‘RuPaul’s Drag Race’ Season 14, Episode 15 recap: Family Ru-union

After two years of virtual reunions, RuPaul’s Drag Race is back in-person. And let me say: thank god. While I think the Zoom-only final episodes of Season 12 had their pleasures (particularly the excellent finale), Season 13’s reunion was not a reunion at all. The dismal affair tried to make up for what was lacking with original music videos and content, but it just felt like a slog to get through.

This year’s reunion reverts to the format used for the Seasons 9 through 11 get-togethers: the cast split in half to face each other, with Ru in the middle as moderator. This hasn’t always been a winning scenario—Season 11’s reunion was dire—but it’s refreshing to get back to a sense of normalcy. And while this isn’t the most explosive reunion ever, there’s a lot to like!

What I appreciate most about this episode is that, like how Season 12’s slumber party reunion matched the ultra-positive vibe of that season (Sherry Pie excluded), Season 14’s reunion is a family affair of sorts. There’s lots of love to go around, and the show picks interesting elements of that to explore: Lady Camden and Angeria Paris VanMicheals’ close relationship, for instance, or Kerri Colby’s connection with her trans sisters in the cast. But families fight, and so does this group—and the show doesn’t shy away from letting them hash it out.
The result is an episode that I think could provide a path forward for Drag Race as a whole: the queer family element of the series is in full force, but the show doesn’t present that family as something immune to conflict or without any flaws. I believe this group truly loves each other, and I also believe that with that love comes bumps in the road. If Drag Race as a whole can maintain this tone of loving honesty, I can see Season 14 becoming the start of a great new era for the franchise.

We get some reunion staples right off the bat, including a supercut of the season, a mashup of every “It’s chocolate” moment and a check-in with early departure Kornbread “The Snack” Jeté. (Who, it must be said, absolutely steals this reunion with every reaction shot.) But then Ru introduces a recurring segment for this episode: “Clash of the Queens!” This is how we’re going to revisit arguments from across the season, and the results are pretty strong across the board.

First we have Kornbread versus Jasmine Kennedie, with the latter thanking Kornbread for calling her out for cutting others off. (She does this by cutting Kornbread off again, showing that growth is a journey.) Camden compliments Jasmine for her persistent positivity despite being dragged, comparing her to a “resilient cockroach,” which makes Jasmine crack up, while June Jambalaya and Alyssa Hunter note that Kornbread, while right, may have hung onto the point for too long. Everyone amicably agrees, and we move onto the next one.

Hoo boy, okay. So Daya Betty versus Jasmine is next on the docket, and judging by Daya’s picture-in-picture reactions to her own reads of Jasmine all season, she is not backing down. And indeed, she immediately does not, leaving Jasmine frustrated. She calls Daya out for not making an attempt to resolve things off-show, noting that prior to an appearance together at Roscoe’s in Chicago, she let Daya know she still felt some type of way, only for Daya to not take her call. Alyssa hops in with a particularly blunt assessment—“Daya, you are the bitch”—while Kerri and Maddy Morphosis jump to their sister Daya’s defense as she cries.

And here’s where I personally lost my patience with Drag Race: Kerri mentions that Daya has by far received the bulk of online hate and death threats sent to queens this season, and Ru doesn’t say anything. Seriously. Ru hears that, once again, one of his queens has been getting eviscerated online, and he says nothing. This is maddening to me. It should be the bare minimum that the host interjects right there and says: “No queen deserves hate or death threats for anything. Knock it off.” 

It’s the simplest action, and in my POV, it should happen every reunion, if not even more frequently! You can argue that it wouldn’t actually deter online trolls, and I could see that. But it’s still worth the effort; the show should lead by example and call this behaviour out. Instead, later in the episode, Ru will unironically refer to the Drag Race fanbase as being “the greatest fans in the world.” The whole thing leaves a bad taste in my mouth amid what is otherwise a really nice reunion.

Ultimately, in a “final thoughts” button near the end of the episode, Daya expresses that she really does respect Jasmine (as well as Jorgeous), and Jasmine says she’s willing to work on their communication. And in a post-show pair of tweets, they indicate they have! Good for them: while I personally think Daya was permitted too much room to be negative this season, I do believe she means her apologies in this episode. At times, it feels like she’s actively wrestling with how badly she feels; in a particularly heated moment, she admits that what she said on the show was “hateful” and “rude.” So while it’s easy to knock her for backing down from her initial “no regrets” stance, I admire Daya for reconsidering.

The final Jasmine fight to revisit is her Untucked brawl with Maddy, and it’s clear just how much the rest of the cast loved this fight. Kerri openly stans, and Willow Pill says this is the fight where she realized she was on Drag Race. Both Jasmine and Maddy seem fine now, and both admit to playing into the “Untucked moment” of it all. And again, it’s hard to feel like Jasmine was being rude when all her braggadocio about winning the lip sync turned out to be extremely correct.

And in the only “Clash of the Queens” segment that does not involve Jasmine, Bosco and Camden revisit their argument over who would get the role of Saltine in “Moulin Ru!” I can tell neither of these queens cares about it that much, but I do appreciate that the show gives DeJa Skye the space to express the core of what was wrong with Bosco’s approach: instead of vaulting herself, like Camden did, she aimed to bring Camden down. Bosco agrees, and apologizes for being more aggressive than she intended. Then Bosco and Camden have a fake fight screaming niceties at each other, and it’s very cute.

There are some other bits mixed in that work to varying degrees. Maddy winning the Golden Boot for her Glamazon Prime look is a high, particularly since last year’s winner LaLa Ri appears via video message to present it. A whole segment about Alyssa being the trade of the season, however, feels like filler. And then we get the customary “Toot or Boot?” and mini-reading challenge sections, in which Orion Story suddenly becomes the hapless villain of the reunion. Coming for Kerri’s J.Lo look and trying unsuccessfully to drag Kornbread? That’s a bold strategy, Orion.

In the end, Season 14’s reunion is a good summation of what came before, and strikes the right tone to close us out. We’ve of course still got the finale to go, but that’s going to be performance-heavy with a final five, so this reunion feels more like the button for the season itself. And I’m leaving it feeling at worst neutral, and often much more positively, about the whole cast. That’s a pretty solid result, if you ask me.
Season 14, the seemingly interminable season, finally comes to an end on Friday! Who will win? What will the finale format be? And who will be Season 14’s Miss Congeniality? We’ll be back next week to break it all down. Until then, as always, stan LaLa Ri.

Untucking our final thoughts

✨No power ranking this week, since this is just a reunion. If I were to parse the reunion edit, I’d say Daya’s arc overall was not that of a winner (similar to how Kameron Michaels and A’keria C. Davenport were called out by one or more of their fellow queens in their reunions), and Bosco and Willow were largely invisible. So does that mean one of “Camgeria” has got the win? Well, it’s not so simple: Aquaria was also largely absent from the edit of the Season 10 reunion, so don’t count Bosco or Willow out.

✨A big critique of Maddy’s run on the show is that, for as funny as she is online, she came across quiet and reserved on Drag Race. Not in this reunion, though! Between dragging Ru for the “heterophobia” of putting two design challenges in the first part of the season, teasing Bosco for flopping Snatch Game or acing the reading challenge, she comes across as funny and in control. My favourite moment of hers all night: “Orion, how’s your last name gonna be Story? You can’t even read.”

✨The clear winner of the reunion is Kerri, who is at times a wise, serene presence in the conversation about queens coming out as trans, and also an absolutely hilarious narrator. She pulls out all kinds of turns of phrase, including calling Jasmine and Maddy “Ms. Mouth Almighty and Mr. Straight” and dubbing this “trans-tastic” season the “Sisterhood of the Travelling Estrogen.” She’s an utter delight, and if the industry is smart, she’ll have a talk show in no time.

✨Odd choice to have Ru deliver the first batch of questions directly to camera instead of the queens themselves, no? He gets better over time, but watching him stare off into middle-distance while theoretically talking to Bosco or Kornbread makes for a disorienting experience.

✨ DAYA: “Say you’re in school, and you’re going to take a science test…”

JORGEOUS: “I didn’t do none of that.” 

✨“I can’t even go to a porn store without being recognized anymore!” DeJa doesn’t get many moments in this reunion, but she makes the most of the ones she gets.
✨Last week, the promo rollout for All Stars 7 began, and—surprise!—it’s an all-former-winners cast! This, of course, had been the word on the street since the season filmed last year (it’s very hard to keep a secret these days) but it was still a gag to see a reveal that included legends like Raja and Jinkx Monsoon and recent fan-favourite winners like Shea Couleé and Jaida Essence Hall. Personally, I’m rooting for Jaida and Jinkx most; who are you stanning for AS7?

The finale of RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 14will air Friday, April 22, at 8 p.m. EST on VH1 in the U.S. and on Crave in Canada. Check back every Monday and Tuesday after new episodes for our recap and power ranking, and subscribe to our drag newsletter Wig! for exclusive Drag Race content delivered straight to your inbox every Tuesday afternoon.