RuPaul's Drag Race Season 16 Review: Episode
The episode starts each week with the girls reflecting on the eliminated queen; this time it’s Xunami Muse. Morphine is heartbroken that she had to send home her good friend, and the queens agree that this far into the competition, it’s hitting even harder to send someone home. The mini-challenge for this episode could easily be the most unfunny one ever to air; the queens just have to spit out water as Ru says something remotely funny, like the one about bringing back Snatch Game for this episode, and Nymphia’s reaction was probably the best. Contrary to the Snatch Game, she wins this challenge.
For the maxi-challenge, the queens have another design challenge, which makes some queens quite nervous. The goal is to create a Neo-goth look, from scratch, a fusion of goth fashion and designer influences. Nymphia is struggling as always, which makes some of the girls quite annoyed by now as she always ends up doing great in the end, and by now, the narrative that she’s doing it on purpose seems to be true. Plasma is also struggling as she’s not a seamstress and is thrown off by having to make a look that’s out of her usual '50s glamour comfort zone. Mhi’ya is facing another struggle as she can’t sew and hasn’t been doing well in the design challenges so far but receives help from Sapphira, which some girls frown upon. Plane even says that by this point in the competition, you shouldn’t receive any help, which makes sense as now it’s getting closer and closer to the final 4 and more and more serious. To make matters worse, Mhi’ya already had Sapphira helping her in the last sewing challenge, but at the end of the day, it’s how you play the game!
As the queens are getting ready for the runway, they talk about dating in high school, and it gets revealed that Dawn had a girlfriend in high school and Morphine was even dating three girls at the same time to make up for the fact that she’s queer. Must be funny seeing your ex-boyfriend on Drag Race! Plasma tells us about how she didn’t feel safe to date or come out where she came from and that she still hasn’t properly dated someone by now. It’s interesting to get a small insight into the queens' personal lives, and their stories are relatable to a lot of queer people. It’s comforting to see how they go through the same things as we do!
Most of the looks turn out quite good, especially Nymphia, who shows once again her eye for fashion and excellent sewing skills. Plane Jane, Morphine, Dawn, and Q are all slaying; the rest are all right. However, Plasma’s look is the worst as it is a weird combination of several styles and is just not pleasing to look at. She and Mhi’ya end up in the bottom and lip-sync to "Bloody Mary," but the sped-up TikTok version, which is such an odd song choice. Suddenly, there’s a nightcore mix on the main stage of Drag Race, which feels a bit out of place for the show. Mhi’ya reveals her wig into what Plane Jane calls a "beanie" and ends up winning as she’s doing her tricks. It leaves the viewer with a mixed feeling as Plasma has such a good track record and gets sent home by someone who’s been in the bottom several times. But we all know that you can never know what they’ll judge when it comes to a lip-sync, whether it's the performance or the fact that they want to keep that queen!
RuPaul’s Drag Race S16 is streaming exclusively on WOW Presents Plus in the UK every Saturday. Subscribe to WOW Presents Plus via https://uk.wowpresentsplus.com/