A feud simmers over into a boil, and an instantly legendary lip-sync reminds us why we watch this show.

This recap is for season two, episode six of RuPaul’s Drag Race Down Under, available to watch on TVNZ+ now. If you’re waiting for the broadcast on Friday night please don’t read any further until then.

I could give you 3000 words on that lip-sync alone, but I won’t because there was an entire episode that was almost as good attached to it. This week the simmering feud between Kween Kong and Beverly Kills reaches a fever pitch and so does, by proxy, the conversation Drag Race Down Under is having on race and drag, and the unique challenges faced by queens of colour on all versions of this show.

The challenge features the queens selling their hometown in an infomercial, and brings back an appropriately bemused Suzanne Paul to judge. It’s a perfectly fine challenge, with a perfectly fine runway theme attached – essentially elevated swimsuits. Nobody fully flounders, although I’d give Spankie the best in show for her Baywatch themed runway (Palmy Anderson, anybody?).

Then RuPaul does what she does every season: She asks the queens who they think should go home that week. As expected from the edit, everybody says Beverly Kills. She does not react well, responding that the other queens can go fuck themselves, and then says Kween Kong should go home instead. Thus she ends up pitting herself against the strongest lip-syncer in the competition, and sealing her fate.

My god, what a lip-sync, though. I have no hesitation in awarding this the best lip-sync in the competition, to RuPaul’s ‘The Beginning’ (a strong contender for the second best RuPaul song). Right from the start, when Kween almost walks Beverly right off the stage, you know this is no ordinary lip-sync. There are deathdrops (and fake deathdrops), there are jumps into splits, there are barrel rolls, there are cartwheels and flick-flacks, both of those done backwards, and a judging panel who are so hyped up you can hear them scream, “WHAT IS HAPPENING?!”. And still there’s not a single lyric lost, not a beat dropped. It’s Drag Race at its best.

Alas, there is one queen who has been in the bottom multiple times without a win, and so she who goes home is…

ELIMINATED: Beverly Kills

Oh, Bev.

Beverly has had an edit that makes for amazing television, but I can’t help but feel bad for her. She’s 21, clearly has a lot of potential as a queen, but probably isn’t ready to show her best face – if she even knows what that is – on reality TV. For almost the entire episode Beverly is repeatedly told to be authentic, to be herself, that she’s not being the queen they know her to be, and it eventually leads to her breaking down and crying. That’s fair enough! Again, Beverly is barely two decades old. That’s so young she hasn’t even finished saying the sentence “I’m figuring things out”.

The edit twists the knife even more in the workroom, where her story about dropping out of university despite being the first queen to ever go is immediately, rightly, pushed to the side by Kween’s about her older sister, who died the year she was transitioning. It’s another reminder that the queens of colour in the franchise often have to overcome a lot more than their white peers – which Ru highlights again on the runway (more on that later).

Good on Bev, though, for going out with such a powerhouse lip-sync. It was a last-minute turnaround that any queen would be proud of.

4. Molly Poppinz

We’re two episodes out from the finale, and I still feel like I’ve yet to see the best of what Molly can give us. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with what she’s done so far – her drag is polished, her performances are never too out there – but when I think of the top three, Molly doesn’t really seem like a unique contender or winner. There hasn’t been a challenge yet that shows off the best of what she can do. Maybe next week!

3. Kween Kong

Big episode for Kween, as established above. We get a lot of her backstory here – from her sister passing away to her father calling her before the competition, asking her if she’d be using their surname – and we get a lot closer to understanding what makes Kween Kong tick. Also: it takes a special blend of personal strength and deep pettiness to apologise for your behaviour while not apologising to the person.

Her advertisement was fine, her runway was a beautiful concept but not the sharpest execution, but where Kween shined was this lip-sync. As I said above, this is going to go down in history. I’ve never seen a queen throw themselves at the stage, the other queen and even the judges like this. Bev tried to keep up, but you can tell that this is what Kween does Tuesdays through Saturdays, and this is the most important Saturday of her life. Magnetic!

2. Hannah Conda

Another great outing from Hannah Conda. She came to the challenge with a clear idea for it, and more importantly, a clear idea of what production could pick up and run with, and a deranged story that didn’t necessarily make sense while shooting but did upon presentation. I didn’t love the runway – it looked a smidge cheaper than the rest of her outfits so far – but I can’t begrudge her a win. She’s in for the final, but my only question is whether she can kill a lip-sync. Time will probably tell.

WINNER: Spankie Jackzon

Again, Spankie doesn’t win the challenge, but these are my power-rankings and not RuPaul’s! I would’ve given it to Spankie, because I felt like I got full Spankie this week. When I think of Hannah Conda, I think of a new season arrival at Smith & Caughey’s; expensive, chic, high quality but not necessarily what I want to spend full price on. When I think of Spankie Jackzon, I think of a surprising treasure found at an op-shop; you might only pay $3.50 for it, but you’ll cherish it forever because it’s special, it’s unique, and it’s yours.

Spankie spends the entire episode showing us that she is, quote “the big mama with the nuts out”. She’s the queen who gives Beverly a pep talk when she needs it, the queen who makes Palmerston North seem like the roughest place to have a good time, the queen who can dress like Pam Anderson or Dame Edna, and the one who would give you the best show of your life, whether you see it in Rotovegas or Las Vegas.

RuPaul’s Drag Race Down Under drops on TVNZ+ on Saturdays at 6pm, and airs the following Friday on TVNZ2 at 9.30pm.

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