‘RuPaul’s Drag Race’ Season 17 Power Ranking: Episode 13 — Make Me Over

With RuPaul’s Drag Race bringing back their Rate-a-Queen system for season 17, Billboard decided to rate each of the new queens every week based on their performance. Below, we take a look at the emotional makeover challenge to see which queens became proud drag parents to their proud real parents. Spoilers ahead for episode 13.

It is a time-honored tradition on RuPaul’s Drag Race to have the queens put someone else in drag. The show has given us dozens of different permutations of this challenge — queens have made over veterans. athletes, members of the Pit Crew, even other eliminated queens.

But in the latest episode of the franchise (aired Friday, March 28), Drag Race decided to go for the emotional jugular, having the remaining contestants make over members of their actual family into members of their drag family. Reuniting with their moms or dads, the contestants put together a look, painted their parent’s faces and presented them on the runway for the judges, all while showing their family what it’s actually like to be a drag artist.

Much has been made over the year’s about Drag Race‘s attempts at sentimentality — fans and former contestants regularly make fun of RuPaul asking the contestants what they would say to their younger selves at the end of the competition. But this episode highlights what a subversive phenomenon Drag Race still is today. What other episode of modern television shows a trans drag performer working through a rocky relationship with her mother, a work-in-progress who is trying to be better after kicking her child out of the house? Given the combative and horrific political climate we find ourselves in today, this episode of Drag Race feels like a breath of fresh air.

Now, for the results: after winding up in the bottom the week prior, Sam Star took home her third challenge win for transforming her mother into Sassy Star. Frontrunner Onya Nurve and underdog Jewels Sparkles, meanwhile, wound up in the bottom for their makeovers of their dads. Lip synching to Amerie’s “1 Thing,” the duo delivered a stunning performance — so stunning, that RuPaul decided no one would be going home this week.

Below, Billboard takes a look back at episode 13 and ranks where our remaining contestants lie based on this episode and the season as a whole: