‘RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars’ Baffling Finale Format Changes Have Dramatically Lowered the Stakes

RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars 8 may just be the most consistently unpredictable season in the history of the franchise — in ways both sickening and nauseating. Watching Jessica Wild come back after 13 years away and absolutely slay? Sickening. Watching Heidi N Closet bow out over off-camera drama? Nauseating. RuPaul literally halting the show to stage an intervention for a cast of burnt-out queens? I mean, both sickening and nauseating. Add all that to the usual heaping helping of rigor morris served in every All Stars season and the new Fame Games twist and, wow, what a ride.

This week we entered the home stretch of the season and the usual format has been flung to the rafters. Yet somehow, even though the finale is going to be unlike any we’ve ever seen before, it’s also been robbed of any and all tension. Unpredictable and boring?? The show has completely gone off the rails. Honey, we are off-roading now just like a Tennessee high school’s varsity team on a Saturday night. RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars is straight up mudding into the finale.

SPOILERS ahead!

Things started to look sus last week when the final four queens — Alexis Michelle, Jessica Wild, Jimbo, and Kandy Muse — were, in fact, not the final four queens.

Instead of how it’s been done in almost every other All Stars season (Season 5 had a top three; Season 7 had a top four, but also no queens were eliminated all season long), the queens… competed in a roast challenge. Okay, so we weren’t going to have a final four. We’d have a final three, like in Season 5. Sure.

And then this week happened! Never in the herstory of Drag Race have just three queens competed in an elimination Maxi Challenge. When you get to three, the queens either sway in front of a green screen for RuPaul’s new music video or they write and perform their own verses to a RuPaul song, and then one of them gets crowned. That’s it! But this week’s makeover challenge unfolds like any other regular episode of Drag Race, with none of the queens acknowledging that this is weird.

Just taking a moment to say that the show absolutely should have shown the queens being flummoxed. Drag Race is the most self-aware reality show on television. If the queens were feeling any uncertainty about what the hell was going on, if they all thought they were gearing up for a finale only to have the dreaded makeover challenge thrown at them, that would’ve made for great TV. And if Ru and/or production told them at some point that we were whittling the cast down to a final two, then… I dunno, tell the audience! All Stars seasons tend to start with the queens and the audience having a format twist thrown at them, so seeing the queens unphased by this format change just felt bizarre. The viewers are low-key supposed to be in the same boat as the contestants, or in a dinghy puttering along behind them, and we’re all supposed to be riding the waves caused by the Drag Race cruise ship.

Instead of showing the queens being told that they were not, in fact, about to write and record their own versers to RuPaul’s “Star Baby” (now available on iTunes), the show went ahead with the usual makeover challenge. Never was it acknowledged that the show’s process was on a direct collision course with the show’s sudden format change. If a Lip Sync for Your Legacy gets on a train that leaves Tuckahoe going 100 mph and a group vote boards a train traveling west from Pacoima at 69 mph, how long until all of our dreams for a thrilling season finale are wrecked?

We often forget that RuPaul’s Drag Race was kinda created to be a drag-tastic spoof of shows like the self-serious America’s Next Top Model and Project Runway, so it’s always jarring when the show’s irreverent roots start showing. The entire All Stars format was not built for a 3-queen roster, and RuPaul knows that. RuPaul lets the audience know that she knows that! The group vote is clearly going to result in a tie and, as has been the case in past seasons, a tied group vote throws the elimination decision back to the winning queen (Kandy Muse).

Everyone involved knew that, and there were plenty of campy winks to the camera about this tomfoolery. Still, going into the lip sync, it was assured that Kandy Muse was going to pick the queen to go home whether she win or lose. Kandy was really just lip-syncing for $10,000. All the tension was drained from this moment — except for those of us Drag Race obsessives who were wondering if and waiting for RuPaul to say, “Oh, shantay you all stay! We have a top three, dammit, which isn’t unprecedented and is actually normal for this show!”

But nope! Kandy pulled Jessica Wild’s lipstick, and now we have, for the first time ever, a final two. Next week is all about the Fame Games and will be a talent show, delayed from its usual season-opener spot, involving the entire cast. And then after that, I guess we’ll get 60 minutes of Jimbo vs. Kandy Muse for the crown?

What’s so frustrating is that all of this is both unpredictable and completely void of any suspense. I mean, kudos to Drag Race for pulling off a surprise that’s also kinda boring! But that is exactly what a finale episode without Jessica Wild — or a third contestant in general, but Jessica Wild specifically — will be. Despite the drama around their alliance — which, doubts aside, actually held firm this week — Jimbo vs. Kandy Muse isn’t exactly riveting television. They were the top two queens that everybody thought would win when the cast was announced . Without Jessica, this unpredictable finale format is playing out as predicted.

Excuse the pun but, Jessica Wild was the wildcard. Not only that, Jessica was the wildcard with a legitimate shot to win the crown, exactly like her Season 2 sister Kylie Sonique Love previously did. Having Jessica, a fan favorite if ever there was one, in the finale would only increase the suspense. Plus, she absolutely could have won, thus finally giving the franchise a winner from Puerto Rico.

It’s also just good television to have more queens in the finale. More people are invested in a finale when one of their faves could win, and three queens means a bigger investment (but four queens is pushing it and five queens is excessive). Now everyone who was rooting for Jessica to take the $200,000 is at least partially checked out. I know I am, and I also like Jimbo and Kandy!

Maybe there’s still a twist to be had. Maybe RuPaul will decide to move Jessica to her rightful place in the finale after being wowed by whatever she has in store for the talent show. That would bring a lot of the suspense back to this unpredictable finale, so I really, really hope that my prediction comes true.