‘RuPaul’s Drag Race UK’ Season 2 finale recap: ‘A Little Bit of Love’ and then some

No matter what happened in this finale, RuPaul’s Drag Race UK Season 2 would have been declared a success. Building on what came before in the excellent first season, the show brought a highly charismatic, eclectic cast together, put them through some of the most enjoyable challenges we’ve seen in years and got another absolute banger of a girl group song out of it. The fashion ranged from the genuinely great to the affably and enjoyably disastrous, while the drama provided enough gags to keep us invested without making the season toxic. And the lip syncs—the first season’s biggest weakness—improved by leaps and bounds this time around.

A huge credit has to go to these queens, who came in hot, endured a massive curveball in a seven-month filming delay due to COVID-19 and never stopped giving it their all. It’s great to see them all back in this week’s finale, joining in the season’s RuMix performance (to “A Little Bit of Love”) and walking the runway in their best drag at episode’s end. Even Ginny Lemon, who walked off the set during her lip sync, and Veronica Green, who tested positive for COVID-19 and couldn’t return to finish filming, get their moments to shine.

But of course, this final episode ultimately belongs to our final four: Bimini Bon Boulash, Ellie Diamond, Lawrence Chaney and Tayce. Between them, we have an underdog, a Lip Sync Assassin, a comedy queen who dominated the first half of the competition and a Jacqueline-of-All-Trades who came back from lockdown to dominate the back half. And though all of them say it’s anyone’s game, it’s hard to believe anyone but the latter will win this competition. That, of course, is Bimini.

Going into the finale, based on the show’s Twitter polls, Bimini is clearly at the front of the pack. Tayce and Lawrence are a good bit behind her (though close between each other), while Ellie is a clear fourth. However, The Vivienne was a good bit less popular than Divina de Campo in similar popularity polls from Season 1, so it’s probably folly to invest too much in the fan votes. But at the same time… look at Bimini’s numbers! Look at her four wins, a record for Drag Race UK so far! Look at the positive notices from the press! She has all the momentum in the competition. Surely this is in Bimini’s bag.

Reader, it is not in Bimini’s bag. In fact, it is Lawrence’s crown to win, as she is declared the U.K.’s Next Drag Race Superstar. And while there’s a lot to dissect in the decision making that led to this, let’s first take the time to celebrate Lawrence’s victory. 

She absolutely smashed the early part of this competition, entering the workroom first and keeping us laughing for weeks. She showed off her vulnerable side as someone with insecurities and self-confidence issues, but triumphed over them to win three separate challenges: A design task, the morning show improv challenge and the RuRuVision challenge as part of the United Kingdolls. There’s a varied skill set represented in her wins; she deserves a ton of credit for nailing different elements of this season.

True, Lawrence’s back half of the season has not been as strong. She had to lip sync for her life after Snatch Game, when her Miriam Margolyes impersonation didn’t land with the judges. She also somehow landed in the bottom three for her design challenge look, though that particular judging call baffles me to this day. And while she landed in the top for the stand-up challenge, her angry reaction to where Ellie put her in the performance order left a bad impression on the fandom. 

But in this episode, Lawrence demonstrates much of what’s made her such a contender this season. She commands the stage in the RuMix performance, writes a clever verse (superior to her “UK Hun” verse, in my opinion) and looks gorgeous in a drag racing-inspired gown—complete with two of her RuPeter Badges as earrings! Moreover, she’s a delight both with her fellow queens and with Ru and Michelle Visage in a sit-down interview, showing off the personality that charmed us from the word go.

There are a few herstorical elements to Lawrence’s win, including being the first Scottish Drag Race champion. By virtue of entering before Ellie, Lawrence was the first Scottish queen on Drag Race, and wasted no time quickly earning the crown for Glasgow. 

Also significant: After years of wondering when it would finally come to pass, Drag Race has finally crowned a plus-size winner. It’s an accomplishment Lawrence herself set out to do; as she said in her pre-show interview, she wanted “to set a precedent” for big girls winning Drag Race. “I really want to show the world what this big diva can do,” Lawrence said. “We can look fierce, wear high fashion too, not every joke needs to be a fat joke.”

Counting just RuPaul’s Drag Race seasons—that means All Stars and UK, but not Drag Race Holland, Drag Race Thailand or Canada’s Drag Race—there have been 20 winners crowned so far. That it took this long for a big girl to win is pretty shocking. So Lawrence can take a lot of pride in accomplishing what she set out to do—and doing it with a fun spirit and some great looks, while staying true to herself all the way through.

There will be viewers who have a hard time with this result, in particular because it means Bimini loses. This is a relatively low-key episode for her compared to what she’s done in the past few weeks of the competition. If all of those ranged from an A+ to an A-, this is a solid B+. 

She had a tall order trying to best her absolutely aces “UK Hun” verse, but while her verse this week feels slightly inferior, she more than made up for it in her killer execution of her RuMix choreography. Her finale gown is also a stunner. As with couture fashion shows, she chose to end her collection this season with a wedding dress. It’s beautiful, perfectly Bimini and a great note to end her journey on.

Surprising no one who reads these recaps, I am a massive Bimini fan, and I’d be lying if I said I’m not heartbroken to see her lose. Lawrence did a fantastic job this season, and fully deserves the crown. But Bimini deserved it, too. 

Her storyline was a terrific one, from being in the bottom two the very first week to not so much as scoring low again for the rest of the season. She took the seven months of lockdown to really work on herself and her drag, and came back fighting hard. As Graham Norton notes in the episode, she made the most of the lockdown to fashion herself into a real contender.

In terms of this episode alone, however, the clear winner for me is Tayce. She has easily the best verse in the RuMix, and her dancing is nothing short of perfection. Her “dance of the seven wigs” runway, as Alan Carr puts it, isn’t my favourite of the final looks, but it’s very uniquely her. And in both her speech to her younger self and her argument for the win, Tayce lets her guard down, speaks from the heart and cracks a few jokes for good measure. She actually got me teary-eyed with the speech to her six-year-old self, something that hasn’t happened during this segment since Peppermint’s speech in Season 9.

Tayce’s super-strong finale performance likely lands her in the top three to lip sync for the win, while Ellie gets the Roxxxy Andrews in All Stars 2-esque chop at the last moment. To be honest, I think it’s ultimately right for Ru to eliminate Ellie at the final hurdle. I’ve grown to appreciate her drag more and more each week, but her lack of wins and overall momentum in the competition is not that of a finalist. 

She made it to the top four, and for that, Ellie can be proud—and she looked stunning in her finale gown. But I was ultimately Team Alan and Graham in their debate with Michelle over Ellie: She’s not surprising us yet. Give her a few years and an All Stars run, though, and I think she’ll be an absolute force.

What’s egregious about this result, in my mind, is not Lawrence’s win. I think she deserves the crown, and has the competition resumé to back that up. Instead, I blame the edit for being incredibly hard on Lawrence the past few weeks, only to then switch gears for a Lawrence win. At least with The Vivienne, her edit had softened to the point that either she or Divina winning felt reasonable. Everything over the past few weeks had clearly been angling toward a Bimini win, and seeing that not pay off can’t help be frustrating.

My reservations from last week about Drag Race UK’s endgame remains intact. The first seven episodes of this season? Unimpeachable. One of the best runs we’ve ever seen in a Drag Race season. Sure, there were shocks and disappointments (catch me bemoaning Asttina Mandella’s early ousting for years to come), but they never felt inorganic or forced. 

The early boots were frustrating, but only because we loved this cast so much that we cared when they went home. But watching A’Whora go home in dubious fashion, having to sit through too-long episodes with nothing to fill them and seeing the edit suddenly and drastically shift to fit a different winner’s narrative really did put a damper on these last three episodes.

I still think this is an absolute top-tier season, and this finale on its own is pretty terrific. It’s really got a British feel to it; like an X Factor finale, this feels like an event from the word go. And, again, there’s so much to celebrate about Lawrence’s win, it almost feels like spoiling the party to complain—I just wish how we got here made a bit more sense. 

But regardless of any quibbles, I’m leaving Drag Race UK Season 2 very happy with how we spent the last two months. And I’ll admit: Hearing Lawrence tell Veronica “God help those queens on Season 3”? It just makes me want another season all the more. 

We’ve got a lot of Drag Race from other countries to get through first, but for the time being, you can catch me clapping for the UK, hun.

Untucking our final thoughts

✨The queens walk into the workroom with a cute little “UK Hun” throwback, complete with choreography. Nice of them to let Ellie join the United Kingdolls for a day!

✨Seems we’ve abandoned the concept of the queens recording a podcast in their finale interviews, and instead the show has brought back Tic Tacs. Honestly? Good! Always hated that the podcasts were never actually released. And it’s fun to have Michelle in the final interviews despite the change in format.

✨A couple of delightful details from Tayce: Her dad was a bassist in Wham!, and her first CD single that she ever bought was “Lady Marmalade” from Moulin Rouge! Tayce was a favourite of mine all season, so I’m glad she gets such a lovely edit in the finale.

✨Ellie reveals the first Drag Race season she watched was Season 6, and she instantly fell in love with Adore Delano. Taste!

✨The final lip sync song is Elton John’s “I’m Still Standing,” which is perfectly British, gay and finale-appropriate. It’s the second Elton song to be used for a lip sync—though the first, “The Bitch Is Back” in All Stars 4, was actually a Tina Turner cover.

✨One final shoutout for Asttina Mandella, who looks absolutely gorgeous in the final runway in a black-and-white look. I pray she comes back in a future season, because she is just too damn good to only get three episodes of Drag Race in her career.

Babes, we have a lot to talk about! Join us Fridays at 4 p.m. EDT for the livestream of Kiki with Kevin. 

RuPaul’s Drag Race UK may be over, but there’s so much more Drag Race to come—including a third season of UK later this year! The next episode of the American version of RuPaul’s Drag Race airs Friday, Mar. 19, at 8 p.m. EDT on VH1 in the U.S. and on Crave and OUTtv in Canada.