and has actually avoided crowning queens with even somewhat mixed edits in the past. (See: Jimbo being cut before the finale in Season 1, Miss Fiercalicious being cut before the final lip sync in Season 3, Nearah Nuff getting a similar treatment in Season 4 and Makayla Couture losing out to The Virgo Queen in Season 5.) Van’s edit is, by far, the most negative we’ve seen for a frontrunner since Fierce’s, and this week’s rant only makes it worse. The other queens, including fan favourites like Sami, are openly critical of Van now. And while she at least still has Eboni on her side, which got her the Beaver this week, the preview for next week’s episode shows stormy seas ahead for the Scissor Sisters.
4. Karamilk (last week: 8)
A lip sync tournament challenge was always destined to be Karamilk’s strongest moment, but I think she underperformed expectations a bit here in terms of final results. (Though certainly not in the lip syncs themselves: Karamilk was truly excellent in both “It’s ok I’m ok” and “Work.”) Granted, she got basically the worst possible draw in a Round 2 opponent, having to go up against Eboni while she would’ve easily beaten either of the other two left in the semifinals. But again, a challenge like this often relies on luck of the draw, especially beyond the Round 1 song selections. I think if there’s anything to be nervous about with Karamilk, it’s that, so far, she’s still only demonstrated that she can lip sync. Sometimes, that’s enough: Nearah got to the final four basically exclusively on the strength of her performances. But this is a stronger cast than Season 4’s, and we can assume Karamilk avoided the design challenge in Episode 3 for a reason. I wouldn’t be shocked if next week sees her and PM finally battling it out in the bottom two—and if the judges decide they’ve seen Karamilk lip sync too much, she may be in a tough spot. I’m rooting for her, but I’m nervous.
3. Sami Landri (last week: 1)
Good on Sami for knowing her win condition for Round 1 and not hesitating in grabbing it. She knew she would devour “I’m Alive,” particularly a comedy-slanted live version, and devour she did. Sami is admittedly a bit limited in her range as a performer—I thought her take on “Don’t Cha” was one of the weaker lip syncs in the episode—but what she does well, she does really well. Right now, Sami’s on a terrific trajectory, and I would consider her all but locked for the top four. Can she win? Perhaps, but I think we need a stronger victory moment from her than last week’s chat show challenge. Both of Eboni’s wins have felt like triumphs, and Van’s design challenge win was an absolute knockout. (Barring something strange, I think she’s winning next week’s, too.) Sami’s victory so far has been doing well at Drag Race while remaining her quirky self. Unless she has a bigger breakout moment on the horizon, getting to the finale may be her ceiling.
2. Saltina Shaker (last week: 7)
A nice recovery from Saltina, and uncoincidentally in a week where we heard not one peep about her “confidence” journey. (She did breathlessly say she was proud of herself in Mini-Untucked, but I think we can give her a pass.) Saltina’s a strong dancer, which helped her edge out Mya despite neither of them connecting strongly to the Fefe Dobson song, but she really shone on “Don’t Cha.” By the time we got to “U + Ur Hand,” though, we’d seen the full repertoire of Saltina’s skills, while Eboni continued to surprise. Whether Saltina makes the endgame or not seems very dependent on what happens next week, considering Van is our likely maxi-challenge winner and made a pledge in her confessionals not to save Saltina with the Beaver next week. Because she did Snatch Game instead of the design challenge, we actually don’t know Saltina’s design capabilities. If she can skate through in the top three, I’d pencil her in for the finale. If she has trouble, and Van decides to leave her in the bottom two with someone like Karamilk? It could be bad for Miss Shaker. We’ll see!
1. Eboni La’Belle (last week: 2)
Meet our new frontrunner, everybody. Eboni has been a terrific confessionalist all season long, has performed solidly-to-well in most of the challenges, and now has revealed herself to be a dynamic, surprising lip syncer. What can’t she do? (Well, a design challenge maybe, but she’s certainly going to try and leverage her alliance with Van next week to help her out with that.) What I’m most impressed by is how Eboni can do a lot of what Van does—the fake alliances, the shady moments—but not get in the same hot water in the edit or with her fellow queens. Like, it’s hard to make the argument that Van deserves the crown for making great TV when Eboni is doing the very same without getting caught. I just see nothing but upside for Eboni, and it couldn’t be happening to a better queen. It’s not over yet—we’ve got three weeks left until the finale—but as of now, everything’s coming up La’Belle.
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