By and large, the Canada\u2019s Drag Race<\/em> Season 6 crew handles \u201cThe Shade,\u201d a drag queen take on The View<\/em> or The Real<\/em>, with aplomb, They\u2019re split into three groups, each becoming responsible for one \u201csegment\u201d of the show. Dulce, Karamilk and Saltina Shaker take on the show-opening \u201cThe Realness,\u201d a chance to connect over general life topics. Then there\u2019s \u201cTea Time,\u201d a celebrity gossip segment that Eboni La\u2019Belle, Mya Foxx and Van Goth handle. Finally, there\u2019s an interview with guest judge Kiesza in \u201cCouchside Kiki,\u201d handled by PM, Sami Landri and Velma Jones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There\u2019s remarkably little drama in group or segment selection, although Dulce does try to claim that Karamilk and Saltina didn\u2019t really want her in their team. This is immediately dismissed by Karamilk in confessional as \u201cnot that serious\u201d and by Saltina to Dulce\u2019s face as not mattering, but Dulce says her feelings do matter. (I would have more sympathy for Dulce if she weren\u2019t inventing this issue entirely out of nowhere\u2014if anything, Dulce<\/em> is the one who didn\u2019t want to work with them, as she was clearly initially trying to work with Eboni and Mya.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n This minor moment of drama presages which group will struggle in the challenge\u2014and I do mean which single group. Although this challenge is not judged in teams, and the top three feature two queens from one segment and one more from another, the entire bottom three comes from Dulce\u2019s group. If there\u2019s one thing the talk show challenge tests more than anything else, it\u2019s group chemistry. From the jump, it\u2019s clear that it\u2019s just not there with the Realness trio.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Kiesza joins the judging panel this week, while Brooke Lynn Hytes brings out her inner Detox for a black-and-white runway look<\/span> Credit: Courtesy Bell Media<\/span><\/p><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n We\u2019ll start with them, since the challenge itself does as well. You can see the train derailing as Saltina says that she wants to showcase \u201ca more serious side\u201d of herself in this challenge. While it\u2019s true that vulnerability and a willingness to open up are important, never in a drag competition like this should you think that \u201cserious\u201d is the target. Drag Race <\/em>wants to find a star entertainer, not a lecturer. But that\u2019s exactly what we get out of the Realness segment: no energy, no charisma and just a lot of queens monologuing to themselves. Where\u2019s the chemistry, the banter? <\/p>\n\n\n\n I hold up Eureka!, A\u2019keria C. Davenport and Trinity K. Bonet in Pink Table Talk as the greatest example of this: they were talking about serious things, and did open up, but also brought a lightness and fun to the proceedings. It was exciting to see them in this format! People were immediately calling for WOW Presents Plus to make their version of Pink Table Talk a real series! That\u2019s not because of how serious they took the material, but how enjoyable and entertaining they were to watch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Much more enjoyable are the Tea Time trio, with Eboni really holding court as the best. Later in the episode, Brooke Lynn Hytes will say she was \u201cmade for TV,\u201d and I couldn\u2019t agree more. Be it in this challenge or in her confessionals, Eboni is just eminently watchable, fully herself in a way that makes her one of the most appealing queens of the season. Mya and Van are both good as well\u2014I screamed at Van bringing up Season 13\u2019s Joey Jay when talking about Brooke Lynn being spotted in drag without a wig\u2014but Eboni\u2019s the star of the show.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Couchside Kiki trio nails their segment, and two of them ultimately join Eboni in contention for the win. Not only are they the most dressed for the part\u2014ironic, Sami notes later, considering they\u2019re the most \u201cweirdo\u201d queens of the lot\u2014but their personalities are a perfect blend together. Van says during segment selection that a three-on-one interview could get chaotic easily, but Sami perfectly moderates the conversation and keeps it moving. PM also connects with Kiesza over them both being dancers, and asks some really good questions. Kiesza is clearly incredibly comfortable with the three of them, and by my estimation, it\u2019s the most successful segment of the challenge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sami Landri, PM, and Velma Jones charm guest judge Kiesza in the talk show challenge<\/span> Credit: Courtesy Bell Media<\/span><\/p><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n At the makeup mirrors, we get to see our clown trio from the Couchside Kiki form an alliance, while Dulce opens up about being in the military and still doing drag. Most affecting in this portion of the episode is Van coming out as HIV-positive and reckoning with that in her look for this week\u2019s \u201cA Perp Walk to Remember\u201d runway category. Van\u2019s diagnosis is still fresh, and I get the sense that she\u2019s still very much reckoning with it. But I admire her willingness to not only speak about it openly, but incorporate it into her art. Much like when Ongina came out as HIV-positive back in the very first season of Drag Race<\/em> ever, it takes real courage to talk about in a format like this, and their visibility is so effective at battling stigma.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Speaking of the runway: this is a case where the interpretations vary wildly<\/em> from one queen to the next. Some go quite serious, like Van\u2019s (gorgeous, love the red chain) and PM\u2019s take on the Toronto bathhouse riots from the 1980s (as Brooke Lynn herself puts it, gorgeous and disgusting). Then there are queens who go with more of a fun, campy take on the category, like Dulce\u2019s shoplifting look, Karamilk\u2019s bank robbery look and Velma\u2019s strange maple syrup look. It\u2019s actually somewhat difficult to evaluate the runways against each other, simply because the interpretations are so disparate. What Dulce is trying to accomplish is so different from what van is, for instance, so it\u2019s hard to compare apples to oranges.<\/p>\n\n\n\n By and large, though, I don\u2019t think the runways play much of a role in deciding the top and bottom three this week. Dulce\u2019s whole team must fight for the Golden Beaver, while Sami edges PM and Eboni out for her first maxi-challenge win of the season. It\u2019s a great moment for Sami, and a richly deserved win. Who she will save, though, is a bit of an open question. Yes, Saltina is the only one of the bottom three to be making her debut there, but judging solely on the challenge itself, Karamilk was probably the best of a bad crop. Van, for her part, admits in confessional that she wants Saltina to have to lip sync. If we take Van\u2019s claim that she really saw Star Doll as bigger competition than PM a couple weeks ago, then the frontrunner\u2019s Golden Beaver MO becomes clear: she wants to send the biggest threats to the lip sync regardless of challenge performance. (Granted, I don\u2019t think Van actually<\/em> saw Star as more of a threat than PM, but I have to go off what she tells us.) The one queen who seems to be guaranteed to lip sync is Dulce, although she does remind Sami that Saltina once failed to give Sami the Beaver, while unlike Karamilk, Dulce did not argue for Sami to have to lip sync.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Karamilk and Dulce’s double dip in their Lip Sync for Your Life makes for a tremendous moment<\/span> Credit: Courtesy Bell Media<\/span><\/p><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n Still, Sami\u2019s request that the bottom three make their case is a sign that she\u2019s taking this duty seriously, and she indeed saves Saltina. With the queen with the strongest track record safe, it becomes a battle between Dulce and Karamilk to Kiesza\u2019s \u201cDancing and Crying.\u201d This is a pretty great lip sync, honestly! Dulce moves well, but there\u2019s something just so natural and smooth about how Karamilk performs. She\u2019s really dynamic in a lip sync, captivating not just with her dancing, but with her emoting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The best moment of the lip sync, and perhaps the whole episode, comes in the final chorus, when both queens do the same dip at the same time. It is so<\/em> satisfying\u2014Carson Kressley is gagged, as am I\u2014and if we had more episodes to play with this season, you could argue for a double shantay here. But thanks to the full cast of 12 and no elimination in the first episode, we actually need a double sashay<\/em> to end on time, not a double shantay. So despite her best efforts, Dulce must sashay away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I do enjoy this episode, if a bit less than the previous four. That\u2019s no knock against this episode, but rather an endorsement of how great the season has been so far. Season 5 was a speed bump for Canada\u2019s Drag Race<\/em>, but Season 6 is proving to be both great TV and a showcase for some really interesting, cool drag. It\u2019s the kind of season that would make me watch even on Christmas Day\u2014which is indeed what will happen, as next week\u2019s episode is still airing on the holiday. See you next week, when we\u2019ll unwrap what Brooke Lynn and her merry band give us for Christmas!<\/p>\n\n\n\n ✨<\/strong> The girls are very<\/em> scared of going up against PM in a lip sync. Sami goes so far as to compare their performance ability to a kind of immunity in the competition, that\u2019s how much she doesn\u2019t think they stand a chance against PM. I do think there are others who stand a chance\u2014Karamilk proved to be quite the performer in her two lip syncs\u2014but I can\u2019t blame the non-dancers for fearing going up against someone who can move as effortlessly as PM can.<\/p>\n\n\n\n ✨<\/strong> PM takes Eboni not saving them with the Golden Beaver fine to her face, but in confessional, they say Eboni is dead to them in the game. It doesn\u2019t pay off with anything this week, but like Makayla Couture\u2019s frequent negative confessionals about Xana before their feud, I have to assume we\u2019re being shown this for a reason. Stay alert!<\/p>\n\n\n\n ✨<\/strong> I\u2019m perplexed by Saltina\u2019s arc in this episode. After being anxious in the first couple of episodes, she seemed to really shake it off after winning a maxi-challenge. But in the werk room before this week\u2019s challenge is even announced, Saltina has a whole monologue about her \u201crealization\u201d that she wants to be confident, and that she already is\u2014she just needs to embrace it. It\u2019s a little loopy, and some of the other queens shade her in confessionals for it, but it\u2019s mostly just played as a quirky moment. Then, later in Mini-Untucked<\/em>, when Sami asks the queens to explain why they should say, Saltina \u2026 practically repeats the same realization? The details are different, but the core message is the same: she\u2019s been afraid of being too confident, but now she\u2019s realized she can own it. It would be one thing if Saltina acknowledged how, just the day before, she had come into this episode thinking this. That would actually make sense! But at least in what we see in the edit, it seems like she monologues about the same realization twice. (Even odder, no one is shown calling out that it\u2019s the same beat.) It almost feels like this \u201crealization\u201d was Saltina producing a moment for herself, only to have to fall back on it when fighting for her spot later. At any rate, it\u2019s quite strange.<\/p>\n\n\n\n ✨<\/strong> Velma brings up to Dulce that her comments in last week\u2019s challenge<\/a> about Velma\u2019s mom\u2019s alcoholism were below the belt. Dulce shocks me by not only not really apologizing (\u201cIf you<\/em> felt some type of way about the jokes that I<\/em> made, I do apologize\u201d), but throwing it back at Velma and saying that by calling her \u201cpoor,\u201d Velma was triggering her<\/em> trauma. I\u2019m not here to litigate what is trauma and what isn\u2019t, but it is plainly true that Velma\u2019s read was about Dulce, while Dulce\u2019s read was about Velma\u2019s mom. This is inherently not an equal trade-off. I would hope that Dulce could see that and more sincerely apologize to Velma for going out of bounds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n ✨<\/strong> The mini-challenge this week is quick drag karaoke to some of the \u201cbest\u201d Canada\u2019s Drag Race<\/em> verses, including Tara Nova\u2019s \u201cGo Off Queen\u201d verse, Xana\u2019s notoriously rhythm-free \u201cNot\u201d verse and even Kennedy Davenport\u2019s \u201cTongue Pop\u201d verse from Canada vs. The World<\/em> Season 2. It\u2019s cute! And a nice callback to some fun CDR<\/em> moments. Dulce wins, earning $2,500 for her pleasure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n ✨<\/strong> I can sometimes be hard on Traci Melchor for her hosting stints in the werk room, but i find her really fun in the mini-challenge\u2014and looking gorgeous in her blonde hair!<\/p>\n\n\n\n ✨<\/strong> Eboni\u2019s confessional about not trusting someone who smiles too much sends me to the moon. \u201cYou can never trust a person who smiles too much, you know? Like, if you\u2019re always smiling, what are you hiding?\u201d she says. \u201cGirl, that\u2019s how Star went home. Too damn much.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n ✨<\/strong> PM clocks how much Van says \u201cclock it.\u201d I\u2019ll get more into this in the power rankings, but while it\u2019s a funny moment, I also think it might say something about how the show is editing Van.<\/p>\n\n\n\n ✨<\/strong> Absolutely cracked up at Sami announcing The Shade\u2019s next guest will be Brad Goreski: \u201cWhere has he been?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n ✨<\/strong> The \u201cGolden Beaver Not Even Gold\u201d headline during the Tea Time segment \u2026 I feel heard<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n ✨<\/strong> A couple of quick plugs: I spoke with Silky Nutmeg Ganache<\/a> about the new season of Slaycation<\/em>, and we chatted a bit about Canada\u2019s Drag Race<\/em>. Additionally, as part of Xtra<\/em>\u2019s Rainbow Rewind 2025 coverage, I put together my list of my 10 favourite lip syncs of the year<\/a>, including one from this very season quite high in my rankings! This was a ton of fun to compile, and resulted in a very international season-dominant list\u2014highly recommend checking it out and seeking out some great lip syncs that you may not yet have seen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The next episode of <\/em>Canada\u2019s Drag Race will be available to stream on Thursday, Dec. 25, at 9 p.m. EST on WOW Presents Plus in the U.S. and on Crave in Canada. You can subscribe to our drag newsletter, <\/em>Wig!, for exclusive <\/em>Drag Race content delivered straight to your inbox every month.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A talk show challenge sees a \u201cmade-for-tv\u201d queen take the win<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1217,"featured_media":279048,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"editorial_slug":"8","_editorial_slug":"8","exclude_from_latest_block":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,8,10],"contributors":[2459],"topic":[89],"clients":[],"series":[50],"timeliness":[58],"editorial_format":[33],"type-of-work":[2536],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/xtramagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279038"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/xtramagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/xtramagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xtramagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1217"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xtramagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=279038"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/xtramagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279038\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":279056,"href":"https:\/\/xtramagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279038\/revisions\/279056"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xtramagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/279048"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/xtramagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=279038"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xtramagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=279038"},{"taxonomy":"contributors","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xtramagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/contributors?post=279038"},{"taxonomy":"topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xtramagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/topic?post=279038"},{"taxonomy":"clients","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xtramagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/clients?post=279038"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xtramagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/series?post=279038"},{"taxonomy":"timeliness","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xtramagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/timeliness?post=279038"},{"taxonomy":"editorial_format","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xtramagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/editorial_format?post=279038"},{"taxonomy":"type-of-work","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xtramagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/type-of-work?post=279038"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Carson](\"https:\/\/xtramagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/CDR_605_A-Large.jpeg\")
![\"Kiesza,](\"https:\/\/xtramagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/CDR_605_B-Large.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"Karamilk](\"https:\/\/xtramagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/CDR_605_D-Large.jpeg\")
Untucking our final thoughts<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n