When it comes to spoilers, nowhere is safe.
Even if they had all the right hashtags and words muted on their social media feeds, many overseas fans of RuPaul’s Drag Race had this season’s All Stars winner spoiled for them on Saturday courtesy of Netflix itself.
(Because we’re not that dumb, we won’t be revealing the results here. This is a Drag Race spoiler-free zone, so read on without fear!)
In a boneheaded error that I can only assume got someone fired, the streaming service showed a shot of the winning queen being crowned when users clicked to watch the final episode of the spin-off’s fifth season. Netflix used the same spoiler-rific image as a thumbnail and loading-screen for the series, so even just navigating to the service’s homepage could reveal the winner.
The finale aired in the U.S. last night but only became available on Netflix in certain regions, including parts of Europe and New Zealand, this morning. So as you can probably imagine, people were pissed to find out who won before even watching the episode. All Stars 5 began trending Twitter even in the U.S. as overseas fans went online to chew Netflix out.
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As of Saturday afternoon, several fans on Reddit are saying that Neflix has replaced the image with a more benign picture of one of the season’s finalists. But the damage was already done.
It’s not the first time Netflix’s questionable user interface choices have screwed over its subscribers. In December, Netflix made the equally baffling decision to autoplay a disturbing preview for its docuseries Don’t Fuck With Cats: Hunting and Internet Killer so that anyone browsing the streaming service for something to watch risked accidentally hearing the sound of kittens being brutally murdered. Because, yes, Netflix decided to include that in the trailer for some reason.
Here’s a small consolation for overseas Drag Race fans to consider, though: If we’re being honest, did Netflix really spoil anything? I mean, we always knew which queen was going to win this season. Maybe Netflix was just out here stanning with the rest of us.
Source: gizmodo.com
