RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 14 Finale Recap: Finally… It’s Over, And The Best Queen Won

The 16th episode of the 14th Season has finally arrived. The show opens in Vegas with each of the girls from the season coming on to the stage, and I must say, each one of them looked more stunning than I could have hoped for.

My favorite looks of the eliminated queens were Kornbread, who rocked a Belle and Beast look from Beauty and the Beast. She ignored the Vegas theme, but her tits were très belle and her dress made me gasp. Completing the look were horns that were extra horny and the campiest of large, red roses. Alyssa Hunter gave us a perfectly Vegas moment when she entered in a beautiful take on a show girl gown. Maddy also really knocked it out of the park; playing fully into the Vegas-ness of it all, she paid homage to Elvis while still managing to keep it all properly feminine.

 

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A post shared by Kornbread (@kornbreadthesnack)

Then the top five queens emerged and, like the eliminated queens, they all fucking brought some holy-shit-gorgeous lewks. Angeria PVM leaned into the Vegas theme looking breathtaking in a blue peacock dress with some of the biggest feathers I’ve ever seen. Following Angeria was Bosco who also looked beautiful, if only slightly hindered by the fact that her look was a smaller version of Angeria’s. Villain of the season Daya Betty entered next rocking a powder pink ensemble with a pink top hat to top it all off and was giving me Vegas gender-bend prom, and let me just say: I was here for it. Lady Camden followed and was serving up a pink unicorn look that was also giving me Bane from Batman, because of the snout mouthpiece, which when removed revealed the bar that carriage horses have in their mouth, which only added to the gold carriage piece that was her torso. She was just so wonderfully camp. And finally, my favorite queen of the season (and top 5 of all time personally), Willow Pill, entered next. She doesn’t give a fuck whether or not you understand her, she just wants you to gag. And gag we did. With a giant machete for an arm, a red warrior dress and headpiece, and a long flowing train behind her, Willow did exactly what she showed up to do: knock us all on our asses and show she is a warrior through and through. Worth noting: two queens went with blue looks, two queens went with pink ones, and only Willow Pill stood alone in her red outfit.

Bitch it just hit me!! I was on an international television show for 4 months!!!! I am BEYOND proud of myself!! Thank you to everyone who supported and rooted for me all season long!! Allstars, what’s good!!??
pic.twitter.com/lKESTsfnEO

— Angeria “Ugaly Bitch” VanMicheals (@Angeriavm) April 23, 2022

But let’s remember whose show this really is: the Queen of Queens. “The winningest host in television herstory” looked absolutely beautiful as she descended onto the stage in a shimmering silver dress. She may be in Las Vegas, but she was giving me Tinsletown meets Xanadu glory. Ru proclaimed, “I’ve got one thing to say: It’s Chocolate.” But it was her next statement that got me a little choked up. “Welcome to the grand finale of RuPaul’s Drag Race. Now, we are coming to you from the stage of RuPaul’s Drag Race Live, and after two years it feels so good to be performing in front of a live audience.” After a beast of a two-year span, seeing Ru in front of a massive crowd in Vegas did give me the sweetest sense for a moment that things were back to normal (or at least solidly on track). We saw it with the reunion episode, too, of course, but for whatever reason it just hit a bit differently this time.

And now it’s time to see who’s going to hit the jackpot to the tune of $150,000 (the highest purse in the show’s herstory). There are five things on which the queens will be assessed: entrance look, Vegas video, musical performance, performance look, and final interview with RuPaul. Angeria’s Vegas video was delightful, her original song was solid, and the most wonderful part for me was her relationship with her parents. I also loved her name in stars it’s cheeky and camp.

Next was Bosco, who decidedly came to finish the game strong. She married all of her best identity elements together and had a truly hilarious Vegas video. Every time Bosco makes me laugh it somehow catches me by surprise, which is how you know someone is truly funny. It’s so fundamental to who she is as a performer. Each joke, each glance, each one-liner is always so impressively skilled.

Daya’s fucked up bug look was truly awesome. It was like Bjork fucked a peacock on acid while watching The Labyrinth, which, incidentally, is what I want my epitaph to read one day (just kidding… cemeteries are an illogical waste of space). Daya’s song was my least favorite of the bunch, but I thought she had a generally solid finish to a tumultuous season. Her one-on-one with Mama Ru was strong for sure.

 

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A post shared by DayaBetty (@dayabetty)

Lady Camden’s video slayed me. I just loved her lil outfit and she kept me won over throughout. She also had a great reveal making the transformation from dolled up straight edge ballerina into punk rock realness. Because remember: Drag IS punk rock. Similar to the Angeria’s supportive family, LC had both her birth and her drag mother with her, which is just a beautiful bringing together of worlds. Strongest for me, though, was her song, because in a show that demands we remember you, it was self-referential in a way that kept us in her corner.

Willow Pill is one of the most self-assured Queens in the show’s history. She knows exactly who she is and she knows exactly what she wants to do. And she’s also proven herself to be quite brilliant. Take her answer to Ru’s question about how she would describe drag to an alien who landed on Earth and asked what it was. “Mental illness and rhinestones,” she said, while pointing to herself. Her look was absolutely ridiculous in the greatest of ways: multiple faces that were reminiscent of the Greek performances that essentially started this all over 2,000 years ago.

Lady Camden and Willow Pill were declared to be the final two. But not before we got to see LaLa Ri again, this time to present the famed Miss Congeniality Award (and check). Kornbread won the title, which I have to admit surprised me only because of how short her time was on the show. To be clear, I think she 100% deserved it, I’m just surprised they made the right call. It’s giving us Judi Dench’s Oscar for 8 minutes of screen time in Shakespeare in Love.

To the tune of Cher's cover of ABBA’s “Gimme Gimme Gimme,” the two Queens faced off. Perhaps a bit over confident, Lady Camden was sporting a crown as part of her look. I get that it ties into the British royalty. One of my favorite things about Adele is that she just stands there and commands your attention. Ironically, Willow, the non-Brit of the two, took just that route. It was a bit dicey for a brief moment because I worried the payoff wasn't going to hit, but it most assuredly did. She doffed her over-sized, zoot suit-esque outfit to reveal giant pants that went up to her chin. Love. But Lady Camden does get points in my mind for her double reveal. We’ve come to expect reveals, so might as well leave them wanting more by just giving them a little bit more. When the chips had fallen, though, one queen was declared the winner: Willow Pill. She truly was the whole package this season: a survivor, Queer as fuck, a performer, hilarious, insightful, philosophical, and a beautiful drag queen to add on top of it all.

I have to say that for an exhausting season, I thoroughly enjoyed this finale. It shook up the medium in a few different ways, and yielded the perfect payoff for an annoyingly elimination-deprived season. Was it enough to keep me coming back? Ugh. Probably. And a shoutout / congrats to Ru, who was not only given the key to the city of Las Vegas as a nod to her career, as well as her wildly successful Drag Race Vegas Review, but also had April 22 officially declared "RuPaul Day." But above all, congrats to our new reigning Queen: Willow Pill.

 

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What did you think of this season? Was the payoff there for you? Did you love it start-to-finish and think I whined too much about the lack of eliminations? Let us know! And thanks for sticking with us on the bumpy ride that was Season 14 of RuPaul’s Drag Race.

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