To properly engage with the choices made in 2025’s Wicked: For Good, you have to throw out 1939’s The Wizard of Oz as a sacred text. After you see exactly where they’ve gone with these characters, you can no longer incorporate into your mental framework the one-dimensional cackling of Margaret Hamilton’s Wicked Witch of the West – who was not called Elphaba at that point – nor the blithe dippiness of Billy Burke’s Glinda the Good. Wicked: For Good’s ostensible goal is to get us there, just as Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith was designed to fully twist Anakin Skywalker into evil. It should have been obvious to anyone who saw the Oscar-nominated first movie that it was never going to go that way, especially since those 1939 characters demonstrated a total lack of depth.

Our expectations were not such a burden Jon M. Chu’s Wicked had to grapple with. All the action in that movie was unfamiliar to us – those of us who hadn’t seen the Broadway musical, anyway – leaving this Oz as virgin ground on which a speculative origin story could be hatched. (Which was actually hatched in Gregory Maguire’s original novel.) And that left the events of that film a delightful surprise, at least to those who didn’t balk at the film’s heavy reliance on digital effects, or whose gag reflexes were not triggered by the movie musical as a genre. This critic is unafraid to say he was swept up in the whole affair, as this review details.

There are plenty of surprises in Wicked: For Good, but many of them have the awkward quality of a twist, where unexpected connections are revealed between characters, identities are unveiled, and the characters who seemed to be central to The Wizard of Oz – Dorothy and her three traveling companions – are total footnotes, some even acting in bad faith. What isn’t a surprise, at least to those who knew Stephen Schwartz needed to write a few more songs to try to give this movie its own “Defying Gravity” centrepiece, is that the musical’s second act songs can’t carry the film along. (Of Schwartz’s new contributions, “No Place Like Home” is memorable; “The Girl in the Bubble,” not so much.)

This isn’t to say Wicked: For Good doesn’t succeed in (most of) what it sets out to do. But it doesn’t seem likely to make a return trip to the Oscar podium, even in the form of a token nomination for best picture just to put it in the company of series like The Godfather, Lord of the Rings and Dune, all of whose films to date have been so nominated.

The film picks up where Wicked left off, with Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo) freshly outcast and Glinda (Ariana Grande) elevated to the role of Oz ombudswoman. In fact, the very first scene indicates some passage of time, though it’s unclear how much – the merely dreamed of Yellow Brick Road is now being constructed in the least labour friendly environment imaginable, with Emerald Palace guards ruthlessly whipping the animals hauling the carts. Elphaba, ever the animal rights activist, flies into the scene to send a number of these jerks ass over teakettle, in one of the acts of supposed disruption that have made her public enemy #1.

It’s hard to believe this is actually Elphaba’s fate, even among an overly credulous population, where any similarities to Donald Trump’s MAGA base are absolutely intended. There’s nothing Elphaba has done, nor will do in this movie, that reeks of any sort of wickedness. The worst she can be accused of is being misunderstood. Glinda, though, is still trying to understand her, though she’s getting caught up in her own duties as the good witch and the cherished popularity that accompanies it. She’s also trying to marry Prince Fiyero (Jonathan Bailey), who secretly carries a torch for Elphaba.

The Wizard (Jeff Goldblum) is still more of an eccentric charlatan than an evil guy – a perfect mode for Goldblum – but stirring the pot is Madame Morrible (Michelle Yeoh), whose genuine ability with magic is matched only by her own wicked nature. Also on hand are Elphaba’s sister Nessarose (Marissa Bode), now the governor of Munchkinland, and Nessa’s own potential love interest, the munchkin Boq (Ethan Slater), who is carrying his own torch, for Glinda.

We know the broad strokes of where this has to go, but the joy of watching the pieces snap into place doesn’t fully materialise. Part of that is because moments we thought we were waiting to arrive are brushed away with a hand wave, many occurring off screen if they occur at all. But then there’s also the fact that this film has painted itself into a corner in terms of how bold it can be. A more daring version of Wicked: For Good might try to conjure genuine rage in Elphaba, legitimate bad behaviour. Because it can’t or rather won’t, in a noble attempt to leave no blood on Erivo’s hands, it leaves severe gaps in the logic about why this woman is so hated, in such a nebulously short amount of time – her death an outcome we were invited to cheer in The Wizard of Oz.

Erivo and Grande do return the goods from their Oscar-nominated roles in the original, each doing what they did there, but without the element of surprise contained in those performances. There’s a sense their overall effectiveness is neutered by having one too many indistinguishable solos, forgettable musical numbers that feel like filler rather than advancements of their characters.

There are, though, a few moments when the themes really shine through. Although acts of peaceful rebellion against malignant authority are one of the clearest ways we identify a movie as coming out in 2025, there are moments when these stagger with their resonance. We know Schwartz wrote “No Place Like Home” recently, with Erivo already in mind, so there’s an added poignancy to the line that starts out Elphaba’s solo: “Why do I love this place, when it never loved me?”

The song takes place as a bunch of animals, oppressed by the government, are fleeing Oz for greener pastures. It turns into Elphaba’s impassioned plea to stay and fight. If you’re still feeling the sting of Trump’s presidential win, and the fact that he’s let loose a bunch of fascistic ICE agents to collect up and deport immigrants, you’ll feel these words especially strongly — especially coming from a Black woman whose country may have never loved her, but who isn’t ready to give up.

 

Wicked: For Good opened yesterday in cinemas.