‘RuPaul’s Drag Race’ Season 17, Episode 6 recap: Under the Sea

Come on, Season 17, let’s get Sea SICKENING! It’s time for the ball challenge, and despite it coming a full six episodes into the season, thanks to the Badonkadunk Tank, we are still at the Top 12. That means 36 looks on the runway, and if you’ve read any of my previous recaps of mega-ball challenges, you know that I hate when there are so many looks on the runway. It’s nearly impossible to keep track of them all! But reader, I did my best while watching this episode, and you’ll get my takes on nearly all of them in the power ranking. For this recap, though, we’ll just be focusing on our top and bottom queens—and, of course, on SprayPaintGate.

Before we get into that mess, though, let’s set the scene. There are three categories: a Bathing Beauties swimwear category, a Sea Creature Couture category asking for outfits inspired by “colourful marine life” and the made-from-scratch final category, Sea Sickening Eleganza. This time around, the queens get unconventional materials, “up-cycling” marine debris into couture garments. Arrietty, the queen saved by the Badonkadunk Tank last week, is delighted to be here: to paraphrase Jinkx Monsoon, this is what she came here to do.

You could never accuse the MTV era of subtle edits when it comes to who will be in the top and bottom on every episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race, and the same is true this week. Arrietty is practically bound to either sink or swim this week with the amount of airtime she gets. Meanwhile, in Ru’s werk room walkthrough, we get two other major narratives. First, Hormona Lisa comes to Ru with a sketch that is in what can only be described as The Hormona Silhouette. You know the one. Hormona has been wearing looks with the same general vibe at a consistent rate not seen since Bianca Del Rio graced the Drag Race main stage. While Ru does say she doesn’t need to change things up now, he does think the judges are about to tire of the same look. Hormona seemingly rethinks her garment, though as we’ll see later, that may not have been for the better.

Meanwhile, Lana tells Ru she feels like she’s coasting. She’s eager to get some actual feedback from the judges; at this point, she is one of only three queens to not receive any critiques all season long. (The others might surprise you: they’re Jewels Sparkles and Lexi Love, thanks to the Rate-a-Queen twist removing the need for critiques in the premiere episodes that they were in the top for.) We’ve seen this desire in other queens before, perhaps most notably Jan, who grew frustrated over being sent to safety (Jantucked, she called it) week after week. Here’s the thing: in the moment, any feedback seems like it’s worth it. But bottom placements on your track record are very rarely worth the benefit of hearing critiques.

Okay, stop everything, because Lexi wants to know who the hell ruined her garment. Someone spray-painted blue and brown onto her tarp fabric, and she needs to find out who it was. No one fesses up to it among the queens in the werk room, though Onya Nurve certainly looks conspicuous. When Lexi heads back outside upon hearing nothing, Onya admits to the other queens that it was her and Arrietty. (Jewels Sparkles immediately gets her lick back on Onya from the last design challenge, referencing the stolen trim. Props to her, she played the long game on that one.)

They had no idea the tarp was Lexi’s fabric—they thought it was a protective tarp to prevent spray paint getting on the ground. When Lexi goes back outside, she finds Arrietty and explains the situation, which Arrietty immediately owns and apologizes for. Because Onya’s drying fabric elements are brown, she susses out that Onya must be the other queen responsible. Arrietty is uncomfortable, not wanting to rat Onya out, but acknowledges that it’s hard to deny it.

Before Lexi comes back into the werk room, the other queens urge Onya to take responsibility and explain that it was a mistake. Onya doesn’t think this is the time, because Lexi is so worked up. (Read: she doesn’t want Lexi to bite her head off.) Lexi comes back in, walking close to Onya as if to make her feel her vengeful spirit, and Onya asks if “they” explained the situation to her. Who is “they” in this scenario, I wonder? The producers? Arrietty? The word on the street? Lexi immediately pivots around and makes clear she knows it was Onya, and she’s pissed Onya didn’t own it. This rapidly escalates into a full-on shouting match between the two, as Lexi insists Onya failed as a sister for not owning it, while Onya insists it was a mistake and that despite not taking immediate accountability, that doesn’t matter. “I’m owning it now,” she says, voice raised louder than we’ve seen in that werk room in some time. Jewels is loving the drama, and I gotta say, I am too. No more kumbaya indeed.

The next day, things resolve quickly: Lexi manages to fix her garment, and she apologizes to Arrietty and Onya at the start of the day for escalating the situation so quickly. Onya apologizes in turn, which Lexi accepts. It’s a mature moment—unsurprising coming from the two oldest queens in the room—but the whole situation is just dramatic enough to make this episode juicy. I imagine there will be a lot of strong feelings in the fandom about this situation. I personally am looking a bit askance at Onya, since this is the second time her actions have negatively impacted another queen’s look in a design challenge. This time is a mistake, yes, but Onya could stand to be a bit more aware of her surroundings.

Onto the runway! Again, we’re not doing all the looks in this recap, otherwise it would be 5,000 words, but definitely check out this week’s power ranking for more thoughts. Some quick evaluations of some of the safe queens’ packages: Kori King’s is surprisingly strong, Onya’s is surprisingly weak and Jewels’ is imperfect, but every look has something to recommend about it. Of the safe queens, I’d wager Jewels or Lexi is the closest to breaking into the top, while no one’s package is a disaster by any means.

Our top queens this week are Crystal Envy, Sam Star and, in a true comeback story, Arrietty. Both Crystal and Sam’s packages are good, but their Sea Creature Couture looks are doing a lot of the work that gets them into the top. Crystal’s inflating pufferfish look, inspired by Alexander McQueen, is a smash, while Sam’s viperfish garment, complete with steel cage skirt, is among my favourite looks of the night. Neither of their reveal-based Bathing Beauties looks are particularly strong, with the fit of Sam’s top being awkward and Crystal offering a slightly too literal take on Barbie inspired by Margot Robbie’s portrayal.

Both of them turn in Sea Sickening Eleganza looks that make a strong impression, but aren’t as strong when you look closer. Crystal’s pink lemonade look has a lot of style and fits her beautifully, but the detailing feels a bit too gimmicky. Sam’s trash bag ball gown, on the other hand, is incredibly high-impact. Had I just seen it walk the runway from afar, as the judges did, I think I would be hard-pressed to deny Sam the win on the strength of it alone. But the issue becomes clear the more you look at it: there’s a bright green tarp underneath the bags that is too visible. It’s just a piece of fabric with trash bags attached. Had she actually sewn the bags together and maybe constructed a skirt cage to give it volume, this could’ve been a showstopper. As it stands, it’s good, but not spectacular.

You know who is spectacular this week? Arrietty. The elven queen hasn’t been my favourite this season, particularly after her temper tantrum last week in response to her bottom placement. I said in last week’s power ranking that if she used her being saved as a chance to take a beat and reset, she could make a solid run—but simply keeping on the same path wouldn’t work. I’ll give Arrietty huge props, because she really did reboot her trajectory in this competition. She demonstrated three entirely different looks: a blue bodysuit look inspired by Avatar, an airbrushed take on a lionfish and a jellyfish warrior outfit that uses coral details beautifully. What’s most impressive is that in each of the looks, she has a different style of mug, and none of them is a replication of her signature beat. But none of them is so far away that you don’t still get Arrietty! This is a grand slam for the Seattle queen, and she gets a well-deserved first win.

Our bottom three include Hormona, Lana and Acacia Forgot—the latter of whom ultimately skates to safety. I’m a bit perplexed why Acacia is still around: she’s been doing okay in the challenges, but she barely gets any screen time and the edit seems largely uninterested in her. Her looks are all pretty underwhelming this week: I like the vinyl beach ball swimsuit more than the judges do, but I think the red feather star look is a real miss and her foil eleganza look is just too stiff. Still, she lives to slay another day, but I can’t imagine we have that many more weeks left with her.

That leaves Lana and Hormona to duke it out in the Lip Sync for Your Life, and both deserve their bottom placements. Not one of Lana’s three looks is novel or interesting, with the macramé bikini for Bathing Beauties being way too simple and her otherwise solid purple sea urchin look being weighed down by an unnecessary cape. Hormona turns out looks that fit right in her wheelhouse—one of the judges gives her props for a “through line” in her whole package—but there’s no real point of interest to any of them. The Sea Creature Couture look is particularly problematic for me: it’s just another Hormona dress, rendered in different colours. We’re not seeing the necessary range with Hormona; she deserves critique for not varying her looks up just as much as Arrietty did for sticking with her elven makeup.

Both really fall apart in the Sea Sickening Couture category, where I don’t really have more substantial critiques to offer other than I find both looks pretty ugly. For Lana’s, I can understand what she was going for with her “bad bitch fish,” but it just lacks style or any sense of cohesion. With Hormona’s, I’m not even sure what I’m looking at. The skirt is bizarre, and only made worse when she reveals that the shape is being given by trash bags underneath. I don’t understand what inspired this garment, and it’s more than enough reason to send her home.

Before we can do that, though, we have a lip sync to get to: it’s to Olivia Rodrigo’s “get him back!”, which is both a great song and not an ideal LSFYL track. (“love is embarrassing” would’ve been a much better fit.) Hormona puts up a fight, but she’s very literal in her interpretation of the song. Lana goes for sex on a stick, evolving her performance as the song goes on, and it works well. Lana shantays to safety, and our other Badonkadunk queen sashays away. It’s ironic that in the same episode that one of the saved queens wins, the other goes home, but so is the way of the Badonkadunk: even a stay of elimination can’t save you forever. We’ll miss Hormona, but judging by the results of this challenge, her departure is the right call.

Untucking our final thoughts

Someone call Loosey LaDuca, because we’ve got a mini-challenge this week! It’s a fun one, too, with the queens working in teams to get a set of lipsticks across the room in a relay race—but the lip sticks must be transported only by mouth, and delivered through a glory hole. It’s the kind of fun, raunchy challenge that Drag Race used to do a lot of in the Logo days, but got surprisingly prudish about upon moving to VH1. Seeing it here further proves that the MTV era is blending the best of both previous eras—but let’s get a mini-challenge more frequently than every five episodes, hm?

Anastasia Beverly Hills CEO Norvina is on hand for the mini-challenge, and while I do miss her robotic line readings in the “Spill the Tea” challenge, she nonetheless brings the absurd regardless by dressing like the Pokémon evolution of Farrah Moan. The queens, after getting only five minutes to put on “quick glory hole drag” (a pussycat wig, cha-cha heels and knee pads), are assigned to either Team Ru or Team Norvina for the challenge. Team Ru ultimately wins, and each queen gets $500 from Anastasia Beverly Hills. Cute!

Sam says she’s doing a ball gown. Suzie repeats it “ball GOWN,” just like Glinda in the “Popular” sequence in Wicked. Theatre queen!

Poor Lucky Starzzz must’ve just been fuming when she learned the queens eventually did get an unconventional materials challenge.

Ru tells Suzie Toot and Lydia B Kollins they look alike out of drag, that they should go on tour with a double act. “Yes, as Victorian orphans or something,” Lydia deadpans, to Ru and Suzie’s delight.

Arrietty tells Ru that she feels Crystal should’ve been in the bottom last week instead of her, because while she wasn’t good in RDR Live, she at least took a swing—Crystal didn’t. Ru respects it, but Crystal does not, asking Arrietty about it later. Arrietty almost rethinks it, asking Crystal what her runway was (“The pink silicone, bubble gum!”
Crystal says in an offended tone), but then she doubles down. I like the sass, honestly! And dare I say I nearly agree with her?

We get something unprecedented in Ru’s werk room chat with Lana: he explicitly tells her that she came close to the bottom three for her Monopulence look. This really gags her (and the other queens!), but Ru explains further that the garment was unfinished. “So I recommend that you step your pussy up with finishing edges and all that kind of stuff,” he says. You never heard Tim Gunn say “I recommend that you step your pussy up” on Project Runway, and that’s what really sets Drag Race apart.

I genuinely cannot believe I’m about to type this sentence: Charles Barkley is Sam Star’s godfather. The show flashes up an Instagram story of Charles at one of Sam’s drag shows, even! Absolutely wild. Mad Libs-ass lore drop. I’m obsessed.

RUPAUL: “Oh my gosh, they found Amelia Earhart.”

MICHELLE: “That was the only fucking thing I wrote down!” 

Euphoria’s Hunter Schafer is our guest judge this week—the only guest judge, which doesn’t seem unusual in modern Drag Race, but I’ll explain why it’s notable in the next point. The queens are very excited about her, particularly Lexi, and she looks great! Her critiques are fine, but she gets a bit … overshadowed, shall we say.

Law Roach is on the panel in the rotating judge’s seat, and he is not named as a guest judge either in the intro or by Ru in the werk room. So is Law officially a rotating judge on Drag Race? It certainly seems so! The Legendary stan inside me is delighted by this development, although I’m confused as to why the show didn’t make a bigger deal of it. Regardless, he’s in fine form this week, calling Sam’s look “Colombian cocaine couture” and comparing Suzie’s Amelia Earhart look to Kathy Griffin being found in a drained lake. Hoping to see more of Law on the panel soon!

“No more littering!” – Hormona Lisa, 2025

“Rot in hell, thanks a lot!” – also Hormona Lisa, 2025

The next episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race will air Friday, February 14 (happy Valentine’s Day!), at 8 p.m. EST on MTV in the U.S. and on Crave in Canada. Check back every Monday after new episodes for our recaps and power rankings, and subscribe to our drag newsletter Wig! for exclusive Drag Race content delivered straight to your inbox every month.