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Peppermint Spilled The Tea About A Shocking, Secret Season Nine Elimination
The iconic Drag Race top four was almost a top three.
The season nine finale of Drag Race was arguably the series’ most iconic. It was the year that Sasha Velour changed the game forever with the rose petal reveal heard around the world. But it’s also just a fan fave because of its stellar top four. Sasha ultimately snatched the crown but she had to fight through three of the most incredible performers the series has featured: Shea Coulée, Trinity the Tuck, and, of course, the lip-sync assassin Peppermint — making season nine the first time the finale featured a top four.
However, this finale almost looked very different, as Peppermint revealed while speaking to YouTuber Joseph Shepard that one of those girls had been secretly eliminated before the finale.
Peppermint explained how now the top four Ru-girls can better prepare because they expect there to be four contestants vying for the crown in the finale, something she said her top four were not ready for. “The girls had preparation in a way that we didn’t. They all went in thinking there was going to be a top four. We went there thinking there’s gonna be a top three,” she shared.
“At that last episode, we were like, well: ‘One of us is going home, and I don’t know who it’s gonna be,” Peppermint recalled. Then she dropped some scalding hot and shocking tea: Initially, she had been eliminated in the penultimate episode, leaving the other three to head into the finale.
Audiences didn’t see this version of events because Drag Race producers “called [them] back in and filmed some other endings just in case”.
“And they filmed one where we all stay and move onto a final four,” Peppermint said. “So that’s what it was, and we didn’t know which one it was gonna be.”
The wildest thing of all is that Peppermint learned her Drag Race story wasn’t over yet at the same time audiences did when the episode aired. “I was expecting to go home and I was watching with everyone else, and discovered with everyone else, I was going onto the final four,” she explained. “And then I got a call: ‘You’re going to the final four, it’s gonna be crazy, we’ve never had a final four, so just get ready.’”
On the night of the finale, she almost took the crown, coming in second to Sasha.
Relive that incredible lip-sync below.
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Rachel Shatto, Editor in Chief of PRIDE.com, is an SF Bay Area-based writer, podcaster, and former editor of Curve magazine, where she honed her passion for writing about social justice and sex (and their frequent intersection). Her work has appeared on Dread Central, Elite Daily, Tecca, and Joystiq. She's a GALECA member and she podcasts regularly about horror on the Zombie Grrlz Horror Podcast Network. She can’t live without cats, vintage style, video games, drag queens, or the Oxford comma.
Rachel Shatto, Editor in Chief of PRIDE.com, is an SF Bay Area-based writer, podcaster, and former editor of Curve magazine, where she honed her passion for writing about social justice and sex (and their frequent intersection). Her work has appeared on Dread Central, Elite Daily, Tecca, and Joystiq. She's a GALECA member and she podcasts regularly about horror on the Zombie Grrlz Horror Podcast Network. She can’t live without cats, vintage style, video games, drag queens, or the Oxford comma.
