RuPaul's Drag Race: Handicapping the Top 8

After quite the rocky start to RuPaul’s Drag Race’s 11th season — it had been a while since the fanbase had to deal with quite this many underwhelming “filler queens” who had to be swept away — we’ve arrived at a strong top 8. And it couldn’t have come at a better time, since last week’s barn-burner of a Lip-Sync For Your Life between Brooke Lynn Hytes and Yvie Oddly, where both queens were declared safe, has already gone down as one of the most acclaimed highlights of the show’s history. So now that our enthusiasm is back to a fever pitch, it’s time to assess this top 8 and see which ones have the stuff to win. By this point, an examination of the queens’ performance thus far and the direction that their TV edit seems headed have informed our predictions for which queens will head to the finals (where, in the past two seasons, the top four will engage in a lip-sync tournament for the crown), and which will fall by the wayside.
 

Plastique Tiara

The stats: One mini-challenge win and one maxi-challenge win. Has survived one lip-sync for her life.

At the outset of the season, it seemed like Plastique was going to be our all-looks, no-substance queen, but after a few weeks of drawing out her personality — including a well-timed sob on Mama Ru’s shoulder — Plastique now seems like she could be a dark horse for the finals. Her only call to lip-sync for her life came in the big six-way disaster in week 3, but other than that, the worst Plastique has ever been has been safe. Still, it seems like she’s going to have to win at least one LSFYL in order to make it to the end, doesn’t it?

Predicted finish: 7th place
 

Shuga Cain

The stats: One mini-challenge win. Has survived two lip-syncs for her life.

Yes, Shuga Cain is still here! Remember how fun she was on Snatch Game last week as Charo? That, combined with her aubergine-betta-don’t runway gown that RuPaul flipped over, and suddenly Shuga is riding higher than she has been all season. ...Which means she’s probably gone this week, right? Honestly, as much as we love an improvement arc, this season is rapidly running out of queens she’s likely to outlast.

Predicted finish: 8th place
 

Vanessa Vanjie Mateo

The stats: Zero challenge wins. Zero lip-syncs.

For a personality as loud (delightfully so) as Vanjie’s, it’s strange that she’s been the middle-of-the-pack girl all season. She’s finished among the tops twice, the bottoms twice, and safe four times, with no wins or lip synchs. That might be a recipe for making the top six, or even sneaking into the finals with a strong stretch run — as Kameron Michaels and Peppermints have done recently — but a winner’s journey that does not make. While she remains one of the most dynamic queens on the roster and the most effortlessly entertaining and funny, her same-y runway looks have earned her the ire of Michelle Visage, and sooner or later, a queen either has to acquiesce to Michelle (as Jinkx Monsoon did when she stepped up her runway game) or die under her boot (see anyone from Max to Dusty Ray Bottoms). Vanjie’s show-mance with Brooke Lynn Hytes is the one complicating factor, as the show will definitely want to pay that off, perhaps with a lip-sync face-off (we thought things were headed there last week). Maybe that’s how we enter the finals?

Predicted finish: 5th place
 

Brooke Lynn Hytes

The stats: One mini-challenge win, two maxi-challenge wins. Has survived one lip-sync for her life.

”Survived” is far too mild a term for what Brooke Lynn did during last week’s all-time-classic LSFYL. After delivering a Celine Dion impersonation that went over like cold poutine in the Snatch Game, BLH first slayed the runway with a double-reveal-reverse-swirl combination that even the Soviet judge would have scored perfectly, then threw it down to Demi Lovato in the lip-sync. We’d say this was the stuff of a comeback narrative, but … well, read on. But at least Brooke Lynn gets to be the season’s Technically Proficient Queen Who Never Feels Quite Vulnerable Enough to Position as a Winner. That’s a fine lineage that includes Ginger Minj, Courtney Act, Chad Michaels, and Manila Luzon. It also included Sasha Velour, who then went and slayed two lip-syncs in the finale so unambiguously that they had to give her the crown. So there’s hope!

Predicted finish: Probably our runner-up but a future contender for an All-Stars win.
 

A’Keria C. Davenport

The stats: One mini-challenge win, one maxi-challenge win. Has survived two lip-syncs.

For the first several episodes, A’Keria was far more notable as a narrator from her talking heads than a challenge competitor. She had her breakout two weeks ago for the Olympics challenge, but the fact that she went right back down to the bottom the week after made that seem like a flash in the pan. She’s a hugely likeable queen, though, and a portion of the fanbase has latched onto her as an underdog fave. And here’s a reality TV secret: pay attention to the narrator queens. They were given that role for a reason.

Predicted finish: Though it doesn’t seem likely now, we’ll take a flyer that A’Keria sneaks into the finals and then loses right away.
 

Nina West

The stats: Two mini-challenge wins, one maxi-challenge win. Has never had to lip sync.

Only Silky and Brooke Lynn have a better on-paper resume than Nina at this point. So why does it feel like she’s a long shot to make the finals? Our veteran queen has made “gaining self-confidence and polish” her storyline, and you go find American Idol’s Melinda Doolittle and ask her how that worked out for her. We envision Nina falling into the bottom two with an Yvie or a Silky, and the show just won’t throw one of their faves overboard to keep Nina, unfortunately. That said, Nina is a delight, and you could just as easily imagine her winning a challenge or two before she’s done. She’s also the frontrunner for Miss Congeniality, right? Or she would be in a pre-”Fan Favorite” world.

Predicted finish: 6th place
 

Silky Nutmeg Ganache

The stats: 3 mini-challenge wins, 2 maxi-challenge wins, including last week’s Snatch Game. Has never had to lip-sync.

Silky is easily the biggest personality this season, and in a year that also includes Yvie Oddly and Miss Vanjie, that’s saying a LOT. To this point in the season, Silky has had a “love her or hate her” energy, but she actually managed to emerge from her various shouting matches with Yvie on the winning side. Her edit still reads verrrrry shady for a winner, but Violet Chachki won, after all. I’d like to see her lip-sync once before I fully assess her chances of winning, but at this point, I can’t see a finale without her.

Predicted finish: Finalist, but not our winner.
 

Yvie Oddly

The stats: One maxi-challenge win. Has survived one lip sync.

Last week’s performance as Whoopi Goldberg on Snatch Game was atrocious, but she then slayed the lip synch, which might just wipe her slate clean. Or better yet, it sets her up for a major comeback arc. No queen this season has more ammunition for a winner’s storyline, from her connective-tissue disorder that could set her career short (impetus to reward her now!) to her ugly war of words with Silky (she apologized and learned something about herself!) to last week’s rock-bottom. There’s nowhere to go but up for Yvie, and we think that ascent is headed all the way.

Predicted finish: America’s next drag superstar.

New Episodes of RuPaul's Drag Race air Thursdays at 8pm ET on VH1
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Joe Reid is the senior writer at Primetimer and co-host of the This Had Oscar Buzz podcast. His work has appeared in Decider, NPR, HuffPost, The Atlantic, Slate, Polygon, Vanity Fair, Vulture, The A.V. Club and more.