‘RuPaul’s Drag Race’ Season 13, Episode 9 recap: From Tudor to Tik Tok

So much has happened in the Drag Race world since we last eliminated a queen on Season 13. We had a Rusical! Kandy Muse almost went home, but then was saved! Drag Race UK had their own Snatch Game, plus two other challenges, leading to three queens going home! RuPaul’s Drag Race Down Under announced a cast reveal (coming tomorrow)! All Stars 6 moved to Paramount+! Yes, it has been a busy couple of weeks in the Drag Race world—but the competition itself has been anything but.

The fandom at large seems cranky about how long this season is taking, and I can’t blame them. I’ve also been feeling a bit sluggish, especially as I’ve been simultaneously covering the downright lightning-paced UK Season 2. But with the three-part premiere and the season’s double shantay behind us, we should be full speed ahead from here on.

And what better challenge to kick off the second half of the season than Snatch Game! Long the subject of questions about its existence, Snatch Game seems to have beaten back any criticisms and established that it is firmly and fully here to stay. I still very much love this challenge. It’s a gauntlet: Asking queens to impersonate someone else in look and voice, all while still being funny and quick-witted. It’s a look: Acting and improv challenge all rolled up into one. As Kandy notes, a queen’s Snatch Game performance can genuinely make or break not just their run on Drag Race, but their greater career in drag.

Luckily for the Season 13 girls, few have much to be embarrassed about. There are a couple of lesser performances—and at least one bomb—but the safe queens are better than the usual safe crop, and there are two genuinely great performances. It’s a very professional Snatch Game, which lowers the level of mess and makes for a more polished final product.

After a brief punk rock mini-challenge (Tina Burner wins $2,500, congratulations to Ms. Burner), the queens launch into Snatch Game prep, complete with a workroom visit from Ru. Already, the writing is on the wall for some of these queens. Utica’s choice to go with Bob Ross is met with great skepticism, while Ru shoots down Olivia Lux’s choice of Tik Tok star Tabitha Brown by labeling her “not a celebrity.” (Rude to Tabitha!) Ru is also skeptical of Symone’s choice to do Harriet Tubman, but seems impressed by Symone’s response when he brings up potential controversy.

In the game, Symone’s choice largely pays off. She gets a couple of good prop jokes in, including wielding her lantern and stamping her own face onto $100 bills—payback for when Donald Trump didn’t put Tubman on the $20. On the runway, Symone dresses as an angelic figure, turning around to reveal two gunshot wounds in her back and “Say Their Names” written across her fascinator. It’s a stunning look and statement, and Ru makes a special point to call it out before sending Symone to safety. The moment stands out largely because, for a show that frequently tries to be political, Drag Race often comes across as too unspecific or bland in its politics. To have a queen like Symone make such a bold statement says so much more than holding up some “Register to Vote” signs. Like Mariah Paris Balenciaga’s stunning talent show performance in All Stars 5, Symone’s look represents a real evolution in Drag Race.

Joining Symone in the Untucked lounge are Tina and Kandy, both of whom manage to get through this week without being critiqued. Tina’s Richard Simmons is a bit too much of the same joke, while Kandy’s Patrick Starr feels very much like just Kandy. They both look fine on the runway, too, where the theme of the week is fascinators and headpieces.

More successful in the Snatch Game is Rosé, who scores in the high group yet again. She goes with Mary Queen of Scots, and her pick of a historical figure (like Symone’s Harriet Tubman) allows a lot of room to make up the details of her character. It reminds me, in a very different way, of Valentina going with Miss Colombia Ariadna Gutiérrez in Season 9. When we don’t know much about a person, queens have a lot more leeway to play with their interpretation. Rosé knows this, and leans into a heavy, almost unintelligible Scottish accent to win Ru over.

But the top two are quite clear (to me, at least, although the judging call-out order indicates Rosé might’ve actually been second). From my point of view, Denali is a very strong second this week. On the runway, she goes full diner waitress, even rolling around on skates to complete the illusion. In the challenge, she goes with Jonathan Van Ness as her character, which initially scares me; JVN is a big personality, but their popularity is also fairly recent, which can sometimes lead to a scarcity of material. But I should’ve known better than to doubt Denali, who seems to have prepared for this competition the way she prepares for an ice skating tournament. She is loaded with punchlines, and has such a fun way of talking as JVN that makes Ru cackle. It’s an impressive performance.

And yet, it’s not the winning performance! That’s because Gottmik takes on the persona of one of her former makeup clients: Paris Hilton. Though Ru expresses concern that knowing or respecting a person can make it hard to lampoon them in Snatch Game, Gottmik has no such issue. In front of contestant Raven, who did Paris Hilton in the very first edition of this challenge, Gottmik makes her Paris a fully realized character. She is a savvy businesswoman with a partially fake persona for the cameras, one whose point of view as a self-styled DJ is to just turn on her computer and see what happens.

Gottmik’s fascinator look is as amazing as her Snatch Game performance. She goes for a punk rock runway, complete with her signature white face, and uses a giant paper clip as her headpiece. She looks stunning and sells the hell out of it. More so than the Bag Ball challenge, which felt like a close competition between her and Utica, Gottmik blows it out of the water this week. She earns this win, her second of the season (tying her with Olivia and Symone).

Speaking of Olivia and Utica: Things get testy between these two friends. Both fail to impress in the challenge—Olivia’s Tabitha Brown never goes anywhere, while Utica absolutely bombs as Bob Ross—but both seem to have a semi-deluded impression of how they did. Utica apparently tells Olivia off-camera that she did well, only to later say on-camera in conversation with Denali that she thinks Olivia is in trouble. Olivia overhears this, and takes major issue with Utica’s flip-flopping. It all seems to be setting up a lip sync between the two of them.

But that would be unfair because, while Olivia is unimpressive, she is nowhere near bottom-two quality when compared to Elliott With Two Ts. The Las Vegas queen goes with Rue McClanahan, and her repetitive jokes about being horny for “gentlemen” quickly grow tiresome. She lands in the bottom next to Utica, spelling one of the two queens’ doom. No double shantay is coming to save them!

The lip sync song is the 1987 single “Fascinated” by Company B—a very cute choice after a fascinator runway. You’d peg this dance-y song as one by which Elliott could easily beat Utica, but you would lose that bet. Elliott is surprisingly subdued in contrast to her “Whole Lotta Woman” lip sync, while Utica wisely bounds all over the stage. She also keeps her campy facial expressions to a minimum, though we do still get a couple of moments (including a tongue bit at the start of the performance). It’s a clear win for Utica Queen, as Elliott must take both of her Ts and sashay away.

This is a strong episode and feels like a continuation of the season’s upswing that started in the Rusical. Unfortunately, airing the COVID-19 documentary special between them killed the momentum—hopefully next week’s makeover challenge continues the forward trend. Season 13 is already striking me as one that will be more enjoyable as a binge than watching it week-to-week. It’ll have to stick the landing in its back half, though, to fully earn that reputation. 

Untucking our final thoughts

✨Interesting tidbit: The top three this week is the same as it was in the last episode, while the bottom three from last episode are the safe three this go-around. This, of course, means the three safe queens from last time are the ones in the bottom this week. Got that? Good! We love a rotation.

✨During her runway presentation, Symone makes a point of saying the names of several Black people killed in 2020—Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Brayla Stone, Tony McDade, Nina Pop and Monika Diamond—as well as Trayvon Martin, the 17-year-old shot and killed by George Zimmerman in 2012. It’s a breathtaking moment, free of any other runway commentary, until it’s capped off by guest judge Ts Madison saying, “Now that’s a statement piece.”

✨Speaking of Ts Madison! She’s terrific this week, so engaged and funny throughout the runway and critiques. You can tell she’s a real fan of Snatch Game, and has a lot of expectations for the queens in their performances. Her last episode was her first time guest judging, so she was still getting her sea legs. This time, she was utterly and completely herself, and the panel was all the better for her presence.

✨Elliott’s imitation of cricket sounds make me think she has never heard a cricket before.

✨Prior to this episode, four queens had gone home this season across eight episodes: Kahmora Hall, Joey Jay, Tamisha Iman and LaLa Ri. By contrast, Elliott is the first of four queens who will go home in March alone. This season really is about to take off like a rocket.

✨“I am a big fan of the entire Tudor dynasty.” Ts Madison about Rosé’s Mary Queen of Scots, but also me while listening to the musical Six on Spotify.

What’s on your mind, queen? Join Kiki with Kevin livestreaming every Friday at 4 p.m. EST and tell us all about.

The next episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race airs Friday, Mar. 12, at 8 p.m. EST on VH1 in the U.S. and on Crave and OUTtv in Canada.