Wicked: For Good has finally landed in theaters, ending a year-long, Endgame-esque wait for the conclusion of the two-part saga. In the meantime, the original film became somewhat of a cultural phenomenon. It took over pop culture thanks to a really strange press tour, a really good film, and some really strong songs. While the sequel doesn’t quite reach those same levels (the press tour was pretty weird again), it does provide a mostly satisfying time at the theaters.

Wicked: For Good Review

Much like the first film, Wicked: For Good is carried by its emotional undercurrent, which is driven home by Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande. Neither are as good as they are in the first movie, but they’re still a really fantastic duo that elevates what would otherwise be a thoroughly disappointing outing. They remain the beating heart of this tale.

Unfortunately, they’re a little let down by the script, which is kind of all over the place. There are some gaps in the narrative that hurt the pacing and the cohesiveness. This is especially true with Elphaba’s character development. She’s meant to go from the sympathetic character from the first movie to the actual wicked witch before returning to her good nature.

All of that happens in a very brief period of time. Wicked: For Good begins ramping up, and Elphaba declares then and there that, because of the wizard and his cohorts’ latest transgression, that she will just be the witch they all portray her as. Right after that, she tortures Dorothy for a literal moment (which mainly happens just to connect back to The Wizard of Oz) before Elphaba decides to turn back to the light and sacrifice herself.

Erivo does a good job carrying these emotional beats on her own, and they are individually pretty good, so you momentarily forget that she was just at an entirely different level of character development just before. Grande doesn’t have as much heavy lifting to do, but she does a great job grounding Glinda and allowing her to continue growing.

Jonathan Bailey, Ethan Slater, Jeff Goldblum, and Marissa Bode are all doing solid supporting work. Bowen Yang, who brought virtually nothing to the table in the first film and wasn’t very funny outside of his solid SNL work, was thankfully sidelined for the vast majority of Wicked: For Good. Michelle Yeoh did not have a good performance, reducing Madame Morrible to a caricature of meanness and nothing else.

Narratively, it’s a little convoluted. It seeks to check back in with The Wizard of Oz at points, which is understandable and required for a movie like Wicked: For Good, but all those moments feel like they are just thrown in to connect back and nothing more.

And when the two movies conflict, it gets a little messy. The best example is the Tin Man. Slater’s Boq is turned into the Tin Man and he wants revenge on Elphaba. He has a really good emotional moment where he vows to take down the witch and bring the wizard her broom, but it flies counter to what he was like in The Wizard of Oz and he is basically not seen or heard from again.

Even when Dorothy, the Cowardly Lion, Tin Man, and Scarecrow all confront Elphaba, the choice was made to show it strictly through Glinda’s eyes and she only sees Dorothy melt the witch. Speaking of Dorothy, there is an actress portraying her, but she’s mostly an abstract. This was a smart choice by director Jon M. Chu, who understands that no one can be Judy Garland, so her face is rarely shown, relying on the iconography of her dress and the shoes as well as her hairstyle.

But despite the narrative flaws, it’s still a really good story. A cleaner script would’ve helped, but the emotional beats hit hard, and the progression from beginning to end, when you step back and assess the entire film, makes sense. Moments feel out of place and there’s some clear gaps, but the overall product doesn’t suffer too greatly from that.

It also looks really beautiful. The color palette is once again excellent, and the bright colors really pop on-screen. The cinematography is quite good, too. There’s a shot where Elphaba is flying in front of some flames with her flying monkeys. It comes right after one of the better songs in the movie, and it’s supposed to be the emotional climax, and that shot really sells it.

The music, by and large, is sadly not nearly as good as in Wicked. There are a couple of standout songs, namely “No Good Deed,” “Girl in the Bubble,” and of course, “For Good.” These all happen relatively close to one another, marking the high point of the movie. Otherwise, the best music comes from part one. The score is good, but it’s just the themes and instrumentals from the first movie’s songs.

Full spoilers from here on out. The ending is certainly a choice. It’s not totally outrageous to provide an alternative ending for Elphaba than in The Wizard of Oz, but I can’t help but feel it’s not a fair ending. Elphaba and Fiyero, a.k.a. Scarecrow, get to leave Oz and enter some elseworld (which also makes little sense since we know the real world exists outside Oz, but that’s another thing entirely), while Glinda is left behind to clean up the mess and not ever know that the two people she loves most are not, in fact, dead.

Elphaba says, in voiceover, that Glinda can’t know they’re alive after the big reveal that she and Scarecrow planned to fake her death, but there’s no explanation. We’re just meant to accept it. If a good reason had been given, that would be one thing. If they’d just told Glinda and then left because Oz obviously still isn’t safe for them, it would’ve been one thing. But instead, neither is the case.

And what’s more, the ending doesn’t make sense for Elphaba. There is an entire song dedicated to Elphaba begging the animals not to leave Oz even though it’s dangerous for them. She lets them know that it’s dangerous for her and she has no idea why, but it’s home to her. It’s a fitting metaphor for some people in our own American society, but with Elphaba leaving at the end, all the emotional weight is removed. Apparently, her “home” isn’t worth fighting for after all, and she’s better off leaving the place she fought to improve.

Conclusion

What a movie like this is supposed to do (and truthfully all movies) is make the audience feel. And thanks to a really good cast and a solid, worthwhile story, it does just that. It might stumble on that yellow brick road, but it never falls down, delivering a satisfying conclusion with a few missteps here and there.

Score: 3.75/5