Yesterday saw the premiere of RuPaul’s Drag Race season nine, which was streaming locally on Stan on the very same day it debuted in the US – seriously, Aussie Drag Race fans, what a time to be alive. Those who’ve already seen the episode (and if you haven’t, you should probably tap out now for spoiler reasons) are still gagging and/or death-dropping from the big cliffhanger at the end: the arrival of a mysterious 14th queen.
We were given very little to go on, other than a brief shot of the mystery queen’s derriere and quaffed hairstyle, and the reveal that whoever she was, she was returning to the competition from a previous season. While there are a number of theories on who the queen could be, we have just six words to say on the subject:
The popular pick right now is season eight fan-favourite Cynthia Lee Fontine, the lovable queen who introduced the word “cucu” to common Drag Race vernacular, and earned the ire of Michelle Visage by wearing shorts on the runway.
Fontaine, who was eliminated after an early acting challenge, won the title of Miss Congeniality in her year. It was later revealed that she was suffering Stage I liver cancer during the competition, but she has since (thankfully) recovered.
Besides being a sentimental favourite, there are a number of pieces of evidence that point to it being Cynthia. Various screengrabs, republished yesterday by the Gossip Boy Twitter account, seem to back the theory up:
#Dragrace … Proof that the 14th contestant is indeed Cynthia Lee Fontaine! <3 #RPDR9 #RupaulsDragRace pic.twitter.com/lAQ34ALF2J
— GOSSIPBOY (@gossipboynet) March 25, 2017
Exhibit A is the wig worn by the mystery queen as she approached the main stage:
Exhibit B is this photo of Fontaine wearing a similarly-quaffed wig along with a pair of chunky earrings:
Exhibit C is this screengrab from a post by the Murray & Peter Present entertainment and events company, which identifies Fontaine as a season eight and nine queen:
A further piece of evidence comes from Reddit user SapphireJolie, who claims that if you listen closely to an NPR interview with RuPaul and the current batch of queens, Fontaine’s voice can clearly be heard in the background.
Aside from Cynthia Lee, the other popular pick for a returning queen is fellow season eight racer Laila McQueen, who is said to have “disappeared” during the August-September period last year when the new episodes would have been filmed.
Shangela has been floated as another contender, but while she’ll probably jump out of a box to surprise the racers at some point soon, we somehow doubt that Ru would bring the season two and three queen back again for a third crack.
Season five queen Serena ChaCha was also absent from social media during August-September last year, and there’s some speculation it could be her, but our money is still on Cynthia Lee.
Funnily enough, Fontaine commemorated the anniversary of the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad shorts in a recent Instagram post, more proof of why we love her so:
We can’t wait for next weekend when mama Ru either proves us spectacularly right or spectacularly wrong.
Source: Reddit / Twitter.
Photo: RuPaul’s Drag Race.
