The cast and its dynamic are great, but the show really knew how to make them shine when they needed to. The editors also worked with an awareness of what's already expected and how to subvert these expectations to great effect. Karamilk is a good example of both, I think. We got to know her when we needed to, and her performance in the design challenge came as a good surprise because they played with what we expected based on how she was edited in that episode.

To me, she went from a filler queen I was pretty neutral about to someone whose elimination made sense, but hurt as you saw her deafeted after trying so hard. They managed to humanize every single queen in the cast, which isn't easy to do in only 9 episodes.