RuPaul's Drag Race All Stars 3 Nearly Had An Entirely Different Ending

The entirety of the third season of "RuPaul's Drag Race All Stars" was a rollercoaster, to say the least. After the massively popular second season, Season 3 returned in 2018 with a star-studded cast consisting of 10 former contestants: Trixie Mattel, BenDeLaCreme, Shangela, Kennedy Davenport, Milk, Aja, BeBe Zahara Benet, Chi Chi DeVayne, Morgan McMichaels, and Thorgy Thor. With the return of the Lip Sync for Your Legacy format— where the winner of the lip sync chooses one of the bottom queens to eliminate— the pressure was on and the drama was high.

Seattle-bred queen BenDeLaCreme had been slaying the competition and was considered the frontrunner with five challenge wins under her belt. But in a surprise turn of events, BenDeLaCreme ended up shockingly self-eliminating due to the guilt that came from having to send home her fellow competitors. This created a power vacuum in the competition going into the finale, with Shangela as the new frontrunner with three challenge wins and Mattel behind her with two.

But, RuPaul had another surprise in store when he implemented the jury twist in the finale episode. The twist changed the trajectory of the competition, with the eliminated queens voting for Mattel and underdog Davenport to enter the final two, snubbing Shangela. But what a lot of fans don't know about "All Stars 3" is that there was nearly a historic decision in the winner of the season.

Of course, we know that drag superstar Trixie Mattel took the crown at the end of "RuPaul's Drag Race All Stars 3" against her fellow Season 7 contestant, the legendary Kennedy Davenport. Both Mattel and Davenport were the ones who best pled their cases to the jury of their drag queen peers, and their final challenge was to lip sync to the emotional power ballad, "Wrecking Ball" by Miley Cyrus. In the end, Mattel won and began her reign as "All Stars" royalty.

But, in an interview with Digital Spy in 2019, Mattel revealed that there was more to the production of the crowning scene than we thought. For the "All Stars 3" crowning, Mattel recalled that the production team had both queens film a tie, in case both Mattel and Davenport ended up splitting the win! "Drag Race" is known to film multiple alternate crownings in order to crack down on spoilers leaking, and the producers choose the winner in the final edit after they see the public's reaction to the season airing. Having a tie between Mattel and Davenport in "All Stars 3" would've been monumental because, at the time, there had never been a double crowning.

Fortunately, the competition didn't tear the two's friendship apart, and Davenport has appeared with Mattel on the official "Drag Race" review web series, "The Pit Stop." But ties and double wins have been a big source of controversy for the "Drag Race" franchise.

Of all the iterations of the "RuPaul's Drag Race" franchise — including in the U.K., France, Spain, and many more — there has only ever been one official tie. In "RuPaul's Drag Race All Stars" Season 4, the fandom was shocked when both Monet X Change and Trinity the Tuck were named the winners of the season.

But fans also noticed that the editing of the double-win sequence looked like Monet and Trinity's separate winning clips edited together. Trixie Mattel was present for the Season 4 crowning, and she confirmed to Digital Spy what fans suspected. "[The show] must have decided on a tie in the past few weeks, in the last month," Mattel speculated. "I think if they thought it was truly a tie in person, they would have filmed a tie."

One time where a tie caused drama on set was all the way back on "RuPaul's Drag Race" Season 6 with Adore Delano, Bianca Del Rio, and Courtney Act. While filming the crowning for the Season 6 finale, the producers asked for all three's separate wins and then filmed a tie between Delano and Del Rio — leaving out Act completely. In an interview with the Gay Times, Del Rio said that they were angry with production for making it look like Act was out of the running in the production's mind. Overall, ties seem to be risky business for "Drag Race."