Drag fans the world over got a special treat on July 15th thanks to the surprise announcement of RuPaul’s Drag Race Global All Stars, the newest iteration of the ever-expanding Drag Race repertoire. With a dozen queens from a dozen different countries (and, in turn, a dozen different drag cultures) serving up a new competition on Paramount , Global All Stars marks one of the franchise’s biggest risks yet. But, for diehard Drag Race fans, this kind of imperial phase escalation was to be expected.

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For a crash course in RuPaul’s Drag Race broadcast history, the show began back in 2009, airing on the niche queer cable channel Logo. Drag Race stayed on Logo for eight seasons before moving to VH1 in 2017. Then, just last year in 2023, the series moved over to MTV, where it boasted a bigger cash prize for winners ($200,000, up from $150,000) and a noticeably higher budget. RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars, which features returning queens battling it out on their second (or sometimes third) go around in the competition, followed a similar trajectory, but,........

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