‘Drag Race’: The Best Lip Sync Challenge Yet Ends With Tears in Episode 4

Spoiler alert: This post contains spoilers from Episode 4 of RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 10. Proceed with caution.

The bottom fell out this week on RuPaul’s Drag Race and it’s a tough loss. Dusty Ray Bottoms seemed like a quirky punk rock queen that had plenty left to show, but the ball challenge — in which the queens have to showcase three separate runway looks — ended up being her downfall.

The theme of the week was global warming and the queens were asked to create looks that would showoff extreme heat, freezing cold, and a space-themed escape from Earth. Considering that a lot of the winners of Season 10 seem to be saved thanks to their challenge wins instead of their runway looks, it was a great time to really see what these girls can bring in terms of pure fashion.

Thanks to some high concepts and strong narrative to their looks, Aquaria and Miz Cracker soared above the competition. The judges even admitted that it was a tight race for the top spot this week, but Aquaria’s poppy comic book colors and attitude earned her the win.

But, what about the bottom queens? It was pretty shocking to see The Vixen remain safe this week as her stripped down looks weren’t quite up to the quality of some of the other queens. However, the big interstellar outfits were where the judges lobbed most of their critiques, and the two that didn’t quite click were Monét X Change and Dusty Ray Bottoms. Monét’s final dress was sloppy and Dusty’s look simply didn’t convey the spacey theme the judges were looking for.

Thankfully, the lip sync battle proved to be the best one of the season so far. The dueling queens turned it out to Nicki Minaj’s “Pound the Alarm” and it was fierce. RuPaul even felt the need to tell the spectating queens that this is what a lip sync for your life is supposed to be. Still, only one queen could stay in the running and Dusty Ray Bottoms just couldn’t sync with the attitude of the song like Monét did.

It’s a real bummer to see Dusty leave this early in the competition. She brought the same kind of streetwise punk attitude that Thorgy Thor had in All Stars 3. It’s a shame to see her go, but she promised this wouldn’t be the last we’d see of her. We hope that’s true.