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The so-called Season 666 of The Boulet Brothers’ Dragula premiered on Tuesday, Oct. 1, scaring up a dozen ghoulies to duke it out on the runway for bragging rights, $100,000 and the title as the next drag supermonster. Among the hopefuls are two Portland contestants, newbie Asia Consent and season two runner-up Majesty (or Maj). WW will try to keep the spoilers to a minimum as we track our hometown horrors’ progress toward the crown, but can the living keep a secret?
In the new season of Dragula—an unholy marriage of RuPaul’s drag-based competition series and Joe Rogan’s old Fear Factor gags, with some of the most acidic contestants reality TV has ever spat back from hell—our Portland antiheroes enter Episode 1 as two of the most underestimated contestants, only to emerge strongest in terms of challenge performance, confessional screen time and face-to-face drama.
Drag artists walk through a blacked-out hallway teeming with haunted house scare actors. Nobody unleashes a Sarah Paulson shriek, but poor Asia—who is one of several openly trans contestants—is sabotaged in a truly astounding move that, without giving anything away, is a clear violation of most haunted house rules!
Maj (unforgivably still billed by production as a Seattle artist!) enters last, and the other monsters in the abandoned movie theater lobby at the end of the hall are shook. Desiree Dik immediately clashes with Maj, and is the first to question why they’re not on the all-star franchise Titans, but a leather daddy opens the theater before things go on too long.
Appearing on screen, the Boulets inform their “uglies” that before they can take part in the Floor Show challenge to reimagine an iconic horror character, they must survive an arduous haunted house.
“Survive” is not an exaggeration: the Boulets put their little devils through the ringer with an elaborate maze with fake walls, disorienting features and aggressive scare actors nonstop. Amid the chaos, the contestant who seems most likely to have been cast as a sacrificial lamb finds an immunity-granting scroll, which apparently they can use on themselves or cast on someone else (they very, very wisely use it on themselves).
Asia and Maj both deliver some of the best workroom and backstage banter between the contestants, with Asia’s one-liner confessionals making me want to be her best friend, while Maj’s believable redemption/rebrand storyline and shrewd Tiffany Pollard awareness of reality TV production and reputation for bringing their first season’s best drama makes them a fascinating watch worth rooting for.
One of the Portland contestants wins the first challenge, while another earns a vote to face off against the other highest voted bottom queen to face their (and most of our) fears and swim in the open ocean with sharks.
Do either Asia or Maj sleep with the fishes? That’d be spoiling, but we can say that the person with the least compelling storyline of the bottom two goes home. Maj, whose elimination vote is based on the horror rules of punishing any violation of the villain’s moral code, sets up drama like a producer’s and viewer’s dream chessmaster. Asia is a sweetheart who takes no shit, overcoming the challenges she faced in the dark to prove herself a formidable opponent.
When it tones down on the grodier Fear Factor callbacks, Dragula proves to be a compelling watch for anyone who’s tired of watching RuPaul chuck fetuses down every continent’s catwalk.
STREAM IT: New episodes of The Boulet Brothers’ Dragula appear on Tuesdays on AMC+/Shudder.