Wicked For Good Gives Glinda Her Voice And Asks If We Still Believe In Oz

If the first Wicked film was about discovering who Elphaba and Glinda are, Wicked: For Good is about living with the consequences. The fairy tale sheen has cracked, the friendships have frayed, and the story finally has to answer the question the Broadway musical has posed for twenty years. What does it really cost to be good in a world that insists on calling you wicked.

Part two arrives with a lot to live up to. The first film, released in November 2024, was both a box office juggernaut and a technical triumph, taking more than 758 million dollars worldwide and winning Oscars for costume design and production design. It largely followed the structure of act one on stage, keeping us at Shiz University as Elphaba and Glinda’s unlikely friendship bloomed before being quite literally torn apart on the chords of Defying Gravity.

Wicked: For Good picks up in the free fall. Elphaba is now the fugitive Witch of the West, Glinda is sliding into her role as the public facing Good Witch, and Oz itself is starting to look less like a sparkling emerald utopia and more like a propaganda machine. Jon M Chu, back in the director’s chair, has made a sequel that critics broadly agree is more intimate, more bruised, and more emotionally direct than the first film, even if not everyone is ready to surrender to its flood of feeling.

The headline, before anything else, is that Ariana Grande seems to have silenced most of the pre release doubters. The Hollywood Reporter’s David Rooney calls her the standout of the film, not because she belts the loudest, but because of what happens in the quiet. His argument is that Glinda, so often the sparkly comic foil on stage, is finally given equal dramatic footing with Elphaba, helped by a new Stephen Schwartz song, The Girl in the Bubble. It is Glinda’s crisis aria, and critics say Grande pours in enough self interrogation and vulnerability to reframe a character long written off as shallow.

That balancing act is at the heart of why the film is landing so strongly with audiences. The second part of Wicked’s story has always been messier. Glinda is compromised by power and proximity to the Wizard, played here with insidious glee by Jeff Goldblum. Elphaba leans into the myth that has been written for her and discovers a form of freedom in exile. The film lets both women be brave and wrong, selfish and selfless, sometimes within the same scene, and their final harmonies in For Good are being described as emotional wrecking balls. Rooney talks about young women at a press screening sobbing their way through the last act. Anyone who has seen a Wicked curtain call from the dress circle will recognise the sound.

What has surprised some is the way Chu shifts his stylistic gears. Bilge Ebiri at Vulture notes that this is a director who staged dazzling set pieces in In the Heights and West Side Story, but here he pulls back. Wicked: For Good still has its spectacle, from flying monkeys to a pair of very contested shoes, yet the musical numbers are often shot in a way that feels closer and more old fashioned. Less sweep, more searching close up. Ebiri argues that this makes the sequel more somber and more human than the first film, and that it keeps the story from feeling like a two part rehash of the same tricks.

Not everyone is bewitched. The Associated Press reminds us that if Wicked’s candy coloured bombast had you reaching for a sick bag the first time, you may feel similarly pummeled by the sequel. From that vantage point, the two films are less stories than productions, capital P, orchestrating characters across the screen like pieces in an enormous Oz themed machine. The complaint is not about the talent, Cynthia Erivo in particular continues to be praised for the volcanic clarity of her voice, but about the relentlessness. It is possible, the review suggests, to admire the craft from a safe distance in the mezzanine without ever quite losing yourself inside the world.

Caryn James at the BBC takes the opposite line. She calls For Good more captivating than its predecessor, while freely admitting that these films are preaching to the choir. If you bristle at Broadway sentimentality, Wicked will not convert you. If you have ever ugly cried your way through For Good in a theatre, this second instalment is likely to feel like a gift. USA Today’s Brian Truitt, clearly in the choir stalls, describes the film as everything you could want in a Wicked closer, flying monkeys and all, even if the ending ties one too many knots into its own plot.

What is interesting in this spread of responses is how much they agree on the fundamentals while disagreeing on the verdict. Almost everyone concedes that the performances, particularly from Erivo and Grande, are extraordinary. Almost everyone notes the same issues with pacing and an overcomplicated final stretch. The divide comes down to tolerance for bombast and sincerity. If you read overt feeling as emotional manipulation, Wicked: For Good will test your patience. If you see it as the genre doing what it does best, you are more likely to surrender and let the score carry you.

The addition of two new songs in this second chapter also speaks to a larger ambition. At the New York premiere, Chu talked about movie one as a fairy tale structure and movie two as what happens after the fairy tale shatters. That is the real subject of the film beneath the green makeup and the glitter. How do you live with a choice once it stops being abstract and starts having consequences for the people you love. Do you stay in the bubble or step outside and risk being called wicked for telling the truth.

In that sense, the critical split feels oddly appropriate. Wicked has always been about perspective, about who gets to tell the story of what happened in Oz. One person’s candy coloured spectacle is another person’s catharsis. One person’s overproduced machine is another’s carefully built world. The two part film cycle asks you to pick a side, not between Elphaba and Glinda, but between cynicism and generosity.

What seems undeniable, from the box office trajectory of the first film and the early audience scores for the second, is that a huge number of people are ready to spend another two and a half hours in this universe. Wicked: For Good may not win over the sceptics, but it was never really trying to. It is a finale for those who have already chosen Oz, a chance to say goodbye properly to a friendship that changed the rules of the fairy tale. If you are willing to meet it on those terms, it just might change you a little, for good.