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Jewels Sparkles quits X/Twitter amid Drag Race season 17 finale discourse
Jewels Sparkles at the grand finale watch party for RuPaul's Drag Race season 17.
The RuPaul's Drag Race runner-up is taking a social media break.
Jewels Sparkles announced that she's taking a social media hiatus after experiencing the intense discourse surrounding the grand finale of RuPaul's Drag Race season 17 — which ended with the crowning of Onya Nurve as America's Next Drag Superstar and Jewels finishing as runner-up.
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The 23-year-old Latina queen from Tampa, FL performed an original song, "Ding," that qualified her to lip sync for the crown at the Drag Race finale. That final lip sync — to "Abracadabra" by Lady Gaga! — had Jewels going toe-to-toe with Onya, who not only came into the finale as a frontrunner with the most maxi challenge wins, but also delivered a groovy performance for her original song "It Do Take Nurve."
Unfortunately, the season 17 finale of Drag Race sparked a confounding discourse among fans who spent all season long rooting for Onya but suddenly felt unsure if Jewels deserved to be crowned instead. Since the grand finale aired on Friday, April 18, an intense portion of the Drag Race fandom kept comparing the top 2 finalists and pitting them against each other.
Jewels took to social media on Sunday, April 20 to address the situation, writing, "Just hopping on to say how proud I am of Onya Nurve. You are an absolute super star and deserve this and the world, I can't wait to see what you do with this reign sister. IT DO TAKE NURVE BAYBE."
The Drag Race season 17 runner-up then revealed that she was taking a break from social media — noting that she felt heartbroken to see certain posts from fans.
"Taking a break from Twitter again now to preserve my mental [heart emoji]," Jewels explained. "It's sad that instead of just celebrating Onya's glorious win, people have to pit us against each other, and it breaks my heart actually. So I'll be back when y'all stfu [heart emojis] LOVE U SO MUCH BYE."
A few hours later, Onya shared some love and support in response to Jewels's original X post.
"Love you sis. So so so so much," the Drag Race champion wrote. "So proud of you [sparkles emojis] [heart emojis]."
This final lap of Drag Race season 17 also included Jewels and Onya's fellow top 4 finalists, Lexi Love and Sam Star, who both had a legitimate shot at snatching the crown. Through the ups and downs between these queens while competing against each other, there was clearly no bad blood between them during this final episode.
As this fabulous season comes to an end, fans are already starting their engines for the so-called "Tournament of All Stars" starting in a few weeks: the landmark All Stars 10 season featuring a whopping 18 queens. We can't wait to see how this turns out.
RuPaul's Drag Race All Stars 10 premieres Friday, May 9 on Paramount+.
Bernardo Sim is the deputy editor of Out. He's also a staff contributor to The Advocate, PRIDE, and other equalpride publications. Born in Brazil, he currently lives in South Florida.
You can follow Bernardo Sim on Instagram. Otherwise, you can find him on Bluesky, Threads, X/Twitter, and TikTok.
Bernardo Sim is the deputy editor of Out. He's also a staff contributor to The Advocate, PRIDE, and other equalpride publications. Born in Brazil, he currently lives in South Florida.
You can follow Bernardo Sim on Instagram. Otherwise, you can find him on Bluesky, Threads, X/Twitter, and TikTok.
