Drag Duel host dishes on season 3 drama, Russian queen, and warrior’s return

YouTuber, podcaster, and content creator Derek Roiter, best known as The Drag Detective, has been building a drag reality competition series of his own, Drag Duel, which premieres its third season today on YouTube with financial support from fans on Patreon.

“It’s fun because the first season of Drag Duel, we made every mistake we possibly could have made… because of course you do!” Roiter tells Out. “We improved a lot in season 2, but felt that we could still up this; we can still make this better. Season 3 truly feels like the idea that I had all the way back in 2023, when we were planning season 1. This is what it truly was, and now we finally have the experience, and the financial means, and all the things to make it what we wanted it to be in the first place. So, this really feels like it’s just a big moment, you know what I mean? Everything has just gone so much better this time.”

The series is cohosted by Roiter himself and drag artist Bucy. In season 3, they’ll be joined by the two previous winners of Drag Duel: Hydra (season 1) and Dom Parinyon, (season 2). “We were actually inspired by Dragula having Landon Cider come back so much,” he notes.

“Bucy and I make the challenges, judge the challenges, do all of the behind the scenes stuff… But we don’t really know what it’s like to be in the hot seat doing these challenges and feeling all that pressure,” Roiter says. “People who have been through this can give insight to Bucy and I. They’re also able to give really great critiques and advice to the cast because they know what it feels like.”

Hydra; Dom Parinyon in the trailer for Drag Duel season 3.YouTube (@DragDuel)

And since we’re on the topic of sharing feedback and giving critiques…

The Drag Detective’s most notorious video series, “The Riggory Of,” features Roiter narrating each episode of a past RuPaul’s Drag Race season and evaluating how “fair” or “rigged” he believes the critiques were. (The “rigging” concept within reality TV dates back to the first season of Survivor, when contestant Stacey Stillman reportedly “sued the production team, alleging that they had rigged the contest to get her voted off the show instead of another contestant … The case was settled out of court for an undisclosed amount.”)

Terms like “rigged” and “riggory” are less literal and severe these days, but it’s still interesting to see the one and only creator of “The Riggory Of” videos now making and judging his own reality competition show for its third consecutive year. “You know if I had a show and it was rigged… I would be reaped through the coals, Bernardo! It’d be over for me,” Roiter admits with both self-awareness and sense of humor. “There will be no ‘Riggory Of’ Drag Duel season 3 videos, I could tell you that.”

An exciting lineup of guest judges will join Roiter, Bucy, Hydra, and Dom Parinyon in the judging panel of Drag Duel season 3. These special judges include The Boulet Brothers’ Dragula: Titans season 2 star Blackberri, plus Drag Race alumni DeJa Skye and Megami. “The queen who Protects Queer Art herself!” Roiter says of the latter.

Blackberri; DeJa Skye; Megami on Drag Duel season 3. YouTube (@DragDuel)

Other guest judges appearing on Drag Duel season 3 are actor Daniel Franzese (Mean Girls, Looking), Chicago drag queen Twink Trash, and model/content creator Vivian Wilson. “She already followed us,” Roiter says of Wilson. “So I reached out and I was like, ‘We would love to have you be a guest judge.’ And she’s like, ‘I was going to ask you, but I didn’t want to sound like a nerd.’ And I was like, ‘No, please! Come on.’”

The “drag warriors” competing on Drag Duel season 3 will experience quite a few twists during this cycle. “We kind of reused a lot of the challenges from season 1 into season 2, and we do bring back a couple of challenges for season 3. But we did a lot of new challenges. And, with that, comes new ways to judge,” Roiter teases. “We’re testing challenges, seeing what works, seeing what doesn’t.”

Roiter explains that all runway categories for season 3 aimed to set up all warriors — whether drag queens, kings, or in-betweens — to succeed. “We have an ‘urban legends’ runway. We have a ‘tarot card’ runway,” Roiter explains. “We gave them the space to be as creative as possible, and they absolutely ran with it.”

Season 3 will also see the return of “power-ups” on Drag Duel, but this time making more room for strategic moves. “There are a lot more opportunities to actively sabotage another warrior’s package and their submission,” Roiter notes. “As cliques and alliances start to form, they’re just going to be taking hits left and right at each other.”

The cast of warriors competing on Drag Duel season 3. Instagram (@dragduel)

Roiter notes that Drag Duel season 3 has “a lot of really different personalities that simply do not get along.” So do expect some drama, mama. But beyond warrior-on-warrior drama, the stakes are higher this season for queens like Shafrania, who lives in Russia. “She’s doing drag in a country where queer people are not accepted… So we’re going to see, when someone is living in a country like that, what is their drag like? How do they approach what they do with their drag?” Roiter muses.

“We also have someone from Croatia, and the Balkan region is very anti-LGBTQ+,” he points out. “We’re going to get to see a lot of really cool stories of trans people, trans masc, trans femme, people from different countries… It’s just really cool to see the bonds that they make, and the conversations that can be had through their varied backgrounds.”

This season of Drag Duel also includes the first-ever returning warrior of the entire series, Glass Staine, who competed in season 1 but dropped out of the show back then.

“It wasn’t because she was upset with anything, she just had a rough financial situation” at the time, Roiter recalls, who clarifies that Glass Staine was not invited or “favored” to return. “She put in the application, did the audition, did the interview, and the whole thing. When we looked at who we wanted to see on the season, it just felt correct to give her a real shot.”

Glass Staine on Drag Duel season 3.Instagram (@dragduel)

On the heels of Revry’s King of Drag having just aired its first season, Roiter passionately advocates for more drag king representation on all drag shows, including his own. In fact, Dom Parinyon — a drag king — won Drag Duel season 2 after having “slayed the entire competition, from start to finish,” Roiter says, and Parinyon is now joining Roiter and Bucy as a main judge for season 3.

When asked about the never-ending discourse about drag kings competing on shows like Drag Race alongside drag queens, Roiter doesn’t mince words: “That was part of the experiment of Drag Duel on season 1. I felt like kings and things and monsters and queens could all coexist in the same competition, and we realized very quickly that was the case. Do you have to make sure that the runway prompts can fit every style of drag? Yes. Do you have to make sure that there are a couple male songs in that the kings could get to do? Yes. But it’s just tweaking a few things.”

Roiter also reflects on the fans’ response to Dom Parinyon competing on and winning the second season of Drag Duel. “The amount of comments on our posts and videos of Dom Parinyon in season 2… Like, ‘I’d never heard of a drag king, but all it took was watching Dom Parinyon once, and I suddenly am a fan.’ Or people saying, ‘I never liked drag kings, but Dom, you made me a fan.’”

“Sometimes it just takes the exposure to make people a fan, or to make people understand the art form better,” Roiter argues.

While many influencers, YouTubers, TikTokers, etc., don’t confront the business part of show business for as long as they can avoid it, Roiter has been an exceptionally wise content creator over the years.

From diversifying his channels of distribution to creating content franchises that he can rely on for steady engagement to even launching his very own drag competition series on the internet, it’s not surprising that Roiter is fully prepared to answer a question about the current administration’s onslaught of censorship over content — ranging from the erasure of LGBTQ+ history from government websites and cultural spaces to attempts to censor late-night talk shows and comedians — which has been a dizzying concern for many queer and trans content creators, as well as drag queens specifically.

Generally, LGBTQ+ creators who make a living on ad-supported platforms like YouTube and Twitch, and/or monetize from social networks like Instagram and TikTok, fear that they’ll soon face revised guidelines that could directly target content made by and for minority groups. For instance, a makeup tutorial video from a drag queen could be flagged as “inappropriate” in a world where conservatives argue that drag artists are “dangerous” for children — no matter how nonsensical that sounds.

“My entire revenue, my YouTube channel [Drag Detective] and Drag Duel, everything is dependent on queer content being allowed to be pushed into the algorithm,” Roiter considers. “And I’ve noticed — and I’ve talked to some other creators as well — since recent events, the views are not coming in as they used to.”

So… what now?

Derek Roiter in a poster for Drag Duel season 3.Instagram (@dragduel)

“Drag Duel is 100 percent, fully funded by the fans and the people who want to watch it,” Roiter says. “There’s obviously an audience that wants this type of content, and wants this type of queer representation, on their televisions. Around the world, all kinds of people you could imagine. So, it is needed, and it is necessary.”

For Roiter, the show must — and will — go on no matter what changes and what challenges come his way. “For me, whether we have to move platforms, or whatever we need to do, we’re going to keep making this show.”

“It’s important to uplift these voices, especially trans voices, who need help at the moment from allies both inside and outside the queer community,” he goes on. “So it is our job, I think, as queer people, to use our platforms to help. A show like Drag Duel is perfect for them to show off their art and their stories.”

Roiter highlights that “so much fear-mongering leads to people just making assumptions about our community. But when they’re just shown, ‘This is who we are, and this is what we represent…’ As long as they have an open mind, they’re going to be OK with it. They’re going to fall in love with the art that we create.”

Drag Duel season 3 premieres today, and drops weekly new episodes every Monday at 3 p.m. ET / 12 p.m. PT on YouTube for free. Fans can support Drag Duel and access bonus content by subscribing to the show’s official page on Patreon.