Too many all stars, not enough stars

‘RuPaul’s Drag Race: All Stars’ season four is too much, too soon

By Roshni Riar, Staff Writer

If you were to stop me in the middle of the street and ask me to blurt out a random fact about RuPaul’s Drag Race, I can confidently say that I would be able to do it.

Who went home season five, episode one? Penny Tration. First double eviction? That was season four, to the dismay of both Honey Mahogany and Vivienne Pinay. Was Shangela robbed? Yes, yes she was.

All this is to stress that I am a huge fan of the show. So, when it was announced that RuPaul’s Drag Race: All Stars season four is set to premiere on December 14, you would expect me to be excited. Instead, I was confused and pre-emptively exhausted. I feel this way because just earlier this year in March, the third season of All Stars concluded with Trixie Mattel as the new crowned queen. With season three wrapped up, I anticipated that the next time Drag Race fans would see an All Stars season would be in a couple of years, at least after a few regular Drag Race seasons introduced fans to new drag queens. Instead, here I am a mere 10 months after Trixie Mattel’s win, not as excited as I would like to be. It’s way too soon for this season to be happening.

The point of All Stars is to show what drag queens have done with their careers after their original seasons. It’s supposed to be about showing growth and bringing back infamous and iconic queens as well as fan favourites. All Stars season one aired in 2012, season two in 2016, and season three in 2018. Spacing them out works because it allows regular seasons to pass and the pool of potential stars to grow. It also gives fans the chance to witness beloved queens’ development outside of the show and be excited to root for them if they do return. Shoehorning another season of All Stars into the end of the year doesn’t allow for the same amount of hype to be built up. Sure, it’s exciting to see the cast and have the show to watch again, but the announcement makes me second-guess the meaning of an “all star” in the context of RuPaul’s Drag Race.

Not everyone can be an All Star or should be for that matter. There have been over 120 queens on RuPaul’s Drag Race after season 10 ended this summer. This year alone, three seasons of Drag Race will have aired, two of those being All Stars seasons. Maybe it’s harsh, but I wonder if we’ll run out of “all stars” at this rate.

I’m really happy to see that Drag Race has exploded in the mainstream and is afforded the ability to put out so many seasons so quickly—but I can’t help but feel like the announcement of season four so soon is overkill. I’d rather discover new queens over the course of two or three regular seasons and then happily accept another All Stars in 2020, when the hype and anticipation is nearly unbearable. At least I’d feel it was worth the wait.