It’s rare that an episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race is legitimately shocking these days. These queens get into spats on the regular and, while they’re always thrilling to watch, it’s not often that they really take us by surprise. The competition gets heated and personalities clash; rinse and repeat!
(Warning: Spoilers ahead for RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars.)
But all bets are off on Drag Race All Stars. The queens have already been through the wringer once, and the only thing they’ve got to lose is $200,000—a small prize when compared to the enormity of what this show requires of its participants. We’ve seen stoic queens, who have never so much as revealed a bead of nervous sweat in front of the camera, completely crumble, literally groveling to their fellow contestants to stay another week. We’ve seen not one but two self-eliminations, from queens who slowly realized they couldn’t handle the competition. But we’ve never seen a rollercoaster quite like what All Stars 8 just delivered, when fierce competitor Heidi N Closet walked out of the competition after one split-second decision.
Heidi’s departure happened so quickly, I had to run back the episode a few times just because of how boggled my mind was. This week’s main challenge was the Snatch Game of Love, perhaps the assignment that puts the most pressure on these queens. It requires them to be hyper-aware of how well they’re doing in every moment, while staying in character, and taking advantage of every single opportunity to throw out a punchline. And while Heidi’s performance started out solid, her team quickly devolved into in-fighting and chaos—a tipping point that, in retrospect, was like a push off a cliff.
In Snatch Game of Love, Heidi chose the pirate Blackbeard as her “celebrity” to impersonate, already a very strange pick considering that there are only so many pirate jokes someone could make or they’d be asked to walk the plank. See? Didn’t that already feel tired? Anyway, Heidi had some fun physical comedy, until she took the character a little too far, overcompensating when her castmate, Kahanna Montrese, started to falter. Kahanna was trying to embody her drag mother, Coco, and was having more and more trouble landing a joke, causing her visible distress.
After Kahanna took us down a particularly meandering road to a punchline, Heidi pulled a treasure map from her pirate’s coat and handed it down the line to her competitor. “Pass that to her so she can find the jokes,” Heidi said, to an awkward pause. Clearly, Heidi had this prop locked and loaded for this very moment, but it came off more contemptible than hilariously caustic. And with fellow queen Jaymes Mansfield towering over the entire group with her impression of Jennifer Coolidge, it played more like a desperate attempt to to make RuPaul wheeze-laugh so hard that he’d keel over and forget any of the group’s clumsiness.
Once everyone served their time in Snatch Game Penitentiary, simmering tensions heated to a boil in the workroom. It took almost no time at all for Heidi to come under fire, with Kandy Muse—who was in an alliance with Heidi and their fellow contender Jimbo—asserting that Heidi told other cast members that Kandy was gunning to send Jimbo home as some of the stiffest competition. Heidi calmly approached each issue one by one, telling Kahanna that she thought she was simply volleying jokes over to her during the challenge. “I wasn’t even hitting the jokes that Ru was giving me, so why are you digging the hole even deeper for me?” Kahanna responded.
“I’m so sorry that that is how it came off,” Heidi said to Kahanna. “I never want my sisters to feel like I’m trying to push them down in any sort of way, you know that’s not me.” Heidi barely got her apology out before Kandy could interject with the “OK so” heard round the world. From there on out, the argument jumped around the room, from queen to queen, with each one revealing a new piece of information to muddle the facts. Alexis Michelle started to agree with Heidi, claiming that she had heard Kandy was trying to send Jimbo home, before retracting her statement. It became impossible to tell who was telling the truth, and though the drama was was nearly quashed, the angst in the room became too much for Heidi.
“If it comes down to voting tonight, vote Heidi,” she began. “This has become really ugly, and really hideous…honestly, no, we don’t even have to vote tonight, I’m leaving.” Heidi exited the workroom so quickly that her makeup muumuu almost flew off by the sheer force of wind her body generated. Kandy ran after her, pleading for her to stay, but Heidi couldn’t be persuaded. Of course, her departure came with a signature sobbing breakdown from Alexis. If Heidi’s gone, you can be sure Ms. Michelle is going to use all that extra camera time for herself, and be shot from the left like Liza Minnelli while doing it.
On the main stage, Heidi’s withdrawal from the competition shocked the judges, but left RuPaul largely unfazed. By taking herself out of the race, Heidi also forfeits the post-elimination Online Fame Games, meaning that she can’t even post the looks she was going to wear to her on her social media accounts, for a shot at a smaller cash prize. That’s a tough consequence, considering how much work both she and other designers might’ve put into the garments she could’ve shown off to millions of fans. Heidi’s lack of hesitation was commendable, in some ways; she did what she had to do to preserve her mental health and relationships. But she didn’t stop to weigh her decision, or take even a moment to process the ramifications it might have, or any regrets that might follow it.
But in Untucked, Heidi addressed that too. “As long as you love who you are, you can’t be mad about your choices, or decisions, or the things that you’ve done,” she said, while packing up her things. “I have nothing to gain from a lie…the fact that [Kandy] tried to make it seem like I’m fake, and trying to lie and scheme, that told me enough. And I had enough.”
It’s always tough to see the pressure of Drag Race become too much for a talented queen. But better to leave with some integrity intact, than leave it all on the workroom floor when the intensity of the competition becomes too much. At the very least, we have Heidi to thank for turning a tepid Snatch Game into a genuine bombshell episode. I’ve already started hoarding Whole Foods airpopped popcorn for what promises to be an equally thrilling reunion at the end of the season.
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