RUPAUL’S DRAG RACE S14E16 “Grand Finale”: A Willow Pill Win Which Was Written In The Stars

Another season has passed and we have our newest winner of RuPaul’s Drag Race…it’s Denver’s very own Willow Pill! From the beginning of season 14, Willow has been a stand-out – a strategic, hilarious, adorable, eccentric, and dark drag performer. Over the course of the season, Willow became an instant favorite amongst fans and RuPaul himself, spoke about living with cystinosis, and she revealed herself to be trans femme, which makes her the very first trans winner of a regular season of RuPaul’s Drag Race. But these aren’t the only things that make Willow Pill such an awesome and awe-inspiring winner of season 14.

“Where Am I?”

As soon as she walked into the workroom, Willow carved out a space for herself, wearing a ridiculously nostalgic outfit my cousin literally wore back in 2003, with the added twist of having “ANGLE” across her little crop top instead of “ANGEL”, letting us all know just where her humor comes from. Way back in episode one, Willow’s entrance look and her general demeanor left the other queens dismissive and they all totally underestimated her…just the way she planned it.

Throughout season 11, Willow always kept her talents and her nerves under wraps by means of strategy, wanting to keep the other queens guessing because, as countless scenes in previous seasons have shown, giving your fellow contestants, the judges, and RuPaul high expectations more often than not sets you up for failure. Willow’s a smart little Pill and she worked the show brilliantly, always thinking from every angle (haha!) before making a move but still staying light-hearted and good-natured with the other queens – being strategic could have very easily cornered her into a negative edit but it was Willow’s willingness to be vulnerable, especially when she’s making absurd jokes, that endeared her to RuPaul, the other queens, and the rest of the world.

Like her drag mother/sister (and winner of RuPaul’s Drag Race season 11) Yvie Oddly, Willow is an eclectic queen who doesn’t mind mixing the most bizarre fashion choices with talents that set her apart from the rest. Oh, and she’s a goddamn winner. There are quite a few other similarities between the two queens as well, the most obvious one being that Yvie and Willow ended up snatching the crown despite only getting one challenge win. This isn’t to say that Willow didn’t have an amazing run during her season; she was consistently either one of the top queens of each week (6 weeks to be exact), she was safe (4 weeks, including when she beat Bosco in the LalapaRuza Lip Sync Smackdown), and she only found herself in the Bottom Two different times – the first being one of seven Bottoms in the aftermath of the worst Snatch Game of all time and the second being simply for narratives reasons since she wasn’t really one of the worst of the week but production just needed to put her up against her bestie Angeria, plus giving them both something to overcome at the end of the competition.

What Led To This Moment

Since the last review, there were two episodes of Rupaul’s Drag Race: the reunion and the finale. Now, most reunion episodes offer very little besides the drama, maybe some tears, and some explanations for why exactly things went down the way they did during the season. It’s a chance to clear the air. Season 14’s reunion episode, titled “Reunited” gave us two moments worth mentioning: Kornbread blessing us with her presence once again, especially with her look being a reference to Willow Pill’s workroom entrance outfit (but with “ANKLE” on the tank top instead of “ANGLE”) and then some venom between Daya Betty and Jasmine Kennedie, who haven’t fully resolved their conflicts from throughout the season, leading to Daya getting very upset and crying. Overall, the reunion episode is serviceable and entertaining. Moving on to the finale of RuPaul’s Drag Race season 14, it’s essentially an enormous advertisement for the live Drag Race show in Las Vegas and a long-winded display of the franchise’s first-ever Top Five – Angeria, Bosco, Camden, Daya, and Willow – who each get their own spotlight at the beginning, complete with personalized performances based on the lip syncs from the season seven and season eight finales.

Everyone does a fairly good job with their numbers, showcasing their individual talents, though the three standouts are Daya, Camden, and Willow. Most likely in a nod to that dragonfly Kornbread dared her to eat at the beginning of the season, Daya comes out dressed as a beautiful insect-like outfit and puts her all into the song while Camden’s is, in every way, a tribute to her Freddie Mercury look from her first win of the season, complete with a male rock n’ roll singing voice for her to lip-sync to. Willow’s performance is also a total treat thanks to her fun and unique look, where she reveals two heads on each shoulder and then a third head popping out from under her dress and later refers to them as Ross Mathews, Carson Kressley, and Michelle Visage – the show’s judges.

After everyone finishes their numbers, their interviews, and their one last pitch for being America’s Next Drag Superstar, there’s a performance from the Las Vegas drag revue show queens and a shoutout to Hot Chocolate, a major drag performer in Las Vegas and the best Tina Turner impersonator out there. Then, all five finalists line up on the stage as RuPaul – looking beautiful as ever – announces how the winner of the season will be chosen: two enormous The Price Is Right-style Big Wheels appear above the stage and Ru says that she has chosen only two queens to move forward to the final Lip Sync For The Crown, and based on the night’s performances, Ru has chosen Lady Camden and Willow Pill for the showdown.

“She’s A Winner Pill”

If you had told me way back at the beginning of the year that it would be Camden going up against Willow for the crown, I would not have believed you. This isn’t to say that Camden wasn’t a strong competitor or she had no personality or talent, but more that she was very easy to overlook especially when there was so much focus on queens like Kornbread, Jorgeous, Angeria, Bosco, and Willow. Despite this, Camden carved out a place for herself in the competition as she nailed the acting challenges, featured some gorgeous runway looks, and became the ultimate dark horse of the competition, making her the perfect choice alongside Willow for the showdown. Angeria and Bosco were immediate frontrunners, but judging by how they fared at the end of the competition and in their finale performances, it makes sense that Ru would choose Camden as her narrative only built momentum, she won three challenges, and her redemption arc paid off way better than Bosco’s. And while it would have been awesome to see Daya in the showdown, her villain edit and the fact that she was eliminated in her first episode stacked the cards against her; it’s great that Daya proved herself enough to make it to the end, but it makes the most sense for Camden to be the one to go up against Willow, a queen whose spot in the final two was cemented as soon as she tossed spaghetti into a bathtub way back in episode one.

While Camden and Willow prepared for their lip-sync, Symone and LaLa Ri – season 13’s crowned winner and Miss Congeniality – blessed the stage with their cool looks and amazing stage presence as they announced season 14’s Miss Congeniality. For the last few seasons, the title of Miss Congeniality has been chosen by the contestants themselves (it used to be up to a vote by Drag Race fans) and in the short amount of time that she was there, Kornbread “The Snack” Jeté won the hearts of the cast and is now our reigning Miss Congeniality – and all while dressed as an incredible amalgamation of Beast and Belle from Disney’s Beauty and the Beast (complete with a giant rose). The only thing that could make Kornbread’s MC win (which comes with $10,000!!) even better is for her bestie Willow to also win this episode as the two bonded so intensely in their short time on the show.

As Camden and Willow return to the stage, the heat is on as RuPaul announces that – for the first time ever – the winner of the season will win $150,000 (as opposed to the usually $100,000) AND the runner-up will receive a cash prize of $50,000. This is honestly huge! The cash prize for the show has been the same since season 4 and it’s honestly about damn time. I guess it literally does pay to sell out to a larger distributor, huh.

The music begins, and it’s the Cher version of ABBA‘s “Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight”. It’s hard at the beginning to tell who’s going to win because, on one hand, Camden is a phenomenal dancer and performer, two major advantages for winning a lip sync on RuPaul’s Drag Race, but on the other hand, Willow has proven that she’s able to turn out a lip sync in the most unexpected ways (her awesome oversized suit and arms help make the lip sync interesting, too). However, the overall lip-sync rapidly begins to dip in quality as it kind of looks like Camden doesn’t seem to fully know the words (or maybe my internet is just slow?) and Willow’s movements come off a bit awkward.

And unfortunately for Camden, she tried to capture lightning in a bottle twice by taking a very obvious on-purpose tumble on stage to reveal a wig and it just wasn’t the same as it was when she did the exact same stunt as she strutted her way to her first win way back in episode seven. Now, statistically, Camden didn’t really have a shot to win the crown because (as I’ve mentioned so many times before) every winner of a regular season of RuPaul’s Drag Race earned their first challenge win within the season’s first five episodes, and Camden missed that boat. However, it would have been so awesome for her to be the ultimate dark horse of Drag Race and come through for the win and beating every single odd. That would have been so awesome and would have felt so deserved, but when Camden made this grave error in her lip sync, it was all over for her. As long as Willow got through the lip sync, she was the one who was going to be crowned – and so it came to be.

Conclusion: RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 14

This was a VERY long season of RuPaul’s Drag Race and while it was sometimes tedious and frustrating, it also gifted us with some of the best episodes of the entire franchise but also some really goddamn, f*cking strong competitors. So while I’m totally at peace with this season being over, I am also a little sad to no longer see these amazing queens on my screen while over the moon that Willow Pill is our winner. I imagine that Willow’s reign will be as entertaining and incredible as she is and, while the actual finale episode was only good, her win automatically made it great and I am beyond happy that she is our queen, that Lady Camden is the first runner-up, and that Kornbread is Miss Congeniality. Nature is truly healing.

Do you agree with Willow Pill winning season 14? Let us know in the comment!

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