Season 16
It felt like the best parts of old and new Drag Race were finally coming together.
Since the pandemic, RuPaul’s Drag Race — in this case meaning just the flagship American series — had been in a quandary. Fans responded so positively to the all-good-vibes nature of Season 12, but basically every season since was weighed down by some issue: Season 13 by a cast too self-aware, Season 14 by repeated non-eliminations, and Season 15 by the shortened episode runtimes. Season 16 felt like the first where the best parts of eras both old and new were embraced. We got fan-beloved frontrunners like Sapphira Cristál and Nymphia Wind, a complex villain in Plane Jane, and even an old-fashioned drag rivalry in Morphine Love Dion vs. Mhi’ya Iman LePaige. The resulting season was a terrific one, and even if I might quibble with the edit of our eventual winner, I think this is overall the strongest regular season we saw in the Biden administration.