‘RuPaul’s Drag Race Global All Stars’ Episode 6 recap: There’s always time for a cocktail dress

Now that’s more like it.

There are still problems with this episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race Global All Stars, namely in the judging. (We’ll get to how Alyssa Edwards gets called safe for that dress later, don’t you worry.) But a fun, unique design challenge, an episode that has enough time to breathe and an actual story arc that involves dramatic tension between two queens? This is starting to actually feel like Drag Race again.

Of course, just because it’s Drag Race doesn’t mean it’s going to be the Drag Race everyone enjoys watching. The main conflict of this episode is between Kitty Scott-Claus and Nehellenia, and if initial reactions online are any indication, Kitty is coming out the loser in the court of public opinion—and some fans are wondering why this issue is airing at all. I personally agree with the former: I’m not sure why Kitty came into this season with this sense of superiority over some of the other queens, but she’s focusing on Nehellenia in a way that does not benefit her. (As always, when I refer to the queens, I refer to them as characters on the show that are a product of themselves, the editors, production and so on—never just the queens themselves as people.)

I can’t agree on the latter point, though! Like UK vs. The World Season 1’s cutthroat eliminations before it, this episode brings to the fore the kind of ugly rivalry we used to see on Drag Race routinely. Early seasons of the American series were filled with these kinds of truly bitter feuds—and those got to a far darker place than Kitty vs. Nehellenia has so far. (Remember Tatianna literally telling Raven “your insides are dark and nasty” during the reunion, and that being a proportionate response to what Raven said about Tatianna during the season?) I can understand the newer fans of the show who don’t enjoy this kind of drama. But I can’t accept the argument that this kind of conflict is Drag Race at its core.

But their fight isn’t the only thing this episode has to offer. In general, this installment is entertaining, featuring all the remaining queens in some way and pushing the story of the season forward. It gives us a surprising, deserving winner, and even though one of my favourite queens of the season departs, even her exit is one to feel good about.

The gimmick of this season’s second design challenge is to make a cocktail dress out of pre-brought fabrics. Sound too simple? That’s because they’re not the queens’ own pre-brought fabrics. After pairing up without knowing why—presuming they’d be working together in some capacity—the queens swap suitcases filled with fabrics they brought from home. This immediately leads to hilarious results, as suddenly Alyssa has to give away her ultra-expensive fabrics to wannabe drag daughter Tessa Testicle (“Well, Tessa just won the lottery!”), while Kween Kong immediately panics that body queen Gala Varo won’t have given her enough fabric.

The biggest drama, however, obviously comes from Kitty and Nehellenia. The issue starts when Nehellenia is left without a partner in the pairing-off segment, so she gets to choose a duo to work with. She chooses Kitty and Pythia, which inspires Kitty to call Nehellenia “Dolores Umbridge” in her confessional. To which I say: what the hell, Kitty? Nothing Nehellenia has done has demonstrated any malice whatsoever—maybe she wasn’t clear enough in her confrontation of the queens a couple of episodes ago, but to call her a villain over that? (Not to mention that making a Harry Potter reference on an LGBTQ2S+ program in 2024 is a bit tone deaf.)

Kitty engineers their three-way swap to make sure she gets Pythia’s fabrics, while Pythia gets Nehellenia’s and Nelly gets Kitty’s. Kitty’s primary fabrics are stretch lycras—nice materials, yes, but hard to work with if you can’t sew. Nehellenia, known for crying on her original Drag Race Italia season, immediately weeps over her new lot in the challenge. Kitty takes personal offense to this, calling her an “ungrateful cow” in confessional and admits she’s hurt by it to Nelly’s face. Eventually Nehellenia says it’s beautiful fabric, but she just never uses it.

At this point, if I were in Kitty’s shoes, I’d accept the miscommunication and move along. But Kitty continues to belabor the point for the rest of the episode, even into Mini-Untucked. And that’s after they’re both called safe! They just seemingly really do not get along, as evidenced by a werk room segment with Ru in which Kitty comes up with “margherita pizza!” as a catchphrase for Nelly. Ru loses his mind over it, while Nehellenia admits to the camera she has no idea why it’s funny. But the whole interaction just underscores the tension in their relationship. 

As I said, though, they both make it out of this episode alive. So does Alyssa, to which I must stop for a moment and laugh at the absurdity. In fairness to Alyssa, Tessa gives her literal scraps to work with. But the too-short, poorly fitting dress she designs with them is absolutely worthy of the bottom two. The fact that Alyssa has the gall to be upset she’s safe later in the episode is not lost on me—she should be thanking her lucky stars she’s not lip syncing.

Anyway, onto our top and bottom three. In good position this week are Tessa, Pythia and Kween, the latter of whom genuinely surprises me this week. Not only is her look great (the shoulders!), it’s very different for her. She did the best job of anyone of molding her own aesthetic with Gala’s, and the result is an aesthetic I actually want to see her explore more. I would argue that if the challenge criteria were slightly different, she would win this. But the challenge is about using the fabrics, not about molding together two aesthetics.

So the win comes down to the two best garments of the week. Tessa’s is not quite as impressive technically, but she leans into the asymmetry that Ru loves, and uses Alyssa’s fabrics well. Pythia’s is the better actual dress; Ru all but says so when he notes it could walk onto a Paris runway right now. But Ru actually says what I wrote in my notes upon seeing the look: the accessories are wrong. In particular, the choice of black gloves really offsets the gorgeous gold colour. Throwing a bunch of gold rings and other jewelry on the gloves doesn’t help tie it together, it’s just more on top of more. It’s a bummer, because I love Pythia, but I can’t deny that Tessa deserves the win this week.

This is, of course, the first win for a non-RuGirl since Week 3, and only the third overall. (The other one, Vanity’s win in the second premiere, had to be a non-RuGirl win, as none of them competed in that episode.) Tessa does seem to increasingly be catching Ru’s eye—maybe she can be a spoiler of sorts and find her way into the top four?

Just escaping the bottom is Vanity, and she is as gagged as I am about that. She literally says “What?” upon being called safe. She seems to strangely screw herself by throwing out what she was working on before, whipping up a kind of poisoned paper look that is interesting, but poorly made and stiff. You can tell Michelle Visage really hates it as she’s walking down the runway (it’s green, after all), but Ru seems to admire the strangeness of it.

That said, Vanity absolutely should’ve been in the bottom over Gala. While I do find Gala’s look ultimately wrong for her—it ages her—the judges’ fixation on her padding seems like excuse-making to put her in the bottom. Is this a design challenge, or a padding challenge? Sure, presentation matters, but I would argue her presentation is superior to Vanity’s.

Ultimately, Gala does stay in the lip sync to Jessie J, Ariana Grande and Nicki Minaj’s “Bang Bang,” which means we sadly say goodbye to Soa De Muse. The French queen has been one of my favourites this season, but design challenges seem to be her downfall. Her mug looks gorgeous, as the judges note, and the colour of her garment looks amazing on her. But the dress itself is a mess, stiff and unflattering. And in the lip sync, while neither queen has a great handle on the words (I’m considering it a blessing for us all that the Nicki rap portion is cut out of the edit), Gala manages to continue to surprise in her style. She earns the shantay.

But don’t cry for Soa: her exuberant departure shows that she’s ending this journey on the right note. She should be tremendously proud of her performances this season, and I hope she’s found new scores of fans to follow her in her drag journey. Any time she wants to perform cabaret in the States, you can count me in.

Untucking our final thoughts

✨ This episode runs for a full hour, which is both welcome (I don’t think it’s a coincidence that this is the best episode yet) and a bit perplexing. Why was the ball episode, which featured 27 more runway looks than this one, over 15 minutes shorter? I actually like variable episode lengths in theory, but they should reflect what the content of the episode actually needs to fill it out.

✨ The mini-challenge this week is a goddamn delight! Glamazonian Airways returns, as the queens board a “flight” (three airplane seats on a rocking device powered by the Pit Crew) in quick drag and are made to do their makeup mid-turbulence. It’s a really fun concept, and one I’d genuinely love to see on the main American series. I’d have given the win to Vanity, but Tessa takes it home.

✨ Tessa winning both challenges means she takes home $12,500 in prizes in just one episode—not too shabby!

✨ Pythia’s Glamazonian Airways makeup looks crazy. Her wig is on backwards and she has lipstick on her teeth. “It looks like Kitty on a good day,” she says in confessional. (Kitty’s makeup, meanwhile, is so bad that Ru asks her to cover it back up.)

✨ We get our routine Norvina appearance in the flight safety video, and maybe it’s just that it’s pre-taped, but she comes across a bit more natural and animated here! Usually in the werk room appearances, she comes across a bit stilted. Anyway, always nice to see the queen of Anastasia Beverly Hills.

✨ Model Jasmine Tookes is our guest judge, and while she’s fine, she is another American—making this four American guests in a row. Look, if Ru wanted to have a USA vs. The World season, he should’ve just done that!

✨ Vanity throwing out “I don’t know, inner saboteur I think?” as an excuse when Ru calls her out for being stressed is incredibly funny. It’s hilariously lazy pandering to Ru’s GuRu bullshit. It probably saves her this week! Good for Vanity, honestly.

✨ Snatch Game of Love is next week! Can Global All Stars keep up the momentum? I’m doubtful, but excited to be proven wrong!

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.