

In the still-nascent latest season of RuPaul’s Drag Race, the competition should still be anyone’s game. But as Symone has now won main challenges in two out of four episodes—three if you count the winning lip-sync in the opener—it is difficult to imagine who might have charisma, uniqueness, etc. to unseat someone who perhaps could have landed top three from the very first moment she slipped into her fuchsia evening gown (which Symone revealed in episode four was also the night of her high school prom).
Symone told the queens in the workroom that she “had no fear” of walking to a high school prom in small-town Arkansas wearing full drag. And I believe her because, at 25, Symone seems like someone who has been doing drag for 30 years while simultaneously managing to surprise judges who have ostensibly seen it all. With details like a flowing sateen do-rag train or by simply pronouncing words like “flag factory” so delightfully “stupidly,” as Ross put it, it is almost difficult to notice the performances of the other queens—despite this being the strongest batch of competitors in years.
So as Kahmora Hall sashays away from last week’s lipstick thespian RuPaullmark movie challenge—a victim of impeccable tailoring that left her unable to move in the lip-sync challenge, as esteemed Drag Race thought leader Harron Walker posits, but absolutely felled by her own inability to comprehend tree-related puns—let us ask ourselves: Who among these remaining queens can stop Symone?
Gottmik
Possibly? The other wildly innovative queen this season, Gottmik is also young but almost preternaturally sophisticated, much like Symone. While her acting in the Rupaulmark challenge was just a bit better than fine, Gottmik’s meticulous attention to styling and details is truly stunning. Not only did she deliver a perfect drag parody of “cold big-city businesswoman” for the part, she did it in Pantone’s colors of the year—a slate grey suit with lemony accents coordinated perfectly between eyelids, press-ons, and button-down blouse. Her runway look was a gorgeous, flowing tribute to the trans flag. Gottmik thinks through her looks with the care of someone plotting a novel, and it’s that sort of thoughtfulness that lands one in the top three.