How ‘RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars’ Reinvents Itself With A New Format

In it’s previous seasons, ‘RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars’ has shown that it is no stranger to switching up it’s format. Starting off with contestants competing in pairs until the finale in it’s first season, to having contestants eliminate each other instead of the decision lying with the judges, and even having no queens eliminated for entire seasons at a time, this drag race spin-off knows how to keep it’s fans engaged and the tenth and latest season is no stranger to that.

With a whopping 18 drag queens competing for the crown and another chance at being inducted into the winner’s circle, All Stars has changed the way viewers watch the competition once again. Instead of having every contestant compete against each other all at once, which has become the standard, All Stars takes a page out of the flagship series’ playbook by introducing a bracket style competition before bringing contestants together in the semi-finale.

Previously, on ‘RuPaul’s Drag Race’, there have been seasons where queens have been split into two groups before meeting the entire cast, with each team having their respective episodes and then joining together, as seen in seasons 6, 12, 13, and 17. Not only did this format give fans the chance to gain familiarity with contestants in already large casts, but it subtly allowed the show to take an already explored format and expand it into an entire season’s worth of content by extending that idea from a singular episode into an entire series. This strategic shift doesn’t only keep things fresh, but it also shows a willingness to, and the ability to, successfully evolve in a world where reality television needs serialized storytelling to extend and capitalize on its engagement.

This season, the 18 queens have been broken up into three groups of six. Each group will compete against each other for a chance to move on to the semi-finals, with only three members from each group moving forward from each group to reach a total of nine queens in the semi-finals. So far, the format has resonated with fans, with the first bracket already finishing its run and sending three queens, Aja, Iren the Alien, and Bosco onward.

With All Stars, fans have already come to expect to see a different, more fulfilled, side to their favorite queens returning queens. With the bracket format, while fans may have a shorter time to engage with queens that are eliminated, fans are guaranteed a minimum of three episodes to see their favorites on the show.

In previous seasons, fans would be heartbroken to see queens that they felt were going to be a frontrunner inevitably be eliminated early in the season. Now, with the episode guarantee, it not only incentivizes fans to watch but it also encourages future contestants to compete. Instead of worrying about returning to the competition and leaving with little to no amount of screentime from an early elimination, contestants can feel reassured that they can at least have three episodes to showcase their outfits, growth, and overall brand, which is sometimes worth more than winning the competition itself, as many successful queens have shown us over the years.