Who really deserved to win ‘RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars 3’
By Jessica Berget, Opinions Editor
*This article contains major spoilers for RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars 3 finale.
Don’t get me wrong, I adore Trixie Mattel. She is one of my all-time favourite drag queens from RPDR. I was rooting for her from the very beginning, so I was over the moon when she won the crown. Although she had a bit of a rough start at the beginning of the competition, she consistently displayed her wry sense of humour, presented some of the best looks that have ever been graced on the mainstage (that finale look? Everything), and slayed some of the challenges on the show.
But Shangela Laquifa Wadley was completely and utterly robbed of the crown and of her position in the top two.
I hate to jump on the “Shangela was robbed” bandwagon, so I’m just going to walk casually onto it. Trixie is a well-deserved winner of All Stars 3. She won four challenges, turned out some amazing looks, and delivered some of my favourite lines from the show. However, I think Shangela is a much more deserving winner.
I knew from the start that Trixie would be the frontrunner of All Stars 3. She’s had an incredibly successful career outside of Drag Race and has a huge fan base. What I didn’t expect, however, was how amazing Shangela would be, not only in every one of the challenges, but with the runways, the lip-syncs, and in the show overall.
Here is a queen who slayed each challenge every week (with one exception) and destroyed every lip-sync. The only reason she didn’t win or make the top two was because of a dumb twist ending that no one asked for. If you ask me, I think the whole season was set up for Trixie to win. Because of the format of All Stars, the queens who won the challenge that week decides who goes home. Since Shangela won most of the challenges, she sent most of the queens home. So, when RuPaul decided to bring the losers back to choose the top two, it was obvious that almost none would pick Shangela. Plus, Trixie is friends with all the losing queens, so her being in the top two was no surprise.
To me, Shangela was the clear winner, not only based on the amount of challenges and lip-sync wins, but her charm, her success, and how much she has grown since being on season two and three. Not only that, to me it seems that Shangela fits RuPaul’s image more so than Trixie, who has already created her own independent aesthetic and brand as a country/folk drag musician and has built herself a career outside of Drag Race.
Despite how you feel about who deserved the crown (or didn’t), what we’re not going to do is send hate to queens on social media because you don’t think they deserved the win. Since winning All Stars 3, Trixie has had to deal with online harassment from over-zealous fans of the show who also believe Shangela was more deserving of the crown. She has even had one of her prizes stolen.
Yes, I believe Shangela did deserve the crown more, but that doesn’t mean I condone bullying Trixie on social media because of it. It’s childish, and Trixie is a human being who deserves respect. Sending her hate isn’t going to crown Shangela, and at the end of the day, it’s just a fucking television show.
As happy as I am with Trixie winning, this was Shangela’s season and if she was in the final lip-sync I’m confident that I wouldn’t even be writing this article. All Stars 3 will go down as the season of robbery, tomfoolery, and unnecessary twists that made us gag.
