Welcome to RuPaul’s Drag Race UK Power Rankings! Every weekend, we’ll debrief the week’s new episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race UK Season 4 to determine which queens are riding high, and which need she-mergency care. Not much is changing at the top of the charts—this remains a battle between two titan queens.
5. Jonbers Blonde (last week: 4)
I’m just running out of things to say about Jonbers, honestly. She has self-admittedly been performing in “mediocre” fashion this season, and yet not only has she survived a second lip sync, but it was in a double shantay she clearly lost. I will admit, without as much of the hyperbole as RuPaul served us, that Jonbers’ look on the runway was a stunner. She delivered the fashion that she’s been saying she can, and that, at least, is exciting. But I’m still not sure it’s enough to justify her continued presence in the competition.
What would it take for JB to win this whole season? Truly, a full abandonment of the informal rules that have guided Ru’s decisions for a decade and a half of Drag Race. It would be an utterly unprecedented decision, and one that would fly in the face of much better work being done by Jonbers’ competitors. Apologies to J. Blonde, but her victory at this point would be making the finale at all.
4. Black Peppa (last week: 3)
Again, I think the hype was too much on Ru’s part, but I did very much enjoy Peppa’s denim look for the Ruff and Ready runway category. Doing denim for a ruffle category demonstrates the creativity and wit that has been under much of Peppa’s work this season. The problem is that she just hasn’t been able to deliver at the level we expected at the start of the season. She’s fire in the lip syncs, and she’s turned some great looks on the runway. But I’m struggling to remember a challenge performance of hers outside of the very first.
What would it take for Peppa to win this whole season? She’d need to remind the judges why they fell in love with her in the premiere, and in a big way. A win next week would practically be required. And she’d have to smash the Rumix and final lip sync so hard that she’s absolutely undeniable. (Though that didn’t help Tayee in the Season 2 finale, but it was a big boon for Krystal Versace last season.) I don’t think it’s impossible, especially in contrast to Jonbers and (spoiler) Pixie Polite, but it would really surprise me.
3. Pixie Polite (last week: 5)
Pixie had a decent week at a time when “decent” was enough to avoid the lip sync. She’s lucky that Jonbers and Peppa had nothing to hang their hats on in their performances, while Pixie herself at least had a great Kim Woodburn impression prepared. Credit to her, though, for making sure she got that character. That was a layup, and it’d have been stupid to let that opportunity pass her by. The runway was a bit of a miss for me, though, and not solely because Cheddar looked better as Queen Elizabeth I during Snatch Game than Pixie did in an Elizabethan look on the runway.
What would it take for Pixie to win this whole season? Honestly, she’s as unlikely as Jonbers is at this point, even with one RuPeter Badge to her name. Fairly or unfairly, she’s received a lot of backlash from fans in the wake of her surviving against Dakota Schiffer, and that has basically guaranteed she’ll be last in the fan vote next week. That doesn’t mean everything, of course, but considering Ru is also not that invested in Pixie—beyond the comment about following her career this week—and her track record is among the worst left, Pixie’s got no real argument for a crown at the end. Like Jonbers, her victory will be if she makes it to the end.
2. Danny Beard (last week: 2)
I didn’t think weeks ago, as I watched RuPaul fawn over Danny in a way that I could only describe as Krystal Versacian, that I would be sitting here not only calling Danny robbed for the second week in a row, but that I would also be rooting for her crowning. Life comes at you fast! As I said in the recap, I’m just really impressed with how Danny approaches Drag Race, and her drag has surprised me repeatedly. Even if her ruffle look this week wasn’t my favourite, I appreciated that she went for something so different than we usually see from her.
What would it take for Danny to win this whole season? Not much! I still think Danny’s the easy favourite to take this home, based on what we’ve seen of Ru’s decision-making process in previous Drag Race UK seasons. However, I do think she needs Cheddar Gorgeous not to win next week. If Cheddar gets five wins, which would be the most wins in original format Drag Race for one queen literally ever, it’s hard to deny her the crown at season’s end. The good news is that a comedy challenge should be right up Danny’s alley. And even a win for one of the other queens would keep Danny’s record competitive. Again, this is not going to be hard for Danny to take home. But I’m not as confident as I was before Cheddar’s fourth RuPeter Badge.
1. Cheddar Gorgeous (last week: 1)
I think what I was missing a bit from Cheddar’s performance—which was relatively funny considering the sketch, don’t get me wrong—was specificity. Danny’s take on Davina McCall felt like someone who had a point of view about the character, while Cheddar was just doing a ditzy character we haven’t seen from her before. Versatile? Yes! Enough to rise above a mediocre sketch? Maybe not. But her pansy runway was stunning, and continued the trend of Cheddar bringing something meaningful to the main stage without relying on its meaning. She’s low-key been the runway queen of the season.
What would it take for Cheddar to win the whole season? As mentioned in Danny’s write-up, a win next week would probably put her over the edge. That kind of record is really hard to deny. But in a world where she’s just up one win on Danny, or evenly matched, I think the argument is harder. Cheddar is basically the Manila Luzon to Danny’s Raja right now: statistically just as impressive as Danny, but she lacks the same affection from Ru that Danny gets. If Cheddar doesn’t win this season, she could very justifiably argue, as Manila did at the end of Season 3, that she did everything she could possibly do. This is just an incredibly close race, and whichever way it goes, a queen deserving of the crown is not going to get it this go-around.
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