Welcome to RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars Power Rankings! Every week, we’ve debriefed the week’s new episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars 8 to determine which queens were riding high, and which needed she-mergency care. And now, the season has come to an end, with two queens earning crowns.
Queen of the Fame Games: LaLa Ri
Golden Boot Award. Miss Congeniality. And now, Queen of the Fame Games. LaLa Ri has taken home just about every title she can without actually winning a season. (Which, if there’s anyone more future Canada vs The World winner-coded than LaLa, I don’t know them.) Listen, did LaLa really deserve this title based on the original premise: that it would be based on queens’ runway looks from the season? Of course not. But we strayed from that premise quite a bit, partially because of the talent show, partially because there was always going to be a fan favourite element to this vote, and partially because, well, no one’s runway package was that great. (Darienne Lake and Kahanna Montrese likely got closest.) And hey, I was rooting for Jessica Wild to win, and she didn’t have the best runway package either. So why not LaLa?
Moreover, in a season that often felt quite dour, both on the show and off of it, LaLa brought us joy. I think a lot about what she said to herself a few weeks ago, when Kahanna was threatening to quit and Alexis Michelle and Kandy Muse were fighting: “I just wanna be a drag queen that has fun, honey, and just live my best life, Lord.” Drag Race is meant to be fun, and LaLa more than anyone embodied that this season. What better reason exists to give a queen a $60,000 tip? She may not have been my pick, but I’m thrilled for LaLa. May she use this to fund many more trips to the LaLa Ri Experience.
Runner-Up: Kandy Muse
I have a lot of complicated feelings about Kandy’s run this season, and her Drag Race career in general. As I said back in Season 13, I will simultaneously never understand Kandy’s worst haters nor her biggest fans. She is an entertaining queen who has given us some great performances (her Season 13 roast, the Rusical this season), but also presents an often-repetitive runway package. She is committed to giving us great TV—which, incidentally, I think makes her a producer favourite, since she’ll happily ask pointed questions and repeat things to give editors more coverage—but she also was caught red-handed (among other queens) handling her business off-camera.
She has now placed second twice, something only Raven before her can claim, but in both cases those finishes felt partially based on flukes of the format. In Season 13, the wheel determined she would lip sync against Rosé in the first Lip Sync for the Crown, when I’m all but certain producers would’ve preferred a Symone-versus-Gottmik final round. And this season, for the first time in All Stars herstory, the final just featured a top two, with Kandy’s makeover win icing Jessica out of the finale (to fans’ consternation). She played the game well, and she certainly deserved to make the finale both times. But I can understand frustrations with both of her runner-up finishes.
In the end, though, I’ll ultimately always appreciate Kandy because I can tell what a fan of Drag Race she is. She is here to give us a show, and while her drag and performances might not always be to my taste, I’d prefer someone engaged and energized to someone barely committing to the project. Moreover, as I’ve said previously, I find the hate directed Kandy’s way to be abhorrent. I hope Kandy continues to be tremendously successful off the show, and that she proves all of her vilest critics wrong. But I will also say that, for all involved, it’s likely best that this is the end of Kandy’s Drag Race journey. She deserves a career far away from the vitriol aimed at her appearances on this show.
Winner: Jimbo
This is the year of the obvious winner on American Drag Race, huh? Jimbo’s casting on All Stars 8 was highly conspicuous from the jump, as the only international queen among a cast of Americans. The fact that Ru loved her so much on UK vs The World clearly meant the host was going to find an opportunity for her to win a crown; lo and behold, here she is as a member of the Drag Race Hall of Fame.
But just because the win was inevitable doesn’t mean Jimbo didn’t deserve it. I think this was by far Jimbo’s best season, both for the ways she bodied the competition—that Snatch Game! that roast! that triumphant lip sync win after six losses!—and for how she softened her prickly edges from her previous runs. Watching Jimbo go after queens like Rita Baga and Pangina Heals in her last two seasons put a damper on her entertaining, exciting performances; this go-around, it was much easier to enjoy Jimbo as a competitor. And she is walking out with $230,000 (don’t forget those $5,000 challenge prizes!) for her efforts. That’s a little over $300,000 in Canadian dollars! But sorry, Jimbo, we do have prize taxes here in the U.S.
If online rumours are correct, Jimbo will be the last winner in this particular All Stars format. I think she makes for a fitting one: a dominant performer who nonetheless represents an aberration from the existing pattern of winners. (Trinity the Tuck and Monét X Change tying during the last season of the Top 2 Lip Sync for Your Legacy format was a similar aberration.) I imagine she will not be the last international queen to win All Stars, but she’ll always be the first. A huge final congrats to Jimbo: she slayed, and she is a deserving champion.
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