RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 14, Episode 9 Recap: Drag Con Panels & an Epic Lip Sync Showdown

March 7, 2022
TOMMY

Another week of Drag Race, which means another week of starting with one less queen than the week before! Which means this episode will also end the same way, right?…RIGHT!? Well, normally that would be the case, but this season we have yet another week where no one is eliminated. I’ll dive in to that and more as we ru-cap episode 10 of RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 14!

Let’s start off by first condragulating Willow Pill on coming out as Trans! She had previously talked about her mixed relationship with gender, but the star performer came out on social media as trans, which continues this season as being the most Trans season yet. Willow is my favorite queen of the season after Kornbread left, and she’s probably in my top 5 of all time. So happy she’s finding her authentic self and is hopefully finding more peace. Congrats, Willow!

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— Willow Pill (@WillowPillQueen) March 3, 2022

Speaking of Willow, it should be no surprise that they won the mini challenge, which of course, was really just a bunch of branding wrapped up in “a mini challenge" (them’s the breaks for Drag Race going mainstream and needing more and more advertisers). Her Mary Lou Retton-esque gymnast was hilarious and earned her the win. I ultimately did love this challenge, though, because even if it was just product placements, it did allow for the queens to do some quick and gritty outfits, which brought me back to more gritty days of Drag Race and the type of drag you may see in a small town somewhere.

Since Willow won, she got to pick her team for the maxi challenge, which is a return to Drag Con. Her team resulted in her, DeJa, Angeria, and Lady Camden. The second team therefore was Bosco, Daya, Jasmine, and Jorgeous. #TeamLeftOvers Daya and Jasmine of course went at it, and I have to say…I’m finding Daya a bit exhausting. She seems to think she’s better than Jasmine, but Jasmine is also just a 22 y/o that’s figuring it all out. I know the producers are giving her the famed “villain edit” and NO DOUBT they read my previous recaps where I said I wanted more drama, but if they had read closely they’d have seen I want intelligent drama. Just… chill, Daya. Willow’s group picks DeJa to act as the team’s moderator, and the other team picked Bosco, but not before Jasmine suggested herself which was much to the chagrin and anger of Daya. I’m glad they went with Bosco, because Bosco is fucking hilarious.

This proved to be a the right call, because Bosco knocked this challenge out of the park. Her look was solid, though the judges felt it was a bit too minimalistic, even by Bosco’s standards, but her approach to moderating the panel was terrific. The judges also loved Willow’s contribution, and similarly thought her look was too small. It was so beautiful, but they wanted more. Though, she didn’t take home the main win this week, Willow just continually knocks it out of the park.

The bottom two, however, gave us an amazing lip sync battle for the ages. Not only were the performances exceptional, with Ru calling them “flawless,” but the bottom two this week ended up being the friend-pair of Jasmine and Jorgeous. Finally, the two dancing queens of the season go head to head. Jasmine has already established herself as a lip sync assassin, which is, in part, because she’s constantly in the bottom two. But with both queens kicking ass in the lip sync, Ru made the decision not to eliminate either of them.

Here’s the deal: both performances were outstanding, so I know it was a tough choice, but someone COULD have gone home. I’m sure the producers want to hedge some bets on whose arc fills out better, and we the audience love a celebratory twist of a double non-elimination, but twice in one season? C’mon! We are too late in the game to be keeping everyone around. I honestly would have preferred two queens were eliminated this week instead of two remaining. At least then we’d have some real fear struck into the eyes of the remaining queens. The pressure is boiling, so let’s not tape the lid down, hm? See the killer lip sync for yourself below.