‘RuPaul’s Drag Race Global All Stars’ Episode 10 recap: The final four is set

Well, it took nearly the entire season, but RuPaul’s Drag Race Global All Stars finally feels like normal Drag Race. The judging is fair across the board, the queens are civil with each other but still playfully shady, and the werk room is full of touching conversations. This final five episode could fit right into an American Drag Race season and blend in—something I couldn’t say for any of the previous episodes.

Of course, simply being familiar doesn’t make the episode good on its own. But I do think this is one of the stronger episodes of Global All Stars on balance, though it’s not quite as entertaining as Snatch Game or the cocktail party design challenge. The challenge for the queens is to create tourism advertisements for their home countries, which basically is a chance for them to run with wild stereotypes about their homes that Ru will laugh at. The ads they produce are solid, if unspectacular, across the board.

But what I think this episode does particularly well is sell the idea that our eventual top four are deserving. Kitty Scott-Claus turns out what is probably her single best performance of the season. Kween Kong gets to demonstrate her fight to stay in a lip sync. Nehellenia once again demonstrates that she can just about do anything this competition asks her to. And Alyssa Edwards, after eight weeks of not winning, finally scores her second maxi-challenge victory—and fifth in her Drag Race career.

This leaves Tessa Testicle out of the final five, and while I’ve very much enjoyed her this season, there was really no other outcome you could expect here. I think the challenge results in this episode set her up for a very clear and fair elimination, and she takes it in stride. It’s a bummer that only one non-RuGirl makes it to the final four, and there were many mistakes made along the way to get us to this point. But for better or worse, this is our group of finalists, and I think they’re all deserving queens—even if the show didn’t do a great job of demonstrating that along the way.

Though this is an advertisement challenge, it’s not really a branding task: the queens should include something about themselves in the commercials, yes, but ultimately they’re promoting their home countries. This makes it unlike most modern branding challenges, and more like “Draglexa” from UK Season 3. I bring up that particularly cursed example because Kitty herself does, noting that no one won their commercial challenge. Kween, meanwhile, remembers that in her branding challenge, she landed in the bottom two and had to fight for her spot to stay.

Meanwhile, this challenge represented something of a missed opportunity for Alyssa in the past. In Season 5, her “Alyssa’s Secret” perfume commercial landed her in the bottom two—but as we all know now, Alyssa’s Secret became not just a WOW Presents Plus series for Alyssa, but a major part of her brand. Armed with that new knowledge of marketing, Alyssa came roaring back in the All Stars 2 product commercial challenge—but her ad in that case was just a bit unfocused. She fell short of the top two, with Alaska and Katya taking those spots instead.

What’s notable about Alyssa never winning a branding or commercial challenge before is that I would argue there are few queens who understand their brand better than Alyssa Edwards. She has become one of the most successful Drag Race alumni ever based on her marketing savvy and understanding of what she brings to the scene. So it’s refreshing to see Alyssa take this challenge so seriously, knowing that she has the tools in her kit to win this one.

Notably, she actually seems a bit nervous when recording her ad. She routinely asks if punchlines land, and even asks what her grade would be once they’ve wrapped. You can chalk this up to Alyssa-isms, but I honestly think there’s something deeper here. Alyssa has not performed the way she clearly wanted to coming into this season, with just one win in the first nine episodes compared to Kitty and Kween’s three apiece. She seems cognizant of the fact that she could really use some momentum heading into the finale. Winning this challenge is her chance.

Lucky for Alyssa, she has one of the best advertisements of the week, and by far the best runway of the week. Her commercial has a lot of the patented Alyssa chaos, but it’s controlled chaos: there’s a clear beginning, middle and ending to her ad (which couldn’t have been said of the All Stars 2 edition). For the Queens in Outer Space runway, she goes for something of a cosmic showgirl look, with a very cool glittery silver hair cap to complement it. I love the way the garment moves in particular; it reminds me in a good way of Shea Couleé’s “Old MacDonald” lip sync look from the All Stars 7 premiere.

Contending with Alyssa at the top are Kitty and Nehellenia, and though neither’s runway is as strong as Alyssa’s, they don’t embarrass themselves. Kitty’s black gown might actually be my favourite look of hers all season long. Nehellenia’s is not really to my taste—too neon Jetson for me—but I can recognize that it fits her and the category quite nicely. Nelly’s is my favourite of the adverts, walking the thin line between too much Italian caricature and appealing to Ru’s sense of humour. Kitty’s is also genuinely quite great: I love the joke about Brits paying for things in RuPeter Badges. This would make a far better maxi-challenge win for her than several of her actual wins.

But in a tight race at the top, it’s the runway that seemingly puts Alyssa over the edge. She takes home $10,000, and more importantly, secures a valuable bit of momentum heading into the finale. The same can’t be said for Kween, who lands in the bottom two for the first time this season. While she doesn’t have the worst ad of the week—that goes to Tessa—she makes the very avoidable mistake of bringing in too much material. Her final product feels like a rushed mess, and as the judges note, she spends more time hyping up her fellow Down Under Season 2 queens Spankie Jackzon and Hannah Conda than she does promoting herself.

Despite Kween’s unfavourable edit this season (including an incredibly poorly timed confessional of her saying “get ready, Down Under, I’m about to get canceled!”), I’ve overall been impressed with her growth since her original season. This runway look is a great example of that, although it’s still got some flaws, namely the underwhelming bottom half. She’s got the polish and the performance chops that you expect of an All Stars-calibre queen. Were it not for how her storyline has gone this season, I’d place top bets on her to win it all. But especially considering some of the online shenanigans she’s been involved with this season (including reposting a claim of favouritism on the show’s part against her—girl, what?), I’m thinking her chances of a crown are slim to none.

She’s got more of a chance than Tessa, though, who sadly departs after her lip sync against Kween. As mentioned above, this is a fair result in my book: Tessa’s commercial feels light on material, with nearly every joke stretched out far beyond the point of getting laughs. She opts for a different take on the runway, in a kind of starry-night-meets-Dianne-Brill outfit, but the materials she’s used for the stars are just too flimsy. With more time and an Alyssa-sized budget, you could see the look working well, but it underwhelms in this form.

After Alyssa wins her cash prize courtesy of Canva, Kween and Tessa face off to Thelma Houston’s “Don’t Leave Me This Way.” The last time we saw a lip sync to this song, Mimi Imfurst was lifting India Ferrah over her head in the third American season—so it’s been a minute! Unfortunately, this isn’t a great battle: while both are certainly activated, both are pretty messy and all over the place. Both try to step in front of the other at different points, though we only see Kitty call out Tessa’s move in confessional. In one particularly shambolic moment, it takes them a good 10 seconds to fully clear their reveal coats off the runway.

Ultimately, you can guess the result of this lip sync going in: three-time challenge winner Kween shantays, and Tessa sashays away. Sad to see her go, even if the result is a fair one. Tessa brought a real spark to this season, and we needed more of her energy to keep things fun. But fifth place was likely her ceiling, especially among such stiff competition.

And so we head into the finale with four queens you could’ve easily predicted: three RuGirls and an underdog. Could Nehellenia pull this out? Will either Kitty or Kween overcome their bad edits to actually win? Or has this all been a bit of a silly exercise on the way to handing Alyssa the crown that’s been obvious since the Meet the Queens videos? After Roxxxy Andrews’ loss in All Stars 9, I’m keeping my finger off the prediction pulse this time. Instead, I’ll just say that while I’d love to see Nelly on top, the desire to finally see Alyssa win Drag Race is a strong one. If either of them take it home, it’ll be a solid ending to a truly messy season.

Untucking our final thoughts

✨ Kween apologizes at the start of the episode to Nehellenia for coming off so harshly in Mini-Untucked, which Nelly accepts. In the present day, though, Kween released a statement on social media claiming it was something Nelly said to Soa that made her so upset. The whole thing’s kind of a mess, and I’m once again bummed that what should’ve been a celebration of queens from around the globe has been a depressing dirge of a season.

✨ A couple of records broken this week: Nehellenia is now the only queen to compete on two seasons and never place below safe in either. Incredibly impressive, and speaks to her consistency as a performer. And congratulations to Alyssa for beating her previous highest placement, and making her first finale ever!

✨ Michelle Visage is very fun in the directing segments, messing with Kitty about her accent and going back and forth with Nehellenia about her delivery of the word “art.” As Nelly notes, she’s watched enough Drag Race to realize that if Michelle is telling you to do something, you best shut up and listen!

✨ Speaking of Michelle, I must say I’m really excited to see how she does as host on Down Under Season 4. We’ve only seen her in such a capacity once before (UK Season 4’s makeover episode), and the show was running with the illusion that she was still getting marching orders from RuPaul then. How will Michelle judge when she’s the final say?

✨ Ts Madison is our guest judge this week, and while I must sigh at yet another American judge, I’m nonetheless very happy to see her in particular. She sometimes feels like the odd judge out on American Drag Race; despite being labeled a rotating judge by the show, she appears less on average than both Ross Mathews and Carson Kressley. I would change that in a heartbeat if I could, because as she proves again this week, she is the most competent and interesting judge of those three.

✨ The Queens of Outer Space runway category is sponsored by Star Trek: Discovery—a Paramount partner, as Ru notes with a wink. The only major thing this means is that the queens beam in on the runway, and they all beam together to Mini-Untucked. It’s cute!

✨ Ru never seemed to understand why Tessa represented more countries than just Germany—in this episode in particular, Switzerland. I take his point that, on a challenge like this, it makes more sense to advertise the country you’re a “delegate” of sorts from, but I also understand Tessa not wanting to do something she knows very little about. Besides, no matter what country she would rep, I think it would’ve taken a truly undeniable performance for Tessa to avoid the chopping block this week.

✨ We’ve got to wait a week for the finale—next week is a reunion LaLaPaRuZa in the style of Season 16’s. That was perhaps my favourite episode of that whole season, so let’s see if this one meets that standard!

The next episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race Global All Stars will be available to stream next Friday at 3 a.m. EST on Paramount+ in the U.S. and on Crave in Canada. We’ll be publishing recaps all season long, exclusively here first in our drag newsletter Wig!, and then on Xtra every week.