After a pretty great season, RuPaul’s Drag Race Down Under wraps up with a genuine all star winner.

This recap is for the finale of season two 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.

After dozens of seasons of Drag Race all over the world, I humbly suggest that none has done as much to revitalise its brand as Drag Race Down Under. The first season of DRDU had a rough go of it, yet this season has been one of the most entertaining of any Drag Race spinoff anywhere. And its final top three is almost impossible to fault.

As an episode, this finale is business as usual. The top three record a verse, learn choreography (courtesy of season one competitor Elektra Shock), and perform to a remix of a RuPaul song of dubious quality. I’ll give the team this one – ‘Who is She’ is at least high-energy enough to be entirely inoffensive, and all three queens deliver verses that improve the song by at least one letter grade. There are also the requisite tear-stained interviews with RuPaul and Michelle Visage, earnest speeches to younger selves, and testimonials from each queen as to why they should be the one to win.

Does this make for an especially dramatic episode of TV? Not really, but it is a satisfying end to a really robust season. We see exactly why each queen is in the finale, which I’ll get to below, and that makes for good reality TV. The best thing I can say about this season is that it felt like a great showcase for what drag in Australia and New Zealand is, and can be. The form can ask for no better ambassadors than the three we ended up with, and I’ve no doubt that when these queens find themselves on the inevitable international All Stars crossovers that await them, they’ll be contenders to win.

The crown is decided by a solo lip-sync, edited together, and I’ll hand it to the production team: This is a great edit showcasing exactly what each queen brings to a lip-sync, in a way that wouldn’t really be possible if they were lip-syncing against each other. Hannah Conda is polished and poised, Kween Kong is high energy and choreographed, Spankie Jackzon is… Spankie Jackzon.

At any rate, there can only be one winner, so onto the rankings.

3. Hannah Conda

I say this sincerely: I cannot wait for Hannah Conda to show up and absolutely body an All Stars season in the future.

The thing that Hannah brought to the competition was polish. There was no doubt, any week, that Hannah was going to have a runway that was on-theme, on-point and worthy of praise. In that way, she might have ended up counting herself out – there was no narrative for her triumph, whereas we got to watch Spankie and Kween gather momentum, going from being a little out of their element to forcing the show to recognise their unique talents.

Would Hannah Conda have been a good winner of Drag Race Down Under season two? Absolutely. Would she have been the correct winner? I think not.

2. Kween Kong

We’ve never had a Kween like Kong. She was, no doubt, one of the best dancers the show has ever seen, to the point where her downplaying it in this finale episode was almost comedic. She was also, crucially, one of the its best conflict resolvers, with a knack for settling squabbles without ever compromising her values. Like Spankie, Kween brought a genuine sense of solidarity and sisterhood that was missing from the first season. It helped make this season a more uplifting watch, and arguably a better reflection of the drag community.

Then, of course, she was also just a damn fierce queen, with a robust, polished performance style that nobody else on the season could really match. Beyond all that, to have a Pasifika, South Auckland queen as a finalist means a lot. The more finalists who look unlike past winners, who practise a different kind of drag, the better the franchise will be. Look out for our profile of her coming to The Spinoff shortly, and no doubt many more achievements from her in the years to come.

WINNER: Spankie Jackzon

From the very first episode, when Spankie came out clad in purple tights, we knew this was not going to be a pageant queen. Instead, Spankie stuck to her guns (or her gowns), and served up who she was the best she could. And it got her the damn sceptre at the end of it.

It’s hard to think of another season in which the judges were so won over by a lack of polish as they were here. It helped that the lack of polish wasn’t a glitch but a feature: it made Spankie more relatable and charming, and it meant our minds were fully blown when she unveiled a performance that knocked our socks off at the end. She had neither the best look nor the fiercest performance in this episode, but what she did have was her unique self. And that’s enough for a crown.

There are queens who were never meant to be Drag Race winners, because the crown wouldn’t rest quite right on their head – they’re too much, too weird, too big for the franchise. I think of Katya, I think of Tammie Brown, I think of Alyssa Edwards. Spankie belongs on that vaunted list, and I couldn’t be happier she’s actually got a crown to show for it. It could only happen Down Under, y’all.

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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