Can we discuss how Wicked and Wicked: For Good are movies based on a play, which is based on a book, and that book is based on another book. It is essentially fanfiction, which is why it is life-changing content.
In this article, I am going to break down notable moments across both Wicked movies with a focus on For Good. Put on your ruby slippers because some of these notes are going to hit home…
DOROTHY GALE’S FACELESS STORYTELLING
In my first viewing of For Good, I hated that the camera kept eluding Dorothy Gale’s face; it felt like a cheap cop-out until my friend Ribbon Girl said, “this is such an excellent artistic choice.” The comment prompted me to put my critical analysis lens to the test. Showing Dorothy’s face will leave the audience wanting more from this iconic character, but the story is not about her and would steal screentime from the two witches at the heart of the tale. The director, Jon M. Chu, spoke on the decision, stating, “I didn’t want to step on who you think Dorothy is in whatever story that you came into this with. This is still Elphaba and Glinda’s journey, and she is a pawn in the middle of all of it.”
The decision intertwines Wicked: For Good and 1939’s The Wizard of Oz, as, if it did show her face, the 2025 film would establish her as a different Dorothy than Judy Garland’s version. Avoiding Bethany Weaver’s face, the actress featured in For Good, ensures that Wicked is the same story from a different point of view, not a retelling.
Further, the faceless storytelling allows viewers to insert their own memories, possibly of watching the 1939 film. Dorothy Gale’s facelessness also tells a metatextual story. Given that Gale “[…] is a pawn in the middle of all of it,” and her facelessness inspires projection from the audience, the audience is also just a pawn to all the propaganda that exists in the world and media today. Viewers who watched the 1939 film feel that they have been pawns in the propaganda machine that features in the story of The Wizard of Oz.
“GOT A WHOLE LOTTA ART…YOU KNOW WHAT WE CALL IT? POLITICS”
Politics permeates through art and, in a world where actress Sydney Sweeney can say she’s “in the arts,” she is “not here to speak on politics and “that’s not an area [she’s] ever even imagined getting into,” it is important to illustrate how art is inherently political and is a highly accessible medium to spread awareness and tell marginalized stories. And yes, although highly capitalistic and commercialized, the messaging in Wicked: For Good is stark and impactful.
In one of the scenes, Boq, a munchkin from Munchkinland, wishes to travel to the Emerald City to finally profess his love to Glinda. In a rather aggressive exchange with the station manager, he learns that animals and munchkins now have restrictions on travel. Their identities require a permit. This decision comes from the Governess of Munchkinland, Nessarose, who weaponizes his identity against him for “love.” The inability to move freely reflects immigration policies in the U.S on undocumented immigrants and marginalized groups, like Trump’s 2017 “Muslim Ban,” which initially called for a “complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States”; this policy, resumed during Trump’s second term, however, rebranded for legal purposes such as blatant discrimination and undocumented immigrants.
Wicked: For Good also depicts Oz’s animals hidden in a lower level of the Wizard’s Palace, stored in cages, eerily reminiscent of the stories coming out of the United States, with ICE placing immigrants, including children, in cages.
There are posters depicting Elphaba with exaggerated features that are comically evil and reminiscent of the Jim Crow era, where racist images were “used as propaganda to send messages that demeaned African Americans and legitimized violence against them.” These posters are spread all over Oz as a symbol of her villainy. Now, the author of the source material, L. Frank Baum had some eccentric religious beliefs. He identified as a Theosophic, which is a movement steeped in Helena Blavatsky’s beliefs. In her writings, she describes Judaism as a “religion of hate and malice.” Scholars note that the portrayal of the Wicked Witch of the West is rooted in Antisemitism, as are many depictions of witches given their hooked noses, marking
the character as undesirable and other. The pointed hats that witches wear are believed to have roots in the Judenhut, a coned hat that Christian authorities forced Jews to wear to identify them in public. Furthermore, there is a frequent casting of Jewish women as Elphaba, i.e., Idina Menzel, in the Broadway production. The depiction of Cynthia Erivo’s Elphaba lends the opportunity to scaldingly comment on the anti-black racist past and present of the United States, drawing specifically on the imagery of the Jim Crow era. The commentary that the film makes on propaganda is notable and allows audiences to reflect on the real-world biases that made Jewish women to be portrayed as Elphaba and the harmful stereotypes present in these revered tales. Wicked is an allegory for a world of discrimination and fascism, and these details in the movies further entrench this.
Even within the soundtrack, the lyrics in Jeff Goldblum’s comical and satirical rendition of “Wonderful” from the original Broadway show are a number that directly delves into propaganda, spin, and the slanted currency of truth. In 2003, during the run of the original Broadway musical, leaders in the United States relied on charm, fear-mongering, and pure spectacle rather than facts when conducting their invasion of Iraq to fight their manufactured war on terror. The lyrics, “truth is not a thing of fact or reason / the truth is just what everyone agrees on,” expose how leaders, or the victors of the past, shape public perception.
The Wizard says that back where he comes from, the world, we, the viewers live in, that “a whole lot of people who believe all sorts of things that aren’t true / you know what we call it? / history,” exploring how language is used to twist morality depending on the label given to them, for examples: “A rich man’s a thief or philanthropist,” “invader or noble crusader,” etc.
Interestingly, viewers should reflect on the fact that Elphaba Thropp, not long ago, was just a student at Shiz. Upon discovering that the Wizard lies and feigns his power, Madame Morrible and the wizard vilify her using persuasive rhetoric and poster propaganda. All this work starts with her label, the Wicked Witch of the West.
ELPHABA AND GLINDA AS FRIENDS OF DOROTHY
Were you aware, reader, that the most used word in the original L. Frank Baum’s books is the word “queer”?
“Friend of Dorothy” is a term that exists beyond the world of the films and the books, as it was used to refer to queer people in the closet, most notably gay men who would identify eachother with it.
Dorothy befriends precarious social outcasts. For example, the Tin Man, the Scarecrow, and the Cowardly Lion, all of whom can be read as gay men. In fact, the Cowardly Lion is most speculated as queer through his descriptions of himself as a “sissy” and a “dandy.” Additionally, Judy Garland’s status and her performance in the movie alongside her misfit friends may be the icing on top as some trace the phrase back to a scene in The Road to Oz, “You have some queer friends,” to which she replies, “The queerness doesn’t matter, so long as they’re friends!”
Glinda’s character reads well as a case of the hyper-feminine picture of compulsory heterosexuality and its friend, the closet.
In fact, the newly added song “The Girl in the Bubble” can be read through a queer lens,
“look there’s that beautiful girl / with a beautiful life / built on lies”
This suggests a postering and posing as someone who is not her true, authentic self.
At one point in the film, Glinda stands at the edge of her pink closet and sings, “And so that beautiful girl […] Has a question that haunts her somehow / If she comes down from the sky / Gives the real world a try / Who in the world is she now?”
The lyrics juxtaposed with the imagery of her closet work together to queer Glinda’s story.
The bubble itself can be read as an allegory for the closet. At the beginning of For Good, Madame Morrible gives Glinda the bubble. The bubble lifts Glinda above others; she is not doing anything, as she has no magic for herself. Remaining in that bubble functions as a propaganda tool for Madame Morrible and the Wizard to control Glinda and make her marketable. Her rebellion, especially in the form of her queerness, would damage this.
Elphaba is also widely interpreted as an intersectional allegory for queerness as well as racial otherness. Her innate differences, such as her outward green skin, lead to social ostracization, and in the first movie, she forcibly hides her true self. “Defying Gravity,” a ballad that many “hold space” and cry to (me included), tells the tale of Elphaba “trying to defy gravity,” to defy the status quo against a conformist, oppressive, Ozian society that could very well mirror the one we live in.
I do argue that the true love triangle is present throughout Wicked: For Good, and aficionados know that requires queerness. Hear me out, Glinda does care that Fiyero leaves her for Elphaba, but not because she mourns Fiyero. She is jealous of Elphaba and wants her partnership and attention. Inarguably, the narrative core of Wicked is Elphaba and Glinda rather than any subplot involving Fiyero (and casting him as Jonathan Bailey is totally metatext). The story follows the pair into the sequel, confronting the wizard and their emotional separation, where they confess that “because I knew you / I’ve been changed for good.” In fact, in the gut-wrenching scene that comes after that, Elphaba and Glinda are on opposite sides of the door, mourning. An “I love you” is exchanged, three words that are never shared by anyone else across two films romantically, including Elphaba to Fiyero. The director Jon M. Chu has confirmed that the scene was not scripted.
For Good frames their relationship as life-defining and intimate because, even as it is revealed that Elphaba is alive and she travels outside of Oz with Fiyero, it is superimposed with these imagined quaint, intimate scenes with Glinda leaning her head on Elphaba’s shoulder. These scenes suggest that there could have been an alternate reality where they were romantically involved, if they had more time or the world they lived in was different. Elphaba may be truly in love with Fiyero, but the great love of her life was Glinda. Elphaba is a unicorn.
Gregory Maguire, author of the Wicked books, answers the question on whether he wrote “sapphic tension between Glinda and Elphaba on purpose”: “[T]hat was intentional, and it was modest and restrained and refined in such a way that one could imagine that one of those two young women had felt more than the other and had not wanted to say it.”
After all, the two actresses, Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande, have both agreed that “Oz is a very queer place.”
Oh, and yes, I noticed the disability tropes and commentary permeating through Wicked: For Good and its source material, L. Frank Baum’s “The Wizard of Oz,” but I’ll be covering that through a different article, a scholarly one.
Readers, keep changing for good.