‘RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars 7’ Episode 3 recap: Ball of Fortune

We’re coming off such a high—or, to quote the “Legends” Rumix, a “rainbow high”—from the first two episodes of RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars 7 that a shift downward feels inevitable. Not every episode can become the highest-rated in Drag Race herstory, as the Snatch Game installment did last week. (A well-deserved honour, I’d say!) So it’s fair to approach this third episode, featuring the “Realness of Fortune” ball challenge, with some caution.

Luckily, this crop of winners are proving that they are not to be underestimated. While not everyone performs at the level you’d expect of a former champion this week, the overall results are above average, and a few looks are positively stunning. Of particular note is the final eleganza category, which gives each queen a certain colour and lets them go to town. Three of the looks instantly enter the pantheon of all-time great ball challenge creations—though notably, only one of them wins the challenge.

That winner is Jaida Essence Hall, who gets the ball victory I would’ve given her back in Season 12 (but ultimately went to Gigi Goode). Like the first episode was a showcase spot for Shea Couleé and the second for Jinkx Monsoon, this installment is a tribute of sorts to Jaida. She breaks out in a big way, coming off as a funny character in the workroom and confessionals, smashing the runway across all three categories and delivering one hell of a lip sync to Beyoncé’s “Green Light.” 

If this is going to be the general vibe of All Stars 7—each episode being a showcase for one of the winners—I’m all in. Silky Nutmeg Ganache’s power hour of lip syncs in All Stars 6 proved just how enjoyable seeing one queen excel across all categories can be. Lady Camden enjoyed a similar spotlight during the “Daytona Wind” episode of Season 14. It may keep the challenges from feeling all that competitive, but when the drag is so damn good, and each queen is getting their shine in their own time, how can you resist such a formula?

We start the episode with a frankly batshit and delightful segment in which Shea pretends that the Platinum Plunger has some extra power to it that the other queens don’t know about. Trinity the Tuck goes along with it, fully for shits and giggles, and leaves the other girls dizzy over the possibilities. (Jinkx has some of the funniest reactions, yelling, “Oh, NO,” “Oh, STOP IT,” and “Why is she SAYING STUFF LIKE THAT?”) It doesn’t go much further, but I love that the queens are just having fun with the twists this season.

The ball challenge immediately following Snatch Game feels like a near guarantee that we’ll see some fresh blood at the top—although there’s been a correlation in recent seasons between ball and Snatch Game winners. (Think Aquaria, Gigi Goode and Gottmik.) Still, the difference in skills required means someone like, say, Jinkx isn’t going to do as well two weeks in a row, allowing the power in the game to shift a bit.

Categories for this ball include “Vanna White Realness,” “Before and After” and the aforementioned “Realness of Fortune Eleganza.” The second category is the most successful, playing on the signature Wheel of Fortune puzzle category to great effect. Basically, every runway must be summarized by a combination of two phrases that share one word in the middle. Jinkx goes for “Whatever Happened to Baby Jane Fonda,” for instance, while Monét X Change does a hilarious “Bob the Drag Queen Elizabeth” look. The clear winner in this category is Jaida’s “Bag Lady in Red” look, which is a marvel of both design and execution.

Jaida also does quite well in the final category with a deceptively complicated black garment, but is trumped there by Raja’s gold look. Though she’s been out of the Drag Race game for quite some time, Raja is proving she’s as sharp as ever this season. Her Madame and Diana Vreeland Snatch Games last week were both great, and here, her eleganza look is a marvel. It’s hard to believe just how much Raja got done in the time allotted, and the impact on the runway is unbelievable. “For fuck’s sake, I give myself a shoot,” she says, and she’s right to say it. Combined with her pitch-perfect look in the Vanna White Realness category, and you’d think Raja would have a shot at the win this week.

Unfortunately, Raja basically throws away the second category, going with an uninspired “Olivia Newton-John Waters” mashup that barely registers as a combination. Ostensibly she’s got a mustache to suggest John Waters, but it’s practically invisible. This ultimately keeps her from the win, which is a shame: I’d have given her a top slot based on her first and third looks alone.

Instead, it’s Trinity who edges Raja out, although the judges do also consider Shea (including her drop-dead gorgeous bridal runway). I’ll admit, the construction on Trinity’s red dominatrix look is impressive, but it’s a pretty obvious take on the colour. Moreover, where the hemline hits on her legs is unflattering. Combined with her conceptually iffy RuPaul Charles II, and you’d think that would keep her from the winners’ circle. But I will say this: her pageant take on Vanna in the realness category is just perfect.

The Vanna category is perhaps my favourite—not for the looks, which are pretty standard, but for the fact that the letter-turning goddess Vanna White herself is there for the show! I grew up watching Wheel of Fortune (my parents actually credit it for helping teach me how to read at a super young age), and I always loved Vanna’s gorgeous gowns and dutiful, professional work revealing the puzzles. In many ways, she was my first gay icon, which is why it’s truly a mind-boggling thing to see her on the show. “This queen stole my look!” she exclaims upon seeing Jinkx in a very similar dress to hers, and I just squeal with delight.

The best part is how every queen reacts upon seeing Vanna, a mixture of the amused (Yvie Oddly, The Vivienne) to the absolutely delighted (Monét, Jinkx, especially Raja). Vanna announces the whole ball—after doing an iconic runway walk at that—and while I get that she likely didn’t want to stick around to judge, I almost wish she had. What a joy to have her here, and so fitting for Jaida to get maybe the best confessional line about her: “Vanna White is probably the first white lady that has ever been in my household.”

After the runways are judged, including by very game guest Kirby Howell-Baptiste (loved you on The Good Place, queen!), Jaida and Trinity wind up in the top. They lip sync to Beyoncé’s B’Day album cut “Green Light,” and to be blunt, Trinity never stood a chance on this one. Jaida absolutely devours the lip sync. She turns her hair into a helicopter blade, and does a drop-split that defies gravity. Trinity tries, but this is all Jaida. She wins $10,000, and the chance to block one of her fellow queens. Following the pattern, she blocks Jinkx.

I know there were some complaints after the first two episodes that the judges barely negatively critiqued the queens, and I can understand the frustration. We’ve watched Drag Race for a collective 35 seasons across the many series in the franchise, and throughout all of them, a mix of positive and negative critiques has been the norm. To suddenly go all-positive, even with queens of this high a calibre, is a tonal shift. And it’s hard not to read into motives that go beyond just the quality of the work—after all, it would be disadvantageous for VH1 and World of Wonder to tarnish the queens who are literal ambassadors for the show.

But I ultimately—like with the showcase episode format—am enjoying the “celebration of drag” vibe of this season. It’s not an ordinary season of Drag Race: it’s a once-in-a-blue-moon treat that we get to see some of our all-time favourites doing our favourite game all over again. I wouldn’t want every Drag Race season to look like this, but I love it for this one. I’ll take it a step further and say I prefer a season that’s up front about its lack of eliminations and all-positive-critiques over a season that promises eliminations, but infrequently delivers.

We’ll see how the good vibes hold up as we get further into this season. But for now, I’m all in. And I’m just so excited to see who gets the spotlight next.

Untucking our final thoughts

✨ Jinkx celebrates her Snatch Game and lip sync wins by making a variety of sounds from “Call Me Mother.” Now that’s a RuPaul song I’d love to hear Jinkx’s Judy Garland cover.

✨ There seems to be general consensus at this point on the Platinum Plunger strategy: block whoever just won. Jinkx did it to Shea (with Viv and most of the cast agreeing they’d have done the same), and now Jaida has done it to Jinkx. I do think there’ll be a strategy shift as the game goes on, but for now, this is the easiest metagame to avoid upsetting the other queens. Jinkx, for her part, ultimately thinks she made the right choice: “At least I blocked one of the sewers!”

✨ Speaking of the Platinum Plunger, my new favourite recurring bit on The Pit Stop is host Bob the Drag Queen’s insistence that the plunger “is certainly gold.” I’d honestly say more bronze than anything, but definitely not platinum.

✨ Jaida’s ultimately successful plan to win this week is hilarious. Step one is to “look drop-dead gorgeous,” step two is to “play Inspector Gadget,” and then the final step is to not actually have a plan at all. Obsessed.

✨ The little challenge introduction task the queens play, “Hungmen,” has actually appeared in full as one of the underwear mini-challenges in a past season. Here, it’s just a cute little bit with the ever-so-crushworthy Calix Quan of the Pit Crew. Ru even lampshades it not being a mini-challenge when Jinkx guesses the puzzle (“VANNA WHITE PARTY”) correctly: “Let’s show Jinkx what she’s won! Oh, you’ve won nothing.”

✨ The colour selection for the Realness of Fortune Eleganza category happens through the spinning of a wheel, with queens landing on locations associated with a certain hue. (This leads to an awkward bit in which Trinity gets red for Moscow, which a disclaimer card at the start of the episode notes was filmed long before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.) In the process of spinning, though, the queens can potentially land on $500 and $1,000 prizes—or a Bankrupt space, losing all their money. This happens to Yvie after collecting the full $1,500, but Viv gets luckier, making it out with all the cash before landing on a blue space for Belize. Fun fact: that $1,500 is the most money The Vivienne has ever won on Drag Race!

✨ Raja’s desire to have a glass of wine and a blunt while working at whatever pace she wants to is deeply relatable. “Why do I have to do anything fast?” she asks rhetorically.

✨ Maybe the best running joke this season is that Monét and Trinity are convinced their alliance is a secret, only for every queen to absolutely call it out at every turn. “What’s the alliance talking about?” Jinkx says as she walks over to them. (They try to propose an alliance to her, which she declines, but they make soft deals to keep each other safe.) “I ain’t walking in on an alliance, am I?” Jaida says, later adding in confessional that she is “bamboozled,” “bewildered” and “beguiled” at alliances forming. Shea also calls it out when they try to approach her. It’s all so dumb and so damn funny.

✨ Jinkx can’t be mad at Jaida’s choice to block her. “You know what? I deserve this!”

✨ The variety of costume changes before the lip sync remains the most baffling part of this season. You can really get a sense of how confident each queen is based on what they’ve changed into—though sadly, no one gets back into their Snatch Game look again this week.

✨ Not Monét thinking Z is a vowel …

The next episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars 7 will stream Friday, June 3, at 3 a.m. EDT on Paramount+ in the U.S. and on OutTV and Crave in Canada. Check World of Wonder’s streaming guide for other countries’ release plans. You can subscribe to our drag newsletter, Wig!, for exclusive Drag Race content delivered straight to your inbox every Tuesday afternoon.