RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 10 Premiere: Nostalgia-Fest

A mere seven days ago, the Rupaul’s Drag Race producers dropped one of the show’s cruelest “twists,” in an All Stars 3 finale that saw Shangela — who had slayed everyone else in the competition (save for BenDeLaCreme) — denied her chance to compete for the crown. It was a fittingly dreadful end to a season that struggled to find its footing, as the strongest queen eliminated herself, the editing continued to focus more on manufactured workroom drama than the drag, and everyone — from competitors to judges — seemed a little over it. Add in some casual transphobia from RuPaul in a recent interview, and it was hardly the best season in Drag Race’s nine-year history.

But no matter, because a landmark tenth season is here, ready to blast away those Shangela blues! With a brand new workroom (a vision in bright pink and even more giant photos of RuPaul), 14 new queens, and even more of that lovely VH1 money being thrown around, RuPaul and co. are ready to crown America’s Next Drag Superstar. And the way they’re kicking things off? By spending twenty minutes fondly reminiscing about the past nine years!

Wait, what?

Yup, it seems that to get over the initially awkward first couple of episodes, where the lesser queens are culled to make way for those with the best editing… umm, we mean design skills… Drag Race decided to bring back a number of previous queens, from winners to fan favorites to Laganja Estranja. The new queens were introduced and given a few minutes to throw shady comments at one another, before being thrown out onto a runway to perform in front of a crowd of past contestants.

Warning: Spoilers ahead!

First, let’s run down those fourteen queens as they entered the workroom:

• Eureka, 27: After crashing out of Season 9 with an injury, Eureka is back — although no word on whether her knee is any more capable of supporting her giant (and amazing) hairpieces.
• Asia O’Hara, 35: Serving Real Housewives realness (is that redundant?), Asia brings a wealth of pageant wins with her, and we’re already on board.
• Miz Cracker, 33: Miz Cracker entered with a scream — much to the confusion of the others — and an upbeat attitude that seems likely to dwindle as the competition heats up. Still, she’s Season 8 winner Bob the Drag Queen’s drag daughter, so we’re looking forward to seeing more.
• Yuhua Hamasaki, 27: Hailing from New York via a childhood in China, Yuhua has Bianca Del Rio’s makeup and personality in droves.
• Blair St. Clair, 22: Promising she’s a “Broadway diva extraordinaire” (from Indiana), Blair is one of the younger queens this season (seriously, she’s scary young out of drag), but she’s brimming with confidence.
• Monét X Change, 27: A slightly cringeworthy entry joke about sweeping up the competition — complete with broom — gave way to an amazing Rosie the Riveter-inspired outfit. We’re sold.
• Kameron Michaels, 31: “That’s a man, Maury!” one of the queens shouted as Kameron entered the workroom, and we have to agree. Kameron may think she’s serving fish in drag, but it’s far from the freshest out there.
• Mayhem Miller, 35: Everyone seems to know Mayhem, and now we want to as well. Plus, her drag family has some strong Drag Race heritage: Morgan McMichaels, Delta Work and Detox.
• Kalorie Karbdashian-Williams, 27: Sigh. It was going to happen. After Kimora Blac professed her love for Kim Kardashian last year, it’s only fitting we get a queen whose whole identity seems based on the reality star. We’re over it already.
• Monique Heart, 31: Dressed in an… interesting… ruffled two-piece outfit, Monique didn’t make the strongest first impression. She promised the “ooh ah ah sensation.” Let’s see if that holds up.
• Dusty Ray Bottoms, 29: Acid Betty meets Adore Delano. We’re not sure about Dusty, but there’s no denying the artistry in her dot-inspired makeup.
• The Vixen, 26: A hot glue mess, The Vixen is apparently very important in Chicago, as she’s so keen to tell us.
• Vanessa Vanjie Mateo, 25: Vanessa’s bits to camera are a glorious symphony of word salad, but we caught banjee (Michelle Visage will love that…) and Alexis. Yes, meet the daughter of Season 3’s wonderful Alexis Mateo. Bam!
• Aquaria, 21: Shades of Season 7’s Violet Chachki here, we have a young queen brimming with confidence about her abilities. The difference, of course, is that Violet didn’t look like an ’80s trainwreck.

Eager to get on with the DRAMA, the producers immediately had the other queens inform us that there’s a huuuuuuge rivalry between Miz Cracker and Aquaria. We’re team Cracker right now.

Next, it’s on to the first mini-challenge, and RuPaul’s first entry in the episode — complete with a typically garish suit and… wait, is RuPaul wearing sandals in the workroom? Okay, new season, new rules, clearly. We did not approve.

Anyway, the nostalgia-fest kicked off with some fun reminiscing about the past nine years from Mama Ru, before she informed the queens that they’d be dancing in front of the aforementioned crowd of ex-contestants. It was a curious choice to start proceedings — simultaneously a nice callback to the show’s history and a bizarre way of steamrolling the new girls as we reminisced about old favorites.

It also highlighted that Drag Race is perhaps starting to run out of truly original queens. Yuhua looks like Bianca has returned to snatch another crown. Dusty is serving shades of Acid Betty. Monét X Change, who rightfully wins this mini-challenge, has callbacks to Bob in both her drag aesthetic and her bits to camera. And Eureka was literally here a year ago.

The maxi challenge, too, drew from Drag Race‘s past — from the hazy days of the show’s first season, as the queens are tasked with doing drag on a dime. (Have we officially ran out of ideas?) Still, it was a nice way to throw the queens in to the deep end, and immediately made clear that we might finally have a season where the queens took basic sewing lessons before they got on the plane.

Naturally, there’s even more DRAMMMAAAAAA (seriously, producers, enough), as it seems Miz Cracker and Aquaria are doing the same eyebrow!

We don’t really see it, nothing else is really made of it, and we move on to the main runway.

Our Tops:

• Blair St. Clair (who looks about 12 years old. Can we get an ID check?) turned a windscreen visor into a futuristic, metallic dress.
• Mayhem Miller’s latex glove and bin bag couture was stunning, not least because she layered the bags to look like leather, as Carson noted in his critique. We gagged.
• Miz Cracker looked gorgeous in her shower curtain dress. We’re definitely #TeamCracker in the Aquaria rivalry.
• Monique Heart was criminally underrated by the judges for her Queen of Hearts look, which used playing cards to create a two-piece mini dress.

Our Bottoms:

• Aquaria inexplicably slipped through as safe, despite a truly ghastly Little Bo-Peep-inspired costume that was ridiculously rough around the edges.
• Dusty Ray Bottoms also used a metallic windscreen visor, but next to Blair it paled in comparison. And Michelle was right, the cone hat ruined everything.
• Kalorie Karbdashian-Williams dressed herself in money, but wound up looking cheap (RuPaul, we’re available to write jokes for you).
• Vanessa Vanjie Mateo generated one of the biggest laughs of the episode when she was read for her shape being too round — only for the camera to cut to an angle that highlighted this to hilarious effect.

Then came the episode’s biggest gag: A returning queen! But who? Well, joke’s on us, because it wasn’t Farrah Moan as RuPaul said, but her lookalike Christina Aguilera, who promptly showed Ru what real singing is as she belted out a note on the main runway, before settling behind the judges’ desk.

The end result? Mayhem was a deserved winner, with Kalorie and Vanessa left to lipsync to Christina’s “Ain’t No Other Man.” It was a pretty uninspiring effort, until Kalorie pulled a wad of money out of her bra and threw it over herself as she dropped into a split. Sorry, Vanessa, you’re going home.

When that direct deposit hits! #DragRace pic.twitter.com/AAgB9vaH0v

— RuPaul's Drag Race (@RuPaulsDragRace) March 23, 2018

And that was the season premiere of Season 10. What did you think? Do you have any early favorites? Did you gag over any moments we missed? Will Aquaria continue to grossly exaggerate her own abilities? Let us know in the comments!