RuPaul’s Drag Race Finale Recap: Did the Right Queen Win Season 16?

Andy Swift
·3 min read
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Long live the new queen! Season 16 of RuPaul’s Drag Race reached its dramatic conclusion on Friday, culminating with a lip sync smackdown for the crown.

This time around, it really was any queen’s game. A recent TVLine poll was split almost completely evenly between the final trio — Nymphia Wind, Plane Jane and Sapphira Cristál — with Sapphira edging out her tied competitors by only a single percent. Even the queens’ track records are remarkably similar; Plane and Sapphira each have four wins under their belts, while Nymphia has three.

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But this being the finale, it all came down to which queen was most determined to lip sync for her life, which queen was able to reach the deepest into her bag of tricks, and most importantly, which queen was willing to act an absolute fool.

Before we get into the big winner, we need to talk about Miss Congeniality. Sound the trumpets, because for the first time in Drag Race history… we have a tie! Last year’s recipient of the title, Malaysia Babydoll Foxx, took the stage to announced not one but two successors — Xunami Muse and Sapphira! The former wasn’t a surprise, but the latter? Uh, yeah! We assumed that still being in the competition would have made Sapphira ineligible, but hey, a win’s a win.

OK, time for the main event. As a last-chance effort to impress Ru, the three remaining queens performed to songs written specifically for them. Nymphia rose to new heights as “Queen of the Wind,” Plane owned every inch of her “Bodysuit” (that reveal of a bodysuit under a bodysuit was extremely Plane) and Sapphira wormed her way into our ears with a Donna Summer-esque disco bop.

Then came the first difficult decision of the night: Mama Ru placed Plane’s performance in third, thus eliminating her from the competition. Were we surprised? Absolutely not, though we do have to wonder how much (if any) of Plane’s fate came down to her being given the least exciting song of the bunch.

This left Nymphia to face off against Sapphira in the final lip sync of the season, set to Kylie Minogue’s “Padam Padam,” and Nymphia stole the show almost immediately with a bubble tea-inspired reveal featuring actual floating balloons. It was an inspired way to work flying props into her performance without, you know, murdering a bunch of butterflies. And this was only the first of three reveals from Ms. Wind, who eventually stripped down to a jaw-dropping yellow bikini with a matching ponytail. Sapphira’s attempt at an outfit reveal was a little clumsy, but she did rebound with a surprise wig towards the end of the showdown, so points must be given.

At this point, it was entirely up to Mama Ru. Would she prove totally bananas for Nymphia, or was she more in the mood to chase Sapphira? Squirrelfriends, the results are in. The winner of RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 16 is… Nymphia Wind!

Did your queen of choice end up with the crown? Weigh in via our poll below, then drop a comment with your full review of the Drag Race Season 16 finale.

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