In Defense Of Wicked: For Good. Elphaba & Glinda’s Love Story Finds Strength In Its Sincerity

Spoilers ahead. There’s been a lot of talk about the door. If you’ve seen Wicked: For Good, you know exactly which door I mean. During “For Good,” the movie’s title track, Cynthia Erivo’s Elphaba and Ariana Grande’s Glinda dramatically say their goodbyes to each other through a crumbling barrier, and through tears, of course. At the end of this scene, Glinda and Elphaba exchange three words that — until now — were forbidden in the world composer Stephen Schwartz created: “I love you.” 

The moment, like most things in director Jon M. Chu’s Wicked universe, is devastatingly emotional, maximized to elicit big feelings from the audience, and anchored by two performances that, no matter how saccharine the material, pull the film back down to the ground. If “Defying Gravity” was a confrontation between a budding radical and a well-meaning white moderate about how power corrupts and divides, “For Good” can be read as the reconciliation between two people with different approaches to the same problem: fighting facism. But also, it’s simply about the power of friendship. It’s about how friendship molds you, how it can be the thing that heals and bonds, and the relationship that reorganizes the molecules in your brain, shifting everything you thought you knew about yourself and the world around you. Friendship is what makes us whole. It’s what makes us human. And, most importantly, Wicked: For Good is about how Elphaba and Glinda are the great loves of each other’s lives. 

If you didn’t get all that from two witches singing harmonies only celestial beings could hit, maybe Wicked isn’t for you. And that’s OK. Some of my fellow critics have had harsh reactions to Wicked: For Good. NPR’s headline reads, “This could have all been one movie” and IndieWire writes, “Finale of a Needlessly Two-Part Movie Musical  Adaptation Doesn’t Go Out on a High Note.” AP News went with a nod to The Wizard of Oz: “sorry, my pretty, ‘For Good’ doesn’t delight.” The Atlantic: "Wicked: For Good Bursts Its Own Bubble." The New Yorker’s review by Justin Chang is the most ruthless, calling the movie “very, very bad” while chiding its “dreadful filmmaking.” Every one of these reviews make some fair points about the clunky inclusion of Dorothy, her cohort, and the effectiveness of Wicked as a prequel to The Wizard of Oz, but most of these critics didn’t like the first one either. And since, famously, part two of the musical has never been revered as highly as part one, those reactions were inevitable. But what so many of these detractors see as Wicked: For Good’s weaknesses — its sincerity, optimistic politics, tidy resolutions, and feel-good messaging — are actually its strengths. 

In a time when everyone’s a critic but no one’s an expert (an Amazon mic and a TikTok account do not a specialist make) and when standom has made it nearly impossible to share a dissenting opinion without heaps of hate, doxxing, and backlash, I’m never going to knock well-written, thoughtful criticism (even if I think some of these reviews are written by men who just don't like musicals, or women emoting). But I can disagree. And I don’t think Wicked: For Good is a disappointment. It’s a pretty faithful adaptation of the second act of an ambitious musical that aims to please. The changes from the Broadway musical to the big screen (like giving Glinda more depth and making Nessarose’s arc less ableist) absolutely work to make the narrative more cohesive, modern, and to deliver satisfying moments that make sure moviegoers get their money’s worth. 

One of those moments is “For Good,” the musical number we’ve waited a whole year for. Erivo and Grande have gotten flack for their joint press interviews that people perceive as codependent, cloying, and overly emotional. But once you see these two sing “Who can say if I've been/ changed for the better/ But because I knew you/ I have been changed for good” it starts to make sense. First of all, they are theater kids. Being overly emotional is their whole thing. Also, it’s refreshing to see two performers care so deeply about their work that they can’t help but cry about it. I’d take this energy over indifference any day. To hear Grande and Erivo tell it, the parallels between their friendship and the one we see on screen are vast, and since they’ve been sitting with this material for years, they’ve developed a bond that formed long before they locked fingers in a junket while holding space for the lyrics of “Defying Gravity.” And once you are sitting in the theater locked in on the culmination of Elphaba and Glinda’s saga, you’ll forget about the off-camera speculation and public perceptions and drift away to Oz to be serenaded by the Wicked Witch of the West and Glinda The Good who have, against all odds, found their way back to each other. 

By the time we get to “For Good” in the film, Elphaba has been living in hiding attempting to expose the Wizard’s lies. She’s on a quest to free Oz’s animals who have been stripped of their voices and their rights. Her image (caricature posters depicting her with exaggerated features are so comically evil, they are reminiscent of Jim Crow-era, anti-Black imagery) is projected all over Oz as a symbol of hate and villainy. Conversely, Glinda has everything she’s ever wanted — she’s risen to fame as a beloved symbol of Goodness — but still doesn’t have any magic of her own. With the help of Madame Morrible (a consistently uneven Michelle Yeoh), she’s keeping up illusions to maintain the Wizard’s tyrannical rule. Glinda is literally living in a bubble to upkeep the lies. She’s everything Elphaba warned her of becoming in “Defying Gravity.” Glinda is about to marry Fiyero (played perfectly by Sexiest Man Alive, Jonathan Bailey), now the captain of the Wizard’s guard, who hasn’t stopped his search for his real love, Elphaba. 

It would be easy to read the dynamic between Elphaba, Fiyero and Glinda as just another literary love triangle, with two girls torn between a dashing prince, but as charming and hot as Fiyero is (I broke into a sweat during the chaste yet horny “As Long As You’re Mine”), he’s really not that important. While it’s beautiful to see Elphaba find the romantic love she deserves, and the origin story of the Scaregrow is the strongest part of the Wizard of Oz tie-in, Fiyero mainly exists as a test of Glinda and Elphaba’s friendship. On her wedding day, Glinda has to process the fact that her ex-best friend and her fiancé are about to run away together. The tables have turned and now, she is Not That Girl. Glinda has lived a privileged life as the popular girl, always chosen, always winning, and now she’s lost not just her groom, but the bubble she so carefully constructed is also about to burst. Later, when Fiyero risks his life to save Elphaba by pointing a gun at Glinda’s face, you see her accept his love for Elphaba and her own. She calls his bluff, and resigns herself to the fact that they both love Elphaba. Of course they do. Grandé is heartbreakingly magnificent in this moment, playing Glinda’s conflict with painful awareness. 

It’s clear that Wicked: For Good  is invested in Glinda’s redemption. She goes from self-serving mean girl to the arbiter of all things good. It’s fun to watch this transformation unfold, thanks in large part to Grande’s performance, but it’s also a fairytale (I like her but I still think Glinda is a spineless, mediocre fraud who ain’t shit). We know in real life that opportunists rarely change their tune, that white women who turn their backs on their Black (ahem, green) counterparts for their own self interests do so callously and with gleeful disregard for their humanity. But in a world of talking Tin Men and cowardly lions, why can’t the fantasy include the moral salvation of the girl who “groveled in submission/ to feed [her] own ambition”? It’s a nice story, even though it comes at the expense of Elphaba’s freedom.

If I have one major critique of Wicked: For Good, it’s that I wanted more for my girl Elphaba. It’s hard to watch her fall on her sword as Glinda gets the glory. Dorothy is now in Oz, after allegedly murdering Nessarose by way of a falling house (we later learn it was Madame Morrible who did the deed, inspired by a Glinda suggestion). Elphaba decides that Oz needs a villain, a foe to Glinda’s hero, and offers herself up as the symbol they need to shun. She’s made this decision out of hurt and frustration — Fiyero is arrested and would have been beaten to death if Elphaba didn’t cast a spell turning his bones into straw — and is done doing good deeds with zero reward. 

Many headlines about Wicked: For Good have focused on Grande, and while it’s true she is great in this sequel and that it’s more Glinda’s movie than Elphaba’s, Erivo is still firing on all cylinders, delivering a timeless performance that is also worthy of unadulterated praise. Throughout Wicked: For Good, Elphaba goes from fugitive freedom fighter, to heartbroken friend, to frustrated revolutionary, to lover in mourning, to resigned martyr. It’s a depressing arc that sees the optimism of progressivism dashed with a big dose of witch-melting water. The simplicity of the message — that doing good comes at a cost, that no matter your intentions, things don’t always work in your favor, and that facism may take on a new face but it’s an ever-present threat — is the point. I don’t love the optics of a Black woman (we’ve established that Elphaba is Black) giving up her freedom and her reputation to save a white woman who betrayed her once and a population who vilified her, but the lesson is about who you are when the choice is to do good when it doesn’t benefit you at all. Who are you in your darkest moments? What are your values, really?

In Chang’s New Yorker review, he references Gregory Maguire’s novel the Broadway musical is loosely based on, which was an adaptation of Frank L. Baum's children's book, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz: “Maguire’s novel was itself written in the spirit of a corrective; it aimed to bring a morally ambiguous modernism and a grownup, forthright sexuality to bear on Baum’s squeaky-clean demarcations of good and evil.” It’s true that Wicked: For Good’s political commentary may be clumsy at times and very much watered down from its source material (the characters are less overtly queer and some are literally whitewashed), but the musical still aims to take a stand against totalitarianism and teach audiences that a lying dictatorship uninterested in the truth, wielding power without checks and balances is bad, actually. And right now, I think that’s good, actually. 

I understand the critiques, but let’s take the Wicked movies for what they are instead of what you hoped the stage musical would be. The movies were never going to be a radical reimagining of Maguire’s novel because that’s not what the musical is. It’s a big-hearted, campy, bold, entertaining ride with a nice message. 

Again, ultimately, Wicked is about Elphaba and Glinda, two girls who grew together while figuring themselves out. It’s about the complexity and softness of platonic affection. And it’s about the door (the "I love yous" were improvised, Erivo says). There’s always been a chasm between the two witches — one is unusually and exceedingly peculiar and altogether quite impossible to describe, the other is blonde — and as they finally reach their farewell, the realization that they are better off because of their relationship hits, and it all coalesces in a gut wrenching declaration of mutual adoration, respect, and forgiveness. The fact that there is still a door between them in this moment, a physical divide between them as they grow into their most actualized selves, is exactly the ending these two characters should have, no matter how bittersweet. 

It’s up for debate if Glinda and Elphaba ever see each other again, or if Glinda even knows her best friend is alive and wandering beyond the walls of Oz journeying to a new life with Fiyero. In the Wicked cinematic universe, it’s also left unclear as to what kind of leader Glinda The Good becomes. In the absence of her evil overlords, does Glinda live up to the task Elphaba entrusts her with? Does she become who her best friend believed she could be? There’s hope in each of these questions. And when you look at it all through Elphaba’s eyes — the ones that saw the Good in Glinda before she did — it’s enough to move even the most cynical viewer. Even if you aren't sobbing in the theater like I was, I promise if you open your heart, let go and embrace its earnestness, Wicked: For Good will change something in you for the better.