The further away we get from it, the more I think Season 15 of RuPaul’s Drag Race was a small miracle. Yes, the shorter episode runtimes for the first half deflated audience enthusiasm at first. But once the season really got cooking with gas, it drew unprecedented levels of fan engagement when it came time for viewers to let Ru know which queen’s team they were on. In fact, one queen broke the record for most likes on their #Team Instagram post. That queen, of course, was the one who excited audiences all season long, and got people thinking she had a real shot of winning it all … Anetra?
Yes, despite Sasha Colby’s utter dominance of Season 15, in a run many look back on as an inevitable victory for the drag legend, she actually didn’t even win the fan vote. Moreover, while she walked into the finale with four wins and no bottom placements, there were many fans rooting for a Luxx Noir London or Mistress Isabelle Brooks win as well. Somehow, in a season that always seemed destined for one queen to win, the finale still really felt like a battle.
Compare Season 15 to All Stars 8. Like Sasha, Jimbo came in as an obvious favourite to win it all. The Canada’s Drag Race Season 1 queen had won Ru over on UK vs. The World, but Pangina Heals’ choice to eliminate her kept Ru from giving her that crown. So on a cast filled with early outs and controversial queens, Jimbo’s casting as the only international queen stuck out like a sore thumb. You could’ve guessed she would win from the Meet the Queens. Unfortunately, instead of unexpected challengers to her dominance arising, All Stars 8 was a slog, with Jimbo winning nearly half the episodes and even the most likable of also-rans (Jessica Wild, love you forever) unable to muster a real argument for the win over her. Jimbo deserved the crown, but the show never made you doubt that for a second.
And so we arrive at Canada’s Drag Race: Canada vs. The World Season 2, with Jimbo’s OG season sister Lemon competing for the third time. I wrote in my season premiere piece that while much of the first episode worked, there was already a sense that Lemon held all the cards. “Lemon is getting favoured-daughter treatment right out of the gate, both entering last to fanfare during the intros and later being gifted a mini-arc about winning the first episode despite doing poorly in her last two premieres,” I wrote at the time. “I’m worried that Lemon is going to waltz to the crown this season, which would feel strange when she’s surrounded by some real heavy-hitters.”
The season is now over, the final Lip Sync for the Crown battle has finished and Lemon is walking away with her crown and $100,000 after winning or placing high in every single challenge this season. A huge congratulations to her—she absolutely slayed this season, and she deserves her flowers. But despite producing what was otherwise an entertaining run of episodes, I can’t help but feel like Canada vs. The World Season 2 ultimately underwhelmed. Lemon felt like a Jimbo, not a Sasha Colby, and despite incredible competition, the season never felt like it could go any other way but this.
The major question that’s hung over Canada vs. The World since the start of its second season is whether it would finally break the Canadian curse on vs. The World seasons. No Canadian made it even to the back half of the first UK vs. The World season, while the second didn’t cast a Canada’s Drag Race alum at all. Canada vs. The World Season 1 cast four Canadians, only for two of them to go home first, one to lose in the first round of the Lip Sync for the Crown tournament and one to quit. Ultimately, two American queens battled it out in the finale, and Ra’Jah O’Hara won the crown.
The queen who quit Season 1, Icesis Couture, claimed that there was pressure from production to keep the crown in Canada. And after UK queens won the first two seasons of their vs. The World variant, the pressure was definitely on for Lemon, Miss Fiercalicious and Tynomi Banks this season. Unfortunately, Tynomi once again got in her own head, while Fierce seemed determined to play her “petulant” character to the hilt (as mostly absent judge Traci Melchor memorably called her), finding perceived slights in everything and losing her drive to compete.
So it all came down to Lemon to win it all for Canada, and to her credit, she held up her end of the bargain and then some. Her girl group and “Snatch Game: The Rusical” performances earned her two wins, while she also did very well in the improv task and easily could’ve won the Reading Battles challenge. Her runways were fantastic all season long, showing her growth since her first season. Yes, her high placement in the ball was a bit suspect, but she would at worst have placed safe there—and I don’t think one high placement was what ultimately put her over the top for the win.
None of my criticism of this season is an argument that Lemon is not deserving of her crown. Rather, it is an argument that even seasons full of entertaining queens—Fierce, Alexis Mateo, Cheryl and Kennedy Davenport among them—and strong challenge design can be made to feel boring if the competition doesn’t feel like a real race. Going into the finale, the only question was whether one of her fellow finalists could so clearly out-perform her in a lip sync that she would get sent home. When that didn’t happen—I think “Hideaway” was effectively a tie—there was literally no question as to the outcome.
In the absence of a real competition, you would expect there to be a significant storyline for our eventual champion—something to really carry the narrative weight of the season. But besides Lemon’s self-doubt after going home first on UK vs. The World, and a minor one-sided feud with Fierce, Lemon actually mostly floated above the narrative this season. As queens like Alexis, Fierce, Kennedy and Eureka! made television, Lemon was just quietly dominating the competition. Even Cheryl got a more compelling arc as she consistently placed high, increasing the hope that she might finally get her first maxi-challenge win in her Drag Race career. (That she ultimately did not is additionally underwhelming—a storyline with no payoff.)
Even the narrative about Lemon’s self-doubt, which done right can be an interesting story for an obvious frontrunner (think Symone in Season 13), didn’t really go anywhere. Part of the issue was that Lemon had done so well in her original season, being judged by Brooke Lynn Hytes, so there was no real surprise to her once again doing well with the same lead judge. Moreover, because she was sent home on UK vs. The World for a performance many fans don’t think she deserved to be in the bottom for, there was no real perception among viewers that she had to “come back” from something. She just got a somewhat raw deal on another franchise, and came home where the panel understands her better.
That’s not to take away from her own feelings of insecurity, which I have no doubt were real. But the feelings being legitimate doesn’t automatically make them fodder for a good storyline. It’s a lesson in why it’s important to show, not tell, in reality TV: we can hear over and over again how Lemon is feeling, but if she’s just winning or nearly winning everything without breaking a sweat, that won’t make for a compelling narrative.
Drag Race as a franchise seems unsure of how they want to handle winners’ edits this year. Queens like Sapphira Cristál and Roxxxy Andrews got dream edits in their seasons this year, only to lose to queens who were under-edited (Nymphia Wind) or were mostly edited as the perceived frontrunner’s rival (Angeria Paris VanMicheals). Over on Drag Race France’s third season, Nicky Doll crowned a queen with no maxi-challenge wins; Le Filip became only the second queen ever to win in such a fashion, after Elecktra Bionic from Drag Race Italia’s first season. UK vs. the World probably did the best job of presenting all members of its top four as potential winners … but the show’s perceived predilection toward crowning hometown heroes meant things always felt a bit too slanted toward Tia Kofi.
I think looking back at Season 15 is the way forward here. (I would also say Season 13 had a strong winner’s edit without feeling inevitable, but I recognize I’m in the minority in liking the storytelling that season.) If someone’s performance is too dominant to ignore, lift up those who could challenge her for the victory. There’s a reason Anetra had literally historic levels of fan support: the show made you believe that she actually stood a chance against Sasha. Imagine if Kennedy’s arc this season felt truly competitive, or Alexis’! Imagine if Cheryl had actually snatched one of the wins, suddenly making her arc feel like a Cinderella story. Imagine if, instead of focusing a lot of the edit time on Fierce’s “petulant” behaviour, the edit had focused on the other members of our final four as real threats to win it all.
Alas, we instead got to see Lemon waltz to the win. Not a soul can take that from her, and no one can argue in good faith that she didn’t deserve to win it all. It’s just slightly deflating from a TV-watching perspective that we knew all along how it would end.