We’ve met half the RuPaul’s Drag Race Global All Stars cast in the first premiere—now it’s time for the others! And with no former RuGirls in the bunch, this is a real chance for Ru to fall in love with some new queens. How will Italia’s Nehellenia, Germany’s Tessa Testicle, Canada’s Pythia, Sverige’s Vanity Vain, Philippines’ Eva Le Queen and Mexico’s Gala Varo fare?
This episode is a bit shorter than the last, clocking in at 43 minutes. You can feel the faster pace in some moments, including the quick cold open, the briefer-than-typical runway presentations and the lack of deliberations. The former doesn’t bother me—I don’t need five minutes of the queens just rehashing what happened the week before—and the runways are still shown for plenty of time to see all the angles. Really, it’s just the lack of deliberations that raises my eyebrow, and I have faith that they’ll be back next week when we’re out of premiere mode.
It helps that the episode is still just beautifully paced. You can feel the difference in production style between American Drag Race and Global All Stars, and while I don’t love every choice (I don’t need gold numbers for cash prizes taking up the whole screen), the overall product is refreshing. It all feels produced with a lighter hand than we’re used to, and the cast is more than making good on being given more room to do their own thing.
In particular, we get a terrific werk room scene this week that gives a few of the queens a chance to open up about their personal histories. Ordinarily, I roll my eyes at too-sappy mirror moments. But what works so well about this one is that these queens come from such different backgrounds—you can tell not only are they getting a lot out of sharing, but the others are getting a lot out of listening as well. As Alyssa Edwards says in confessional, drag is about more than the stunts and the looks and the gags—it’s “a journey of courageous souls.” And this two-part premiere makes me really excited to see them take this journey.
Among the backstory bits we get in this episode: Tessa is representing Austria and Switzerland in this competition alongside Germany, and her Alyssa obsession continues unabated. Alyssa clearly means a lot to a lot of the girls. In fact, Gala reveals her first live drag show ever was an Alyssa show. She grew her love of dance after that show, meeting the man who would go on to become her husband who taught her a lot about dancing. He’s passed away since, but the other queens (Alyssa especially) are touched at how she has continued to grow that love of dance since.
Meanwhile, Nehellenia grew up with a love of dance, but her father didn’t approve. Her mom took her to dance lessons without telling her dad. Eventually, when Nehellenia decided to go into drag, she wound up working at a bar where her dad was working security. When he saw her, he gave her a kiss and told her he was the most beautiful one there. It’s a touching story, and it clearly makes Nehellenia very emotional. What I love about this story and Gala’s is they tell us something crucial about how the queen came to be here today, and why they love what they do. Truly, what more could you want out of this show?
Heading into the talent show, we’ve got a couple other stories at work, most prominently that Eva never won a challenge in her original season. She made it to the finale anyway—her Jujubee serve—but as we’ve seen with plenty of All Stars competitors on the American series, getting that individual challenge win often means a lot to these girls. (Speaking of Jujubee, that was her experience on All Stars 5!) Overall, there’s just a lot of anticipation coming off of the very good talent show in the premiere.
Despite that, I gotta say: with one exception, I think all these performances are even better. Pythia’s storybook time performance showcases a lot of pre-performance cr aft in a way we don’t usually see in this challenge, while Gala’s pole dancing is pretty easily the best pole dancing performance we’ve seen on the show. Nehellenia and Vanity both go the pop star route, turning out great performances to original songs. Nehellenia gives us the final gag of a fire sword, while Vanity’s song is such a bop that the judges seem genuinely taken aback.
Eva’s performance is my pick for best of the night, though, and I think it’s my favourite across both premieres. It’s a pretty incredible blend of all the things Ru looks for in these performances: the comedy of doing a “rice-making tutorial,” an impressive swordfighting performance with dancers that shows she can move (including slaying a dragon), clearly strong cultural connections to her home country and a gag final moment in which she reveals the rice cooker was never plugged in. It’s just spectacular front to back, and it makes her an instant frontrunner in this competition.
The other performance is, sadly, the worst of both premieres, and the judges can’t feign much interest in it. Tessa is clearly paying homage to queens like her beloved Alyssa with her variety act, even injecting some burlesque aesthetics. Unfortunately, none of it really works. It’s too scattered, and Tessa herself is too scattered. Were this a normal talent show premiere with an elimination, I don’t think Tessa’s lip syncing ability even could’ve saved her. She was the only one to underperform across both premieres, and I wonder if she’s at the requisite level to compete with this cast.
Once again, all the queens walk the runway, even if they didn’t perform this week. The “Money Makes the World Go Round” category inspires them to dress like their home country’s currency, which produces some fun results. Nehellenia reveals from a lira-inspired look into a pink euro look, and while I don’t love the first garment, I love the transformation and the second. Eva also pulls out a great reveal, and the way her final garment moves is stunning.
Other highlights include Pythia’s Lady Britannia look (maybe my favourite of the night?), Soa De Muse’s shell look and Miranda Lebrão’s super conceptual take on real bill mascots. I’m overall just so impressed that we’re seeing each queen’s philosophy so clearly in their drag looks. The ideal with an international crossover series like this is that you can give the cast the same prompt every week and get vastly different results. So far, mission accomplished.
Eva takes one of the top slots this week, while Vanity wins the other. I’ve gone back and forth in my head about this since watching the episode. Ultimately, I think she wins this based on the strength of her songwriting. And it is great! But increasingly, the talent show has been about performance on the day, not the concept or pre-show work. (Were it about the latter, I’d say Pythia should’ve had a shot.) So if I’m judging the two performances I’d call second and third against each other—Vanity’s and Nehellenia’s—I think that while Vanity’s song was better, Nehellenia’s performance day-of was stronger. Because of that, I’d give a slight edge to the Italian queen, but I totally understand Vanity’s win.
Eva and Vanity face off in a lip sync to Danna’s “Paranoia,” and while it’s very good, it’s not quite as spectacular as the first premiere’s. Getting Alyssa and Kween Kong facing off to a Rihanna song was about as perfect a first lip sync as we could’ve hoped for; this would be good by any metric other than comparison to that one. Of the two, I’d give the win to Eva—it feels like she gets into the emotion of the song more.
But Ru surprises me and gives it to Vanity! As the only solo premiere winner so far, Vanity is clearly in a strong position moving into the season. Yet as Kitty Scott-Claus notes at the end of the episode, while it’s been a fun couple of premieres, it’s time to get to business. And what better way to start off than with a ball? Next week, we’ll see all 12 queens deliver the fashion goods—and one of them will be sent packing. Until then!