‘RuPaul’s Drag Race UK’ Season 4, Episode 3 recap: Twin winning

With all these RuPeter Badges flying around on this season of RuPaul’s Drag Race UK, it’s more notable as to who doesn’t have one yet. Of the 10 queens remaining in the fight to become Great Britain’s Next Drag Superstar, only three have yet to receive a badge: Jonbers Blonde, Sminty Drop and Baby. And Baby, in particular, is not taking that lying down. She says she is feeling “badgeless, nude, naked” at the start of this week’s episode, and she’s not here for it!

All of this set-up naturally means one of two things: Baby is walking out of this episode with a badge, or she is going home. I’ll give the show credit and say I’m not immediately sure how it’ll work out when the teams for this week’s design challenge are assigned. We get an interesting twist in the maxi-challenge: queens are paired up and asked to design two cohesive looks without just making them the same. There’s tangentially some connection to these outfits being ready for a bingo hall, but that gets dropped quickly. Really, this is the dramatic inverse of the Who Wore It Best? design challenge in UK Season 2: instead of trying to outshine your partner, you’re trying to shine together.

The teams are assigned via bingo ball draw, and Le Fil and Sminty are our first group. There’s a lot of potential for disaster with Sminty, who is not a queen who can just go with the flow—but Le Fil is a focused, calming presence. Baby and Dakota Schiffer are next, and it’s not a guaranteed successful group. Dakota landed in the bottom in the season-opening fashion challenge, after all. But she seems excited about Baby being able to bring her out of her shell more, and as I said, Baby’s got a lot of potential-win upside here.

The other teams are a bit more expected: Cheddar Gorgeous and Copper Topp being paired means the older queens will be working together, while Danny Beard and Pixie Polite have felt like natural buddies all season. Left over are Jonbers and Black Peppa, who both have a fashionable perspective and should, in theory, smash this challenge. In theory.

In practice, however, the results are somewhat unexpected. Baby and Dakota do pull out a strong victory, armed with black fabric that they don’t let go too dark. Returning rotating judge Alan Carr is right when he points out that their colour selection could’ve gone dour so easily. Instead, they lean into the ’90s with their silhouettes, and wisely use just enough details to bring their looks together. In particular, I love their matching hairstyles, rendered in different colours of hair (Dakota blond, Baby black). Their whole presentation is so fun and light, and it’s a deserved victory.

I think Sminty and Le Fil were just behind them in the judging, though, and it may have come down to one detail that tipped the scales. Sminty spends most of this episode spiralling, hating most of the blue fabrics that come out of their box. Le Fil does everything he can to keep things on track, which Sminty smartly notes on the runway. There’s little doubt that his work is what comes through most on the main stage, as the two model vintage swimwear looks that make them look like synchronized swimmers.

If I were judging individual winners this week, I would once again give the solo victory to Le Fil. His look is rendered immaculately, with some really impressive construction. However, the challenge is not to create one great look, but come up with two that read as cohesive. Unfortunately, as Michelle Visage notes, Sminty’s panty showing really disrupts the skirt of her look. In a week where only the smallest details separate the top two teams, this is enough to break things in Baby and Dakota’s favour. And based on that, I’d have made the same decision as Ru does.

I maybe wouldn’t have saved Danny and Pixie from any critiques, though. They weren’t worse than either of the bottom queens, but it feels odd that Cheddar technically placed “LOW” this week for a look that the judges couldn’t stop gushing over. (More on that in a second.) Meanwhile, Danny and Pixie completely miss the mark on not just making themselves look like twins. There’s cohesion to their looks, sure, but that’s just because they’re the same purple dress and black leggings with a gold necklace. One skirt is hiked up a bit more, but that’s the only discernible difference between the two.

Danny is very charming, and I can see how Ru is responding to her better than a lot of the other queens so far. But other than her pretty strong verse last week (which I’d still have placed behind Le Fil’s and Dakota’s on the winning team), I’ve not yet seen the work I’d expect of a frontrunner. My guess is we’re heading toward a moment where she’s told she needs to step it up—and I have no doubt she’ll do so. But this week’s work with Pixie is lucky to be waved through as it is.

Copper and Cheddar are one of our bottom teams, and it’s clear that if anyone is lip syncing from them, it’s Copper. Cheddar’s gold-draped villain look is a stunner, and if this challenge were judged individually, it’d probably be in the top alongside Dakota’s and Le Fil’s. But how good it is is actually a detriment to their team’s chances, because she so vastly outshines Copper. There’s a Barbarella thing happening with Copper’s look, especially with the white boots she wears (a clear mistake, which Alan notes). But Cheddar doesn’t look like a villain Barbarella would fight. Combined with how simple Copper’s actual garment is, and it’s clear that she’s in trouble.

There’s an argument to be made that it should just be Peppa and Jonbers in the bottom instead, though. The two try to make lattice work for them, layering strips of fabric to create a basket-weave effect. Unfortunately, they just don’t have enough time to make it come together, and Peppa’s piece in particular turns disastrous. She’s barely keeping her skirt on as she walks the runway, and the lattice crumples at the top. Jonbers’s look is not much better, but it holds together, which is enough for her to avoid elimination.

In a twist from how Ru usually judges challenges like these, it’s one member from each of the bottom groups lip syncing: Copper and Peppa. And while Copper puts up a fight in the lip sync to Ella Henderson and Jax Jones’s “This Is Real,” there’s a reason why Peppa is hailed for her star quality by her fellow queens, while Copper is voted as someone fading into the background. Peppa just tears the lip sync apart, and leaves no doubt that she should be the one to stay. The move where she takes her skirt off, kicks it up and grabs it alone is enough for her to be declared the victor.

I feel for Copper, who seems like a sweet queen, and is clearly a Drag Race devotee. But not every queen is going to be one who can pull focus and shine the way Ru needs his winners to. It’s less a statement about Copper and more about what this show is looking for at this point. Unless you can change Ru’s mind about you, as we’ve seen a few queens do before, you’re basically just biding time until your elimination.

Next week, it’s our improv challenge for the season, as Alan leads a “Catty Man” task that’s reminiscent of “Bossy Rossy” over in the U.S. Will this be where Danny starts her hot streak? Will Peppa bounce back from her bottom two appearance? Will one of our two badgeless queens, Sminty or Jonbers, pull out a surprise win? There are a lot of questions, and that’s a good sign for the season: I’m invested in a lot of these dolls, and I’m rooting for their success.

Untucking our final thoughts

✨ Our guest judge this week is Leomie Anderson, a British model who has a real eye for design. Her critiques are on point, even though they skew largely positive in front of the queens. I’ve noticed this becoming a trend recently: guest judges are saving their most critical remarks for deliberations instead of making them when the queens are on the main stage. I think there’s a lot of value in actually doing the latter, so I’d like to see guests step up to do so in future seasons.

✨ My favourite of Leomie’s lines is about wishing Jonbers wore dark hair, so it’d be “more Bella Hadid than Bella Ha-didn’t.”

✨ The mini-challenge this week is the Naff-ta Awards, which is akin to the superlative challenges we’ve seen in previous UK seasons. Peppa wins Beast in Show for showing the most star quality, while Copper “wins” the Best Background Actress in a Non-Speaking Role prize. (She’s unhappy about this, even questioning the girls as to their votes.) Other winners: Best Scene-Stealing, Attention-Grabbing Camera Hog for Danny, Best Actress Resting on Pretty for Baby and Best Hot Mess for Sminty.

✨ Getting Best Hot Mess gives Sminty the chance to pick fabrics for her team and assign all the others, knowing only the colour before opening the boxes. I’m not sure why she avoids black—it’s a super easy colour to make look great, as Dakota and Baby prove. More to the point, Sminty practically has a breakdown over some very predictable blue fabrics being in the box (like a blue-and-white checkered pattern). Seems like she makes some strategic mistakes here, to say the least.

✨ Peppa gets lots of laughs while noting that her skirt zipper somehow found its way around to the front of her garment. As long as you can keep the judges laughing, that’s usually a good sign!

✨ There’s a twist in the story of Pixie and Tia Kofi’s former girl group that she mentioned last week: Pixie and Tia used to date, and she blames herself for their breakup. They’re still good friends, but it’s a development I did not see coming.

✨ Man, Ru hates Jonbers’s name. I’m guessing it’s about the repeated “on” sound—he had a similar note about the flow of Heidi N Closet’s name. Will “JB” change her name by season’s end? We’ll have to see!

✨ “Well, I guess a Topp can bottom!” is a delightful exit line from Copper. I’ll miss her!

✨ The race is tight with so many queens already having wins, but it’s worth noting that Dakota has hit two remarkably quickly. I’m not sure I saw this potential in her in the premiere; she’s really standing out from the pack in an already very competitive season. Keep an eye on her—she’s going far.

The next episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race UK will be available to stream on Thursday, Oct. 13, at 4 p.m. EDT on WOW Presents Plus in the U.S. and on Crave in Canada. You can subscribe to our drag newsletter, Wig!, for exclusive Drag Race content delivered straight to your inbox every Tuesday afternoon.