‘RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars 6’ Episode 2 recap: Hey Blue, here is a ball for you

This is more like it! The RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars 6 premiere was all a bit too sleek for my liking, to the point of feeling like branding was consuming the show (even more than usual). But it took just one episode for the queens to relax a bit, and the result is a very solid episode of Drag Race. Is there still room to grow? Absolutely. However, I feel more confident about the season than I did before.

Part of that is seeing these queens start to differentiate themselves. Hosting a Ball challenge this early—akin to the Mega-Ball challenges of the flagship series from Season 10 onward, in which there are over 30 looks total presented—really puts the queens through their paces. We get a great sense of their personal style across the three looks each queen presents, which is especially helpful for those who have grown significantly since their original seasons.

Additionally, the vibe across the workroom is much more relaxed. The queens are beginning to mesh as a group, as opposed to the dynamic simply being Season 11 plus nine others that it risked becoming. All Stars 2 may have had five queens from Season 5, but they found ways to integrate rapidly. The success of this season is likely going to hinge on being able to do the same.

Add in an absolutely dynamite Lip Sync for Your Legacy at episode’s end, and you’ve got a much better installment than the premiere. I now understand why Paramount+ chose to drop both these episodes first—they really do work as a two-part premiere of sorts. The first introduces the queens, but the second introduces the show.

The episode starts with Trinity K. Bonet expressing relief that not only was she saved, but she was saved by an all-but-unanimous vote. The mood dampens a bit, however, when Yara Sofia reveals that she actually had Trinity’s lipstick in her bra. Trinity was saved by the grace of Lip Sync Assassin Coco Montrese’s skills. “The nerve! The unmitigated gall! How dare you!” she says in confessional, though to Yara’s face, she mostly lets it slide. That said, as we’ll find out by episode’s end, Trinity does not forget.

No mini-challenge this week means we’re diving right into the maxi-challenge: the Blue Ball. The three categories are pretty specific, which always helps. There’s Blue Betta Work, which is a blue collar occupation category (and a welcome reprieve after years of Executive Realness categories); Blue Jean Baby, a denim category; and Blue Ball Bonanza, the create-on-the-fly Eleganza category. Everyone came to this competition expecting to have to sew, but some—especially Jiggly Caliente—are honest that sewing is just never quite going to be their gig.

Yara is perhaps the most casual in the challenge, saying she won the last one, and she’s going to win this one as well. It’s an odd position to take, considering she was sent home on the Money Ball challenge in Season 3. (Though as the edit notes, she won the Hair Ball challenge in that same season.) Her cockiness is a major plot point, and it’s a pretty obvious setup for a fall into the bottom two. The thing is, looking at her three looks, it’s surprising to me that she does fall into the bottom. Her first two looks are funny and sexy, respectively, and her final look is pretty gorgeous. She maybe wouldn’t have been in the top for me, but she’s clearly safe.

Drag Race has a habit of sometimes placing queens in certain spots to get a dramatic result. Eureka! is top three in this episode over a few queens who I argue do better—Scarlet Envy and Jan, in particular—but it makes sense when you consider that Eureka! is someone who the show likely wants to do well. Similarly, putting Yara in the bottom to shake her up and build tension is designed to serve the story. This kind of judging has consistently irritated the fanbase over the years, but I can’t imagine it stopping anytime soon. This is a reality TV production, after all (emphasis on “production”).

Luckily, basically all the other judgments in this episode are acceptable. Kylie Sonique Love lands in the top with three distinct, effective looks. Her blue collar carpenter look isn’t particularly real, but realness isn’t in the category title, so she goes fab with it. Her Christina Aguilera and Britney Spears tribute in the denim category is hot, and features the lovely touch of including the trans pride flag colours. And I’m actually kind of obsessed with her final look, which is so perfectly Kylie and also perfectly constructed. She makes for a very strong runner-up.

But the winner in this episode is the same queen I would’ve picked to win the premiere: Ra’Jah O’Hara. I never really got on the same wavelength with Ra’Jah in Season 11; as she admits herself in confessional, she was painted and perceived as a villain in a way queens of colour too often are on this show. I am quite happy to admit my previous judgment of her was wrong, and she has quickly risen to the very top of my favourites this season. 

All three of her looks are stunners, but special notice has to be given to the bodice on her denim look—it’s complicated in all the right ways and has such a spectacular effect on the runway—and the construction of her Bonanza look. Between this display and her talent show performance last week, Ra’Jah has quickly established herself as one of the top queens in the competition, and the current frontrunner.

Meanwhile, joining Yara in the bottom three is A’keria C. Davenport, who the judges strangely knock for her ultra-cute club denim look instead of for her Bonanza look, which was among the worst of all 36 looks. The final bottom member, and the one who faces Yara in the bottom two, is Jiggly Caliente. And this one is tough. I would’ve put Jiggly in the bottom three last week, and I can’t disagree that she does the worst this week. Her sanitation worker look is a little simple, and I really only like the hair and the pants on her denim look. Her party dress for the Bonanza category is nowhere near good enough to compete at this level, and it’s pretty clear that she’s going to be going home.

Both in the episode and in Untucked after, Jiggly gets very emotional about her likely departure. She even asks a producer why she can’t have a chance to fight for herself in a lip sync, and campaigns hard to stay. Amplifying matters is that Yara already has a win, so judging by track record, Jiggly should be the one to go. But hearing her talk with RuPaul in the workroom earlier in the episode, it’s clear that Jiggly has so much room to grow, and could do well in so many other challenges. It’s a shame to think about losing her and her new-to-Drag Race confidence so early.

While it seems the group has likely chosen Jiggly to go home—even her pal Ginger Minj votes for her (though Trinity actually votes Yara out)—Ra’Jah’s choice is more of a mystery. She’s got to lip sync for the right to make that choice, though, and she has to do it against Season 11 sister Brooke Lynn Hytes. The Queen of the North and Canada’s Drag Race judge is back to dazzle us with another of her acrobatic lip syncs. Ra’Jah seems in full competition mode, and actually barely acknowledges BLH when she first says hi.

But then we see why: Ra’Jah absolutely slays the lip sync to Janet Jackson’s “Miss You Much,” very much keeping pace with Brooke Lynn and even at times surpassing her. The whole lip sync is such a blast that Ru declares it a tie, with Ra’Jah taking home the $20,000 cash tip. The queens as a group do indeed send Jiggly home… and Ra’Jah does the same.

Like I said, this episode is a drastic improvement over the premiere, but there’s still space for All Stars 6 to surprise us. We’ve lost one queen that I was very excited to watch this season, so boot order from here is going to be a factor as well. Are the queens with the most to offer going to be sticking around? Are we going to get the chance to watch queens like Ra’Jah, Kylie and Yara impress us further? 

Right now, I’d say All Stars 6 is still very much showing promise, and even on an upswing. But it’s a fragile position, and what happens from here will determine the trajectory of things moving forward. As for Jiggly, to paraphrase Janet herself: We’ll miss her much.

Untucking our final thoughts

✨With this tie, Brooke Lynn Hytes becomes the fifth queen to participate in two lip sync ties on Drag Race. Previously, Alyssa Edwards, BenDeLaCreme, Eureka! and Monét X Change all did the same—but only Eureka! and Monét tied twice in the same season.

✨Big Freedia is our first guest judge of the season! Other than Cynthia Erivo, every guest judge rotated in the slot last season—Nicole Byer, Ts Madison, Loni Love and Jamal Sims—but we’re back to our usual one-and-done arrangement this time around. Freedia, the rapper who was a huge part of bringing bounce music into the mainstream, is the kind of judge who feels like she should’ve been on the show already. It’s great to have her, and it’s so wonderful to hear fresh takes on the queens. We’ve had the same judging panel for so long that new voices are all the more appreciated.

✨I am in the middle of a Season 10 rewatch right now for my Patreon, and obviously that portrayal of Eureka! (particularly her adversarial relationship with The Vixen) is going to naturally come into the conversation this season. So let me tell you, Eureka! referring to Trinity when someone defines “trade” as a person with an element of danger to them? There was a moment of cringing, to say the least.

✨The lights going off in Trinity’s confessional for a moment, and her subsequent expression, is one of the funniest moments I’ve seen on Drag Race in seasons.

✨Note that Michelle Visage and Carson Kressley dressed exactly to the theme, and RuPaul… wore not a stitch of blue.

✨Jiggly offers Ra’Jah both an alliance and her Netflix password if Ra’Jah keeps her in the game. Clearly Ra’Jah has her own Netflix account!

✨Untucked shows that Trinity is really thinking through things, evaluating her competition at all times. She came to win this whole thing—now she just needs to step up and win a challenge.

✨“As the great Jessica Wild once said: ‘Being a bottom is not bad.’” Hearing RuPaul say the words “the great Jessica Wild” in the year of our Lord 2021 made me smile like an idiot. Bring Jessica back for All Stars!

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The next episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars Season 6 will stream Thursday, July 1, on Paramount+ in the U.S. and on Crave in Canada.