‘RuPaul’s Drag Race UK Versus The World’ Episode 3 recap: Anything could happen

Since All Stars 2 premiered in 2016, the spoken promise of the RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars format has been that anyone could, given one bad day and some strategic machinations on their competition’s part, be sent home. Yes, even frontrunners would be vulnerable in such a format—moreso, even, because the smallest slip-up would not benefit from the unspoken protection RuPaul usually provides to his best girls.

However, that promise has rarely been fulfilled: more often, queens choose to eliminate based on track record or judges’ critiques than anything else. Alaska and Detox used the format defensively in All Stars 2 to keep their friend Roxxxy Andrews in the competition, but while an Alyssa Edwards or Tatianna fan (ahem, me) might argue they were unfairly eliminated, we were all-but-certainly headed to an Alaska crowning that season no matter what. The details of how we got there were secondary.

Even a change to the group vote format in All Stars 5 didn’t change much: an attempt to get Shea Couleé out that season ultimately went nowhere, and while there were some split decisions in All Stars 6, frontrunners like Ginger Minj and Ra’Jah O’Hara never felt in real danger. The one exception to this pattern of safe decisions came in All Stars 4, when Naomi Smalls so memorably eliminated Manila Luzon—but that was late in the season, after a run of largely fair decision-making by the rest of the cast.

But UK Versus The World, which has so far shown sparks of potential strategic gameplay, suddenly changes the game in its third instalment. Finally, after years of queens not embracing the chance to eliminate their biggest competition, someone makes a dramatic move. It’s one that will no doubt upset the fans of the queen eliminated, but I can’t help admire the drama of the result. If the first two episodes of UK Versus The World felt like a show that was still deciding what it wants to be, this episode is a clear declaration: this is drag Survivor, and no one is safe.

The seeds for this strategic shift are planted early, as Jimbo reveals she picked Jujubee’s lipstick last episode, not Cheryl Hole’s. She frames this as a strategic decision both to the other queens and in a confessional, claiming that her “devilish side” prompted her to pick her bigger competition at the last second. (I remain confused as to whether Juju is a beloved veteran and a threat to win it all, or a tired queen on her fourth try who is flopping—the queens seem to change their idea of her on a dime.) The rest of the cast is shocked by this decision, particularly in how Jimbo frames it as strategic.

Making matters worse, Juju reveals to the group that Jimbo offered her a safety deal if she kept her, and instantly broke it. Jimbo defends this by saying she offered it to both Juju and Cheryl, which only makes matters worse. Now Jimbo is labeled the shady, strategic player, a title she seemingly does not shy away from. (She even admits to Baga Chipz that their alliance, Team Bimbo, is the only alliance she considers real.) But she won’t be the only strategic queen in this episode, no ma’am.

We’ve got a Reading Is Fundamental mini-challenge to get through first, though, and it’s a good one! A few favourite reads:

• Janey Jacké to Baga: “I think you took the wrong stage door. They’re filming Botched next door.”
• Pangina Heals to Blu Hydrangea: “You’re such a horny little devil! When you took the A-levels, you got an STD.”
• Pangina to Jimbo: “Canadian, just like Celine Dion! That explains why, when you do the lip sync, you go down like the Titanic.”
• Jimbo to Mo Heart: “You’ve been passed around more than a collection basket on Sunday—and gotten less change!”
• Jujubee to Pangina: “RuPaul was looking for the most beautiful, talented drag queen from Thailand. Was she busy?”
• Jujubee to Baga: “You walked into the room as Princess Di, but I just saw Princess Diarrhea.”

Jujubee earns her third Reading Challenge win across her many runs on this show, becoming the first queen to win it three times. But overall, the results are solid across the board. Only Mo completely bombs—and she bombs—but Baga’s not great, either. It’s a bit of foreshadowing that Baga will remain disappointing throughout this episode, as Ru introduces the maxi-challenge: the Rusical.

Your mileage may vary when it comes to Rusicals—unless they’re singing live, I’m pretty uninterested—but this one at least has a unique premise! Each queen is assigned an odd take on a beloved musical character (think “Tracy Fatberg” instead of Tracy Turnblad from Hairspray), and they’re thrust into a comeback reality competition called “West End Wendys” to try and return to the spotlight. Basically, it’s a chance for the queens to impersonate famous people and characters while avoiding copyright issues, and give them off-brand versions of those characters’ signature songs to lip sync to.

Juju gets to assign the parts, and while everyone gives a couple of options of what they might want—facilitating Juju’s goal of giving everyone something they’d like—Baga insists on the part everyone wants, “Lally Bowlez.” The character is basically Liza Minelli, filtered through her role as Sally Bowles in Cabaret, and Baga says she’d be the best at it. But Juju wants the Lally role, and as the mini-challenge winner, it’s her right to keep it for herself. Baga’s insistence on just one (taken!) part lands her with the Hairspray role, one she says is her last choice.

Instead of taking this challenge and running with it, Baga throws a hissy fit. It’s pretty egregious, with her moaning on and on about not getting what she wants. She even tells Jimbo she only likes her and Blu, and the rest of the queens annoy her. Juju, for one, is amused: “I didn’t think Baga was being serious, but I think she’s really upset. And it’s kinda funny!” 

The best read on the situation, however, comes from Mo. “Being the ‘most famous woman in Britain,’ I think she’s used to having her way and getting what she wants,” she says in a confessional. “And she’s just not getting it, and… tough titties!” In the extraordinarily short time since her season aired, Baga’s ego seems to have ballooned 10 sizes larger. And it’s a shame: though she wasn’t my favourite in UK Season 1, I enjoyed Baga, and I considered her a major part of why that season was as successful as it was. Now, she’s actively unpleasant to watch, and is a major drain on UK Versus The World—and one apology in mini-Untucked this week after being called out by Pangina and Mo won’t change that.

But despite a flat, unenthusiastic, poorly danced take on Tracy in the challenge, Baga is once again waved to safety. She’s being treated with kid gloves this season, and were it not for how actively bad her edit is, I’d assume it’s because she’s going to win it all. But no, instead it seems like Ru and production are at odds over how to treat Baga. A similar problem is happening over on Season 14 with Jorgeous, although I’d argue the framing is different: Ru loves Jorgeous while the edit is less enthused; in UK, Ru seems to be okay giving Baga passes while the edit buries her.

Joining Baga in the safe crew is Blu, who is well-cast as a horny take on Maria from The Sound of Music but looks somewhat angry throughout. Mo scores an ambiguous “safe with critiques” spot—her notes are mostly negative on her “Spunk-N-Spurter” Rocky Horror Picture Show homage, but she’s not up for elimination. 

Everyone else in this very small cast is in the top or bottom: Pangina and Janey land their second top placement each for their work. For my money, Janey’s is the best performance of the episode. She has a tough assignment, having to make the very non-fictional character of “Meryl Streep” as funny as her competition’s exaggerated roles. She gets all of Meryl’s little tics exactly right, using her costuming from Mamma Mia! to her benefit. (The judges’ note her choice of hands-in-pockets is perfect, and it really is a knockout.) Pangina excels as “Fannie,” an older take on Annie, but she also gets one of the biggest characters of the lot. I like both of their performances, but I appreciate the difficult curve of Janey’s just a bit more.

The two are thrust into deliberations again, this time weighing the fate of bottom-dwellers Jimbo and Jujubee. This is the former’s first time in the bottom, but her take on “Dodo the Dog” in a Wizard of Oz (by way of Wicked?) tribute is pretty clearly the worst of the lot. She purposefully opts for simpler choreography, citing neck stiffness and drawing skeptical responses from Mo and Pangina in response. But she does nothing to elevate her character—one she chose for herself, mind you—and makes some strange choices that further undercut any potential entertainment value.

But of course, Jimbo has two top placements on her report card, while Jujubee has been struggling all season. She lands in the bottom again for a valiant-but-insufficient take on Lally Bowlez. She lacks any of the Liza-isms that the part clearly calls for, although she does her best to execute the given choreography faithfully. This is somehow Juju’s first Rusical in her many seasons, and you can tell she misses some of what the challenge calls for in terms of emoting and characterization.

Juju seems sad in the deliberations, but she’s not sad enough to stop playing the game! She notes to Janey that Jimbo picked both of their lipsticks the last two weeks, playing up Jimbo’s threat level as someone who wanted to send them home. I find this gameplay more effective than what Jimbo attempts, which is more clumsy deal-making. She particularly errs by assuming that Janey would also ask for a safety deal, which Janey pointedly rejects. “I’m playing the game like everybody plays the game,” Jimbo says. But that’s just the thing! Everyone on this cast may be playing a game, but they’re not playing the same game. They all have their own codes and ideas of what they want to do, and it’s so much more interesting as a result. I’d much prefer this level of intrigue and spontaneity to the lock-step decisions of seasons past.

Pangina says she’s approaching the decision as she did as a judge, judging on the merits of this week’s challenge. That would seemingly spell doom for Jimbo, but there’s still a lip sync to get through first. And hey, Janey won one last week—maybe she could win and choose to eliminate Jujubee? Except no: on the Vengaboys’ “We Like to Party,” Pangina is a fucking machine. She embodies the joyous spirit of the song, as does Janey, but also uses dance breaks to execute some of the most impressive moves we’ve ever seen in a lip sync. She’s mesmerizing to watch; I’m with Mo, who shouts out at the end, “Come on, choreography!”

And so it comes down to the reveal of two-time Gold RuPeter Badge-winner Pangina’s lipstick, which almost feels like an afterthought once it happens: she has eliminated Jimbo, taking out huge competition at the first opportunity. Jimbo cries through her final words, paying tribute to Ru and earnestly thanking everyone for their time. And then, of course, being Jimbo, she turns it back to a joke at the end: “I’ll get you, Ru! And your little dog, too! I’m talking about you, Michelle.”

With Jimbo gone, all bets are off. Who might go next? The game has changed, and UK Versus The World is better off for it. It’s a shame that Jimbo won’t get her chance to compete for the crown, but she serves as a cautionary tale: this season, “beating the best” can happen at any time.

Untucking our final thoughts:

✨Up and Down: Jimbo leaving means our only challenge winners left are Pangina and Janey, and at least one of them just put a big target on her back (although I think Janey likely picked Jimbo’s lipstick, too). Pangina will have to be flawless for the rest of the season to avoid someone chopping her like she did Jimbo. If she can get to the end, I think she’s almost certainly a lock for the win. If she doesn’t, I’m looking at someone like Blu as a potential spoiler: she’s getting a lot of story, and I’ve thought from the start that UK Versus The World is most likely to produce a UK winner. It’s possible it could still be Baga, but apology or no, her edit remains so terrible that I’d be shocked to see her emerge victorious in three episodes’ time.

✨I don’t want to get too conspiracy-minded with UK Versus The World, since this season’s judging has actually been pretty straight-up so far. (Props to Ru for really falling in love with three queens he never judged before, and not just preferring his favourites from the U.S. and U.K. series.) But I do have to wonder if Baga has been kept safe knowing that she’s the most likely contender to kill Snatch Game. And if that’s the case, what will happen to her when it’s over?

✨You’ll notice I referred to Mo Heart as such throughout this recap, and that’s because we finally got her long-teased rebranding! The artist formerly known as “Monique” says she wants to be known as “a genderless entertainer,” and Mo is more androgynous. Good for her! Happy to officially meet the newly reborn Mo. 

✨Johannes Radebe from Strictly Come Dancing is the choreographer, and he’s a lovely addition to the Drag Race family. I love any choreographer who is encouraging but challenging, and who tailors their work to a queen’s ability. Would love to see him back in the future.

✨Mo pulls off a flashy move when getting up from the floor in rehearsal. “That was the bar, bitch!” she laughs. “I thought I was in the club!” 

✨The “Dot Dot Dot” polka dot runway is a mixed bag: Juju has a nice top, but a terrible wig and tights, while Baga somehow pulls out a Day at the Races look that is worse than the one she wore in that category back in her original season. My two favourites, unsurprisingly, are Janey in a really chic “Catherine Zeta-Jones in Zorro”-inspired look, and Pangina wearing a work of architectural art on the runway. If Janey edged Pangina out for me in the Rusical, then it was the opposite on the runway.

✨Snaps all around for Bridgerton’s Jonathan Bailey, who makes for a remarkably lovely guest judge this week. He’s cute and game (and wearing an on-theme shirt!), and he has some funny puns in the runway commentary. But while he keeps the jokes going during critiques (“It was a bit Kander and Low-Ebb,” he says of Juju’s Cabaret take), he also offers genuine criticism. The show should welcome him back anytime.

✨I’d be remiss not to shout-out Tammie Brown’s legendary “We Like to Party” lip sync from 2012 here. Pangina and Janey are both great in their own ways, but Tammie’s performance remains definitive.

✨One of the most quietly delightful moments of the episode is Jimbo seeing RuPaul’s seahorse brooch upon his entering the workroom, and being awestruck in response, “A seahorse!” I will miss her.

✨In a funny bit of coincidence, everyone Pangina has eliminated has come from Canada’s Drag Race. And with Jimbo’s elimination, Canada becomes the first country completely eliminated from contention this season. I wouldn’t have guessed that when we started!

✨Speaking of Jimbo and Pangina, the former leaves the latter one hell of a mirror message, all in caps: “MY NAME IS PANGINA AND I’M A STUPID IDIOT PS: I LOVE YOU ALL PPS: EXCEPT JIMBO.” Wonder what her reaction to that will be!

The next episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race UK Versus the World will be available to stream Tuesday, Feb. 22, at 4 p.m. EST on WOW Presents Plus in the U.S. and Crave in Canada, as well as on BBC Three in the United Kingdom. For other countries, check World of Wonder’s streaming guide.