It is time for the penultimate episode of RuPaul's Drag Race. This season has felt very long at times, but the top contenders for the crown are some of the best queens this show has ever seen. The drag they bring and the speeches they give to their childhood selves make this a sparklingly beautiful episode.

Many fans thought this week would be the finale, but alas the season that never ends had no intention of going away this soon. Next week is the reunion and the following week is the crowning. This week the dolls do a podcast interview with RuPaul, make a music video, present their best drag on the runway and lip-sync for their lives one at a time.

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Gottmik's interview is so charming and lovable. After thirteen seasons we have seen so many of these conversations with RuPaul and this one stands out as uniquely singular. Gottmik touches on dead names, transitioning, trans representation and brings us so many laughs. As RuPaul says "there's this freedom about you that is infectious". Gottmik says she is having so much fun being in the competition and that has shined through so much in every single episode.

In Rosé's interview, she talks about leaving the theatre industry because she felt that the business was putting her into boxes she didn't belong in. Rosé goes on to say that drag revealed to her that she is "way more queer than I realized".

Kandy is charming and funny as usual. The more episodes we spend with her the more obvious it is that she truly is a star. Shey may not have the best lewks, she may not have performed the best in the challenges and she may not be the best lip-syncer... anyway on to Symone. Just kidding. Kandy does have many hurdles to climb compared to the other contestants, but personality is a huge part of what makes an excellent drag queen and Kandy has so much of it. This interview and this episode prove that Kandy Muse is someone whose show you'd want to pay to see.

Symone's interview shows that she is the one. She is the most poised and warm. She gives off the presence of someone who should be wearing a crown. Symone is charming and has the essence of a true leader. She is a queen with a powerful and clear point of view and the way she shows her vulnerability in this episode makes us love her even more.

Symone on RuPauls Drag Race season 13

For the mainstage challenge, the dolls have to perform their own verses to RuPaul's new song: Lucky. Gottmik is in the pocket. She is spitting some sexy rhymes and really looks like a superstar. Kandy is... fine. Rosé absolutely kills it. In a very on-brand performance for Rosé it is in a word... impressive. Symone has something the other girls do not have. She is not perfecting a performance she is feeling it. You get the impression that if a light fixture fell mid-number she would incorporate it into her song without flinching. Rosé would call for a stage manager and ask to start the song again.

On the runway, the category is drag excellence. Gottmik's lewk literally made my jaw drop. She is serving 101 Dalmations and as Ross Matthews says it is the perfect intersection between fashion and stupid. Kandy looks fun and cute. It's a very interesting silhouette and her make-up is gorgeous. Rosé... to quote Hillary Rodham Clinton... what happened? The wig is an odd color and the dress is not flattering. The styling is strange and while she is giving a nod to her Scottish heritage we wish one of her castmates would have had a Braveheart and told her this is not the lewk. It seems like she is in a regional production of Plaid Tidings. Symone continues to bring Black excellence to the runway and she has so many tricks up her giant sleeve. Every week she serves it even better than the week before.

RuPaul shows the queens pictures of themselves as children and says really beautiful things to each one of them. Symone's message to her younger self is particularly tear-jerking. She tells young Reggie that "people will make you think you cannot be Black and gay. That you cannot be feminine and successful, but that isn't true" while tears stream down her gorgeous cheeks.

The dolls have to lip-sync for their lives and they do it one at a time. Then RuPaul calls the names of the queens who should step forward to go into the finale of RuPaul's Drag Race and all four of them are invited to continue. It is pretty lame, but hopefully, the finale will gag us as it has in the past.

Fans seem torn on which queen should win the crown and for the first time in Drag Race herstory so is this recapper. We predict a double crowning. Symone and Gottmik are both too fierce not to reward. They both bring such different styles of drag. May they both reign.

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Source: VH1