Brush Up On Everything Happening in Oz Before ‘Wicked: For Good’ This Weekend
[This story contains major spoilers fromWicked the movie and musical.] Wicked fans are ready to return to the wonderful land of Oz. The second film in Jon M. Chu’s two-part on-screen adaptation of the beloved Broadway hits theaters this Friday, almost exactly one year after Wicked was released. Wicked: For Good will see the witches…
[This story contains major spoilers fromWicked the movie and musical.]
Wicked fans are ready to return to the wonderful land of Oz.
The second film in Jon M. Chu’s two-part on-screen adaptation of the beloved Broadway hits theaters this Friday, almost exactly one year after Wicked was released. Wicked: For Good will see the witches of Oz — Ariana Grande‘s Galinda, aka Glinda the Good Witch, and Cynthia Erivo‘s Elphaba, aka the Wicked Witch of the West — continuing the story that began with the first film.
The first glimpse of Wicked: For Good came in the form of a CinemaCon 2025 poster. In the image, Erivo’s Elphaba looked right at home in her full “wicked witch” glory, while Grande’s Glinda resembled the Glinda the Good fans ofThe Wizard of Ozare used to. The poster’s tagline, “You will be changed,” is a reference to the iconic duet from the Broadway musical and inspiration for the film’s title, “For Good.” The song is one ofWicked‘s most recognizable after “Defying Gravity.”
Wicked, which arrived in theaters Nov. 22, 2024, had the highest opening for a musical adaptation with an estimated $114 million at the domestic box office. (Grande and Erivo, despite an unverified online rumor, were paid equal for their show-stopping starring roles; they even compared contracts.) The sequel film is tracking to open with $115 million-plus Thanksgiving week, according to prerelease tracking.
The films are based on the 2003 musical of the same name, which was originally based on the best-selling novel by Gregory Maguire. Wickedtells the untold story of thewitches of Oz. Winnie Holzman, the stage production’s book writer, wrote the screenplay for Chu’s movies with Dana Fox. Academy Award-winning composer and lyricist Stephen Schwartz adapted the musical for the screen. Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenoweth originated the roles of Elphaba and Glinda on Broadway (and they appeared in surprise cameos during the “One Short Day” sequence in the first film).
Wicked ended with Erivo’s awe-inspiring performance of the stage show’s most well-known musical number, “Defying Gravity.” Since “Defying Gravity” served as the end of the Broadway show’s first act, this Wicked ending helped to usher in Chu’s vision to break Act 1 and Act 2 into separate films.
Chu’s Wicked stayed true to the stage musical, featuring little to no changes to the story’s overall plot. He told The Hollywood Reporter ahead of the film’s release of the moviemaking process, “We knew we didn’t want to pull the movie away from the show so far that it wasn’t the show that I loved. We started talking about, what numbers can you cut to get it in? And the amount of numbers you have to cut to get this story in is just not plausible. You want all the songs, so you’re going to cut dancing. Which ones? Tell me which ones and we’ll do it. It just became very apparent that we had to make a choice. We went back and forth, are we making a three-and-a-half-hour movie that cuts off all these things? Are we doing one at a time? And if we’re doing one at a time, then we have to make sure that that movie is emotionally fulfilling so it doesn’t feel like we’re stopping in the middle of a story. … We all agreed that we were splitting it.”
He continued, “And we found that that room was necessary. Because if you’re going to, I don’t know, perhaps end on a ‘Defying Gravity,’ let’s say, then you have Elphaba that needs to be the most pivotal moment of her life. So then you need to set up Elphaba more than maybe the show does. You need to see what her childhood was like. … And how do you build that friendship? In the medium of movie, you call bullshit on things so fast, you have to have the time and the space to believe in that relationship. And you have a narrator of Galinda that wraps it all together, that sets up things for movie two. So all those things are just a lot, and I think we found a beautiful balance in it.”
Chu and the team shot both movies together “over 160 days and got stopped 10 days before finishing [because of the strike] our ‘Defying Gravity’ and flying days,” he told THR. The team finished up the 10 days of production at the beginning of 2024. As the movies were shot together, the cast remains the same for both films.
Wicked‘s second act takes a darker turn from the bright poppy moments in the first act. “Defying Gravity,” in both the stage musical and film, serves as the moment that Elphaba “transforms” into the Wicked Witch of the West that Wizard of Oz fans know, with the added context that the Wizard and her mentor, Madame Morrible, played in the film by Jeff Goldblum and Michelle Yeoh, respectively, have branded her “wicked” after she refused to help their plot to strip rights away from the animals in Oz. Elphaba and Glinda, who spent the first act and film becoming friends against all odds, go their separate ways as Elphaba chooses to rebel against the Wizard and Glinda stays behind.
Schwartz previously confirmed to THR that there are two new songs in Wicked: For Good. Erivo will sing “No Place Like Home,” while Grande will tackle a new track, “The Girl in the Bubble.”
“They were written because they were necessary for the storytelling. It’s why there isn’t a new song in the first movie because we didn’t need one,” Schwartz previously said to THR. “They’re an important part of the story.”
“The reason we even wanted to have new songs in the second part, and that’s the only thing I’m going to say about the second part, is because we had these ideas of songs that we kind of fell in love with, and as Dana’s saying, we couldn’t even have fit the whole score into one movie,” Holzman said, adding that any changes made to part one were made to “increase the intensity or increase the stakes” and never just because.
Holzman and Fox also weighed in on the Wicked spoiler debate, explaining why they aren’t concerned about fans potentially spoiling the second film. “It didn’t open yesterday, it’s been running for 21 years,” Holzman joked about the stage musical. “Not just in America, all over the place. It’s been touring and it’s been in a lot of languages. There are some answers in that you can know … If you gofind that out yourself, you can know those things.”
Still, she said she feels for the fans who are trying to avoid the spoilers: “I have to pay homage to people who are having their responses because that is what we wanted. Passion is beautiful. It shows how they gave their hearts.”
Universal Pictures has released multiple trailers ahead of the release, including the main trailer that saw Elphaba and Glinda reuniting, at least momentarily. The closing lines of the sneak peek getting to the point of the entire story. “You’re the only friend I’ve ever had,” Erivo’s Elphaba tells Grande’s Glinda. The latter responding, “And I’ve had so many friends, but only one that mattered.” The trailer also gave Wicked fans their first peak at the iconic, titular track, “For Good,” sung by the two leads.
The final trailer, released in September, gives a glimpse into the making of the Glinda that Wizard of Oz fans have come to know, sharing a quick snippet of the character’s main second act solo song, “Thank Goodness.” When Elphaba returns in the trailer, the fallout and tension between the former friends is evident, accompanied by a clip of the titular Wicked Witch’s iconic second act song, “No Good Deed.”
In a review of the sequel, THR’s David Rooney described the follow-up film as being Glinda’s film. “Even if the combined two parts totaling almost five hours are a lot, there’s a lovely symmetry to the fact that while the opener very much belonged to Erivo’s misunderstood, green-skinned Oz outcast Elphaba, the follow-up foregrounds her erstwhile nemesis turned friend Glinda, brought to luminous life by Grande,” the review reads.
It’s clear that Erivo remains a true force in the film with “pipes that shake the heavens and a wellspring of unforced emotional intensity that never runs dry.” However, act two of the show has been known to showcase more of Glinda’s side of the story. Rooney says Grande’s “conceited blonde bubblehead gains in stature” in the second film — “Grande has been acting since she was a kid, and her quiet moments of introspection, anxiety or sadness show tender depths, as does her loyalty to Elphaba.”
For those who want to be spoiled, here’s how the story continues in the stage musical (spoiler alert warning ahead for new moviegoers!)…
Act 2 takes place parallel to the events of the original Wizard of Oz. It begins with Glinda, now officially dubbed Glinda the Good, and Fiyero, portrayed by Jonathan Bailey, now captain of the wizard’s guard, speaking with the public of Oz as officials for the Wizard. Morrible, who tells a completely untrue account of the show’s first act finale, announces that Fiyero and Glinda are engaged to calm a crowd worried about the Wicked Witch. Fiyero still cares for Elphaba and leaves due to the crowd’s horrible comments.
Elphaba visits her sister, Nessarose, played by Marissa Bode in the film, who has become the governor of Munchkinland. Nessa has taken away the Munchkins’ rights to get Boq, portrayed by Ethan Slater in the film, to stay with her. Elphaba enchants their mother’s jeweled shoes allowing Nessa to walk, but Boq still rejects her. A spell gone wrong, which Nessa blames on Elphaba, turns Boq into the Tin Man.
The Wizard once again offers Elphaba a chance to join his cause, but she rejects him and Fiyero helps her escape from the Wizard, leaving Glinda behind. The pair eventually confess their love for one another. Morrible and the Wizard devise a plan to put Nessarose in danger to get Elphaba’s attention. This kicks off Morrible causing the tornado in the Wizard of Oz that brings Dorothy to Oz and kills Nessarose, a.k.a. the Wicked Witch of the East.
Glinda and Elphaba reunite and fight over Glinda giving Nessa’s shoes to the girl who has arrived in Oz, Dorothy. Eventually, the pair make up after Glinda warns Elphaba of the plan to kill her with a powerful musical number, “For Good.” Elphaba is seemingly melted by a bucket of water — her ending in the Wizard of Oz. Glinda tells the Wizard that Elphaba was his daughter, kicking him out of Oz and having Morrible arrested for her plot to kill Nessarose. Fiyero, who has been turned into the scarecrow after trying to help Elphaba earlier, returns to the site of the melting, releasing Elphaba from a trap door and the pair run away together.
Dorothy and her crew can be seen briefly in Wicked‘s first part of the movie, from behind only, and in the trailer speaking with the Wizard. The Wizard of Oz character is shown from behind or in silhouette, never explicitly featured in the stage musical. Colman Domingo is confirmed to voice the Cowardly Lion, however, it’s unclear who might star as Dorothy – the Scarecrow and Tin Man being played by Slater and Bailey, respectively.
This story originally posted Nov. 28, 2024. Leading up to Wicked: For Good arriving in theaters Nov. 21, 2025, THR has been updating this post.
