It’s common wisdom that all the good songs of Wicked (2003) are in the first half. But if the majority of songs in the anti-fascist melodrama of Act 2 were as silly and energetic as “Dancing Through Life,” the whole of the play wouldn’t work. Audiences would rightfully cry foul at a musical that doesn’t take its issues seriously, which is how I felt about the first film. Last year, Wicked’s timely election-month release saw director John M. Chu (Wicked; In the Heights) discuss the post-Reagan book and post-9/11 play as openly political works about America in transition. Where the first film’s songbook neatly captures the naivete of coming of age politically and personally in college, the emotional narrative of the dialogue scenes never catches up with the emotional throughline of the songs. This time however, both are locked in, as is Chu.
L-R: Ariana Grande as Glinda and Cynthia Erivo as Elphaba in WICKED: FOR GOOD, directed by Jon M. Chu. Photo Credit: Giles Keyte/Universal Pictures. © Universal Studios. All Rights Reserved.
Wicked: For Good opens on the paving of the yellow brick road. Next to the uniformed men whipping the animals of Oz to exhaustion is a blink-and-you-miss-it detail: a paint-dipping station for the bricks. They’re painting the bricks yellow on all six faces, one at a time, on a station without wheels. So they must have to pack it up and move it throughout the day to keep up with the brick-laying cart. Cynthia Erivo’s (Harriet; Widows) Elpheba quickly dismantles the operation and frees the animals while surfing on her broomstick like a ‘90s superhero. The film quickly moves on to a great musical number in the Emerald City with more real human people on screen than maybe any other film this year. But that paint station is an example of what Chu accomplishes in this film.
“Oz is more than just a place. An idea…why should land have so much meaning?”
The land of Oz is crisscrossed with trains headed towards the Emerald City, but here the government is building a useless piece of infrastructure at great expense and cruelty in the silliest way. All for the sake of giving their leader a piece of grandeur he can sell to the public for mollification. The second half of Wicked’s songbook has fewer songs and a tighter narrative focus, but even when the screenplay falters, Chu expands the visual strength of political analogy. His attempts to add songs, however, amount to little. Wicked: For Good manages to be a sturdier film than the first, with more cohesive cinematography, a stronger handle on the tone, and a more earnest expression of its themes.
L-R: Cynthia Erivo as Elphaba and Jonathan Bailey as Fiyero in WICKED: FOR GOOD, directed by Jon M. Chu. Photo Credit: Giles Keyte/Universal Pictures. © Universal Studios. All Rights Reserved.
In the year since we last saw them, the students of Shiz University have lost all naivete, save for Elphaba and Ariana Grande’s (Don’t Look Up; Zoolander 2) Galinda. Their humanizing encounter with The Wizard has left them both hopeful that either exposure or lobbying can convince the powerful man to change his ways. But Jonathan Bailey’s (Fellow Travelers; Jurassic World Rebirth) Fiyero, Ethan Slater’s (I’m “George Lucas”: A Connor Ratliff Story; Wicked) Boq and Marissa Bode’s (Wicked) Nessarose have been beaten down by living in unprecedented times. Fiyero, in particular, has lost his spark, the events in the last movie leaving him steely, reserved, and determined to act the hero for the regime in order to undermine it. Boq has become the bitter bystander to Nessarose’s slide into fascism, socially trapped by his own lie of affection in the last film. The greatest weakness of Wicked: For Good is not the songbook, but the decision to only expand existing scenes. Slater’s performance is so much more interesting than his first that it’s maddening that we don’t get to see Boq and Fiyero talk to each other at least once in the third act. Colman Domingo (The Running Man; Sing Sing) also joins the cast as the Cowardly Lion, but he’s barely distinguishable with his limited lines. Newcomer Bethany Weaver sounds good as the infamous Dorothy, but you never get to see her face.
“If I can make them believe that everything he says is a lie.”
The draw of the first film was the chemistry between Erivo and Grande and they deliver again. They are fun, witty, and earnest, as usual. Grande has the lion’s share of this spotlight, and the camera sweeps gracefully with her ballads. Erivo, on the other hand, is tasked with selling some quick emotional turns that the screenplay is too loyal to deepen.
L-R: Cynthia Erivo as Elphaba and Ariana Grande as Glinda in WICKED: FOR GOOD, directed by Jon M. Chu. Photo courtesy of Universal Pictures. © Universal Studios. All Rights Reserved.
Wicked requires Wicked: For Good and The Wizard of Oz (1939) to exist in order to generate the dramatic irony that fuels both its laughs and its tears. Wicked for Good needs the others to exist in order for it to make any sense at all. Despite that, the tight focus on Elphaba and Galinda’s friendship and a healthy dose of good direction keeps the film emotionally fluent. As a work of fiction, it says what it wants and says it well. As an entertaining musical … “Defying Gravity” is in the other one. As a film about The Wizard of Oz, it could have given us a lot more between the Tin Man, the Cowardly Lion, and the Scarecrow. But what it did give us was pretty good.
In theaters November 21st, 2025.
For more information, head to the official Universal Pictures Wicked: For Good website.
Final Score: 3 out of 5.
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Categories: In Theaters, Reviews
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