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Four weeks into our ongoing recap coverage of The Boulet Brothers’ Dragula has slightly desensitized us to horror-related squeamishness while we watch Portland-based contestants Asia Consent and Majesty creep closer to the competitive drag series’ $100,000 grand prize. While both competitors established themselves as the ones to beat straight out of the gate, this week’s episode scares us into thinking that the hot streak Stumptown’s scariest drag artists could drop dead at any moment.
While waiting to see if Desiree Dik or Yuri return from the previous episode’s extermination challenge, Majesty compares their previous experience on a televised drag competition to Yuri’s time on Drag Race Down Under, the Australian offshoot of RuPaul’s Cinematic Universe. This annoys some of the other contestants, especially Auntie Heroine, who doubts Majesty’s overarching redemption storyline in their confessional. Majesty further annoys Auntie after Yuri returns, taking focus from Yuri conquering their fear of skydiving and making it about themselves.
The ghouls must form three teams of three to lip sync a performance in locomotive looks (think contemptible conductors and awful old money heiresses) to the Boulet Brothers’ song “Ghost Train,” for the chance to win $2,500 of stage jewelry. In all honesty, the song lives with some of the better musically-inclined drag musicians’ repertoire out there, in the style of vintage crooners like Roy Orbison or modern successors like Orville Peck. Their performance is set at an actual-factual haunted train yard, upping the spooky factor up a notch. Everyone seems confident in their abilities, so there’s a heavier dose of interpersonal drama while still focusing on the contestants’ technical proficiency. Asia Consent and Pi avoid teaming up to hide their new alliance.
Auntie Heroine calls Majesty narcissistic to their face. Asia and Maj call them hypocritical in their confessions, noting that Auntie has their own drag character’s face tattooed across their chest (Maj proudly notes their chest tattoo is a portrait of Cher). Rather than get defensive or upset, Maj calmly hears Auntie out. Majesty seems to understand that they’ll have to earn their castmates’ trust, and though their confidence was shaken in earlier episodes, they seem ready and willing to prove it.
The Boulets and their guest judges, director Justin Simien (Dear White People) and Dragula season 3 winner Landon Cider—who just performed at Triple Nickel on Thursday, Oct. 17—had their work cut out for them after the challenge. The fabulous phantoms all seemed to perform well enough, so naming weak performers proved difficult. Since the episode ends on a cliff-hanger, we won’t reveal who gets electrocuted in the Tesla coil extermination challenge, but we can say that both Majesty and Asia lose points in the judges’ eyes for not being ghostly enough. Does that critique come to haunt them, or do they scare up top honors after all?