Wicked: For Good ... or Bad?

How spellbinding is the sequel to the acclaimed Wicked? DARCEY-MAY GAGE evaluates the continuing origin story of the legendary Ozian witches

Watching Wicked: For Good - with the same friend who accompanied me to the first Wicked film - was the perfect way to experience this emotional rollercoaster of a sequel. The tears soon started flowing in my new hometown cinema, Chester Picturehouse, when Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo performed the tear-jerking ballad ‘For Good’.  The pair of us, much like many Wicked fans, couldn’t wait to see Jonathan Bailey’s performance in ‘As Long as You’re Mine’, and we weren’t disappointed.

Chester Picturehouse cinema

So how did the film, sometimes labelled Wicked: Part Two, compare with its hugely popular first instalment?

The origins of Wicked

Wicked is the well-known ‘prequel’ to The Wizard of Oz. It’s a film, adapted from a stage production (2003), based on a book (Wicked, 1995), which itself was based on the film (1939) which was based on a book (The Wizard of Oz, 1900)!

The Ozian franchise tells a timeless story of political agendas and differences, prejudice and discrimination, yet also love and friendship.

  The films follow Galinda ‘Glinda’ Upland the Good (Ariana Grande) and the green-skinned Elphaba Thropp (Cynthia Erivo), the Wicked Witch of the West, on their journey, meeting at Shiz, a prestigious university. It shows how two people with opposite morals and desires can put their differences aside to form an ultimate bond.

Revisiting Wicked

The first film, Wicked, starts with the news that the Wicked Witch of the West is dead, paying homage to the 1939 film where the Wicked Witch of the East is crushed by Dorothy’s house (the munchkins sing ‘Ding Dong! The Witch is Dead’). This is followed by Glinda’s recollection of her time at Shiz with Elphaba, where the two are rivals. Glinda is envious of Elphaba’s magic which helped her be taught by Madame Morrible (Michelle Yeoh), when a dream of Glinda is also to be a magician. All the while, Elphaba has longed to meet the Wizard of Oz, hoping he can change her green-ness and finally not be shunned from society as an outcast.

  But when animals of Oz are made to be enemies, caged and silenced, Elphaba’s heart's desire changes and she desperately wants to save them, knowing herself what it is like to be kept hidden. The musical explores themes beyond friendship, looking at racism and slavery, the use of propaganda and distractions from the real enemy.

Sequel summary

Whilst Part One acted as Glinda’s reminiscence of her and Elphie’s rivalry transformed into friendship, Wicked: For Good depicts the extremities of the Wizard and Madame Morrible’s attempt to paint Elphaba as wicked. Heaps of leaflets flood Madame Morrible’s office, munchkins carry buckets of water saying ‘melt the witch’, and Glinda (the Good) is used as a symbol of hope and strength against the Wicked Witch. 

  Wicked illustrates the power behind rumours, by pitting two friends against each other. A distraction in the form of a wedding between Glinda and Fiyero Tigelaar (Johnathan Bailey), Prince of Winkie and Captain of the Guard, emits hope and generates unity between those who were ‘good’. The plot is clever, exploring political differences and the extent that people go to get what they want.

How good is Wicked: For Good?

Personally, I found Wicked (Part One) a more enjoyable watch. As much as the plot for Wicked: For Good was important, it felt like too much was going on at once. It starts with a slightly confusing time jump and some information felt missing. There seems to be no definitive answer to how much time had elapsed between the two films - some claim one year (Reddit) and some up to five years (The Tab), speaking volumes about the confusion. The ending was somewhat rushed - from all the main events, to Elphaba being ‘melted’ (the opening to Wicked) - unlike the first film where all the events unfolded in a smoother way.  Wicked: For Good has a more serious tone, whereas Wicked was more entertaining and comedic. So your preferences may well depend on your taste.

Tear-jerking soundtrack

There are fewer popular songs in Wicked: For Good but fans anticipating ‘As Long As You’re Mine’ (the duet between Elphaba and Fiyero), ‘No Good Deed’ (where Elphaba embraces her persona as ‘Wicked’) and ‘For Good’ (the heart-warming, tear-jerking ballad between the two friends at the end of the film), may not be disappointed.

  The soundtrack to the first film left more of an impact on me - I had it on repeat for weeks after. This time round there hasn’t been enough fuel in me to listen to the soundtrack as frequently, apart from ‘For Good’.

  Nevertheless, the combined voices of Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande are compelling and raw, performing live whilst filming (with microphones hidden around the set), hence an emotional, tear-filled audience response and an understanding why the pair often cry in their interviews during the movie releases. They are definitely the perfect duo to capture the essence of the Wicked soundtrack.

‘The Girl in the Bubble’, a song written for the film and nominated for an Oscar for ‘Best Original Song’, explores the emotions of Glinda in her role as Glinda the Good, and whether she is truly happy with the choice she made to stay with the Wizard. It enhances Glinda’s character development, learning to accept the choice she made, even if it was the wrong side of history - exemplified in the last verse of the song: “And the beautiful lies never stop”.

  The songs in Wicked: For Good are more sentimental owing to the severity of the events being told and the yearning tone both Glinda and Elphaba have for everything to go back to how it had been years before. Entirely effective are the strategic sampling elements of the songs ‘Popular’, ‘Defying Gravity’ and ‘No One Mourns the Wicked’ to relay that these are still the same characters we grew to love in the first film, only this time they have grown up. But the feelings - especially the friendship between Elphie and Glinda - have stayed the same, if not intensified as the story develops.

Symbolic costumes and colour schemes

The costumes are swankified and scandalacious, symbolising each person’s character in the film. Costume designer Paul Tazwell, stated in his TED talk (7:46s), “I wasn’t designing stereotypes, I was designing questions”. For instance, he didn’t choose to use black clothing on the Wicked Witch because black is seen as an ‘evil’ colour, but because it is supposed to make the audience reflect on why she is seen as Wicked. According to Tazwell, it is our own perceptions and belief systems that influence us to see green and black as wicked, because that’s how they’ve been represented since the origins of the Wicked Witch character. What I find ironic is that Elphaba’s green skin is seen as a disease, yet the Wizard lives in the Emerald City. The real evil is green, yes, but it is not from Elphaba’s skin.

  Similarly, the bright coloured pink and blue for Glinda’s wardrobe may signify happiness and hope, when in fact she can be seen as a more morally problematic character. Her costumes are a distraction from the choices she makes, contradicting her complicity in actual ‘wickedness’ such as the torment of animals. The pink dress which features at the beginning of Wicked and the end of Wicked: For Good, shows her embracing her ‘old’ self again, her Shiz wardrobe full of pink, and taking back control of her own actions rather than the ones she was told to carry out by Madame Morrible.

Tazwell won a Best Costume Design Oscar for Wicked in 2025 and it is no surprise he has also been nominated in this category for the sequel.

  The costume and makeup needed for the transformations of Boq (played by Ethan Slater) into the Tinman, and Fiyero into the scarecrow were brilliant, with the former achieved purely from makeup and prosthetics (no CGI).

  The shift in make-up to signalling the time jump between the two films is also very effective, especially in Elphaba’s change. Hers has become more sophisticated to indicate a growth in wisdom, losing her initial naivety to the Wizard’s schemes. The matted edges of her hair signify the living conditions in her forest hideout, in contrast to her previously tame lifestyle. These fine little details are essential elements in the storytelling process.

Too much dodgy CGI?

In Wicked (Part One), director Jon M. Chu relied mainly on manually built environments and practical effects rather than heavy CGI – for instance, the plantation of millions of tulips to create a more realistic setting. However, there have been criticisms of CGI in the second film, with claims that Chu used too much of the budget on the CGI animals at the expense of other effects, such as the Wizard’s face when he was younger. For instance on one Facebook fan site I read, someone commented: “Why is no one talking about the Young Wizard CGI 🤮 It genuinely made me uncomfortable 🤣”!

  Yes, there are obvious aspects of the film that couldn’t be as effective without CGI, like Elphaba in the castle, when she’s casting spells, and the role of the flying monkeys. However, could Chu not have just casted a younger man to play the flashbacks of the Wizard?

Wicked: For Good... still wicked!

Jon M. Chu created a masterpiece in the Wicked films, bringing the stage production to the screen to reach a much larger audience, and he succeeded. Although I go along with the general consensus in preferring the first film, the sequel has been no less of a sensation, earning £44.5 million in the UK on its release weekend. My favourite message from the film is that love is formed in the most unexpected places. I would urge you to book a place in your favourite cinema, bring the tissues, and enjoy!

Written by DARCEY-MAY GAGE (BA Creative Writing student, University of Chester, UK)