With RuPaul’s Drag Race bringing back their Rate-a-Queen system for season 17, Billboard decided to rate each of the new queens every week based on their performance. Below, we look at the final main stage challenge of the season to see who made the cut for the finale. Spoilers ahead for episode 14.
Fourteen episodes in, and we finally have our answer to the question we have been asking all season: Who will make it to the finale of RuPaul’s Drag Race season 17? And the results are shocking.
On Friday’s (April 4) episode of the show, the top five queens competed in the final main stage challenge of the season, where RuPaul tasked the girls with “auditioning” to star in RuPaul’s Drag Race Live in Las Vegas. This meant the girls had to complete a formal job interview with Drag Race royalty Latrice Royale, pose in an exclusive Vegas-inspired photoshoot, film a promo video for the show itself and perform in a rousing lip sync to the original song, “Gift Shop.” It’s the final challenge, so Ru pulled out every single stop.
With the fewest number of wins amongst the remaining queens and the most recent stint in the bottom, Jewels Sparkles knew that her options this week were “win the challenge” or “sashay away.” We’re happy to report that she chose the former — in every single aspect of the challenge, Jewels … well, she sparkled!
But that left the judges with a tough call to make; with the clear choice to be eliminated next winning the challenge, who is getting sent home this week? After two respectively mediocre performances, the judges sent two of the season’s clear frontrunners — Suzie Toot and Sam Star — to the bottom, where the pair duked it out to Diana Ross & the Supremes’ “Love Child.” In a twist that sent shockwaves across the Drag Race fandom, the judges decided to eliminate Suzie, ending her bid for the crown and sending Sam Star through to the finale.
With the challenges over and the finale two weeks away, Billboard takes a look back at episode 14 and season 17 as a whole to determine which of the top four queens are most likely to earn the title of America’s Next Drag Superstar:
