Well squirrel friends, while you were out walking in nature AS3 wandered into its sophomore ep, and planted the seeds for some drama, mamas.

This week, the dolls (remember when Ru used to refer to the contestants as dolls?) duked it out in a Divas Live-style main stage performance, and had the chance to re-do a former fail on the runway. But the diva antics weren’t just limited to the challenges with some seriously bad behaviour.

This Week’s Shade

Last week, you may have noticed Milk throwing some questionable shade at the other queens whilst showing signs of a very healthy, high-protein ego. This week, you’d have to be udder-ly blind to not catch Milk’s delusional response to not making the top three.

After cursing in the shadows at the back of the stage, Milk took to the Untucked-within-the-episode workroom and shed actual tears at the absolute injustice of Ru and the judges not acknowledging the apparent genius that was his Celine Dion diva performance and runway rudemption look.

Here’s the Milky T: the season 6 alum made it big post-RPDR as a Marc Jacobs model, fashion darling and NYC hottie. His fame has absolutely nothing to do with Drag Race, and yet his name recognition is up there with some of the most well-known RPDR queens. So, now that he is an All Star, MIlk is stuck between a rock and hard place: namely, his spot as an All Star is justified but he has zero cred within the RPDR universe. His skill set, beyond turning high quality looks on Insta and in magazines, has little crossover into the workroom and main stage.

After the last two eps, it seems Milk is shaping up to be the Phi Phi O’Hara of AS3: unjustifiably bitchy with a shitty attitude and an inability to read the room, making him ripe for the villain edit.

The Challenges

As a tribute to its new corporate overlord, RPDR’s main challenge was a tribute to VH1’s Divas Live. You might be too young/heterosexual to remember Divas Live, so let me break it down for you: Divas Live was a pop cultural phenomenon* (*DON’T TAKE THIS AWAY FROM ME) that saw iconic women of pop, country, RnB and soul come together and… sing songs on the telly. It was a late 90s/early 00s explosion of talent, and it should always be remembered for giving us THIS:

This challenge is the AS3 version of last All Star’s Baddest Bitches in Herstory challenge, where the All Stars are assigned characters/roles and perform a group lip sync. Unlike last season, which was largely made up of historical figures and thus open to broader interpretation, this challenge asked the queens to impersonate recent music icons. In this way it was part snatch game, part lip sync challenge, and thus a little tougher than last season.

Speaking of tough, Thorgy definitely drew the short straw when she was cast as Stevie Nicks, especially compared to the writing of some of the other roles. I thought her Stevie Nicks was well-thought out and pretty solid, as tricky impersonations go, but combined with a lacklustre runway look, she landed in the bottom two. While Thorgy’s inner-sabotHER reared its ugly head once more, she was somewhat justified in feeling put out by her role. A great performer can make any part work, but not when they’re up against the gift that was Shangela’s Mariah Carey.

Shangela easily scored the best role of the week, and it was one of the few Divas Live roles that moved from imitation to satire, riffing on the elusive chanteuse’s infamously dismal NYE performance. Shangela’s spot in the top two was handed to her on a platter this week, but she earned it with her redemptive Christmas re-do look.

That the queens got a chance to do-over a runway fail from their season, quite frankly, was a genius idea, if only for getting another chance to bask in the glory that is Kennedy’s looooooong night of hooking look:

Kennedy dropped the ball with her Janet Jackson Divas routine, but she deserves points for bringing back her meme-tastic flambé sex-worker-as-crystallised-chicken look from season seven. Forgetting her lyrics landed her in the bottom two though, although why the chicken lady got punished but the Milk man got off scot-free is beyond me.

BenDeLaCreme made the top two again this week, deservedly so for both her dripping with jewels re-do and her Julie Andrews Divas performance. Like Shangela’s Mariah, the quality of the writing for the Julie Andrews portion of the main stage challenge was head and shoulders above others, but DeLa delivered like the pro she is. Although, her antics in the lip sync for your legacy were less Sister Maria, and more can’t face.

The Lip Sync And The Elimination

Straight up, BeDeLaCreme played it damn shady this week with her lip sync performance. After Shangela turned it out with some quality gags and tight moves, DeLa pulled what may be one of the dirtiest lip sync tricks since Mimi Imfurst made drag a contact sport.

Perhaps realising that Shangela had this one in the bag, DeLa tried some comedy in mimicking and mirroring what her competitor was doing. While this wasn’t a terribly unfunny strategy, it came off somewhere between awkward, desperate, and kind of bullying. We are now at twelve seasons of lip syncs, which means the queens need to come up with new ways to keep us entertained…but DeLa’s grab at the win came off seriously single white female.

After Ep 2, Who Do You Think Is Going To Win?

Last week, I told you to keep an eye on BenDeLaCreme but that my money, ohhhh money was on Trixie and Shangela. Trixie is playing the long game staying safe, and it feels almost like she is in cahoots with the editors and showrunner because she is standing out in the to-cameras each week but yet to win anything. That will need to change though, and quickly (c’mon Snatch Game).

Shangela meanwhile is out the gate and the queen to beat, and after this week she is going to have to take down DeLa, who seems to have put the con in Miss Congeniality. Were we so blinded by how awful Darienne Lake was, that we didn’t listen to her moaning and groaning about DeLa?

In this inverse world of AS3, it seems the sorority and sisterhood of AS2 may have been replaced with buffoonery, riggery, and straight up tomfoolery (to quote the Vanessa Williams of drag herself, Miss Alyssa Edwards).

Let’s see if all this scheming sneakiness sustains…

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RuPaul’s Drag Race is fast-tracked from the US on Stan. Read more Drag Race recaps here.

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Nic Holas has written for The Guardian, Sydney Morning Herald, Archer Magazine, and Hello Mr. You can find him on Twitter @nicheholas, or in his role as co-founder of HIV movement The Institute of Many.