Movie Review: WICKED: FOR GOOD

By ABBIE BERNSTEIN / Staff Writer

Posted: November 21st, 2025 / 04:22 AM

Rating: PG
Stars: Cynthia Erivo, Ariana Grande-Butera, Jonathan Bailey, Marissa Bode, Ethan Slater, Michelle Yeoh, Jeff Goldblum
Writers: Winnie Holzman and Winnie Holzman & Dana Fox, based on the stage musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz and book by Winnie Holzman, based on the novel by Gregory Maguire
Director: Jon M. Chu
Distributor: Universal
Release Date: November 21, 2024

WICKED: FOR GOOD is the second half/conclusion of 2024’s WICKED, aka WICKED: PART 1. Both films are based on the stage musical WICKED, with music and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz and book by Winnie Holzman, which has been playing on Broadway (and touring all over the planet) nonstop since it opened in 2003. This, in turn, is based on the 1995 novel WICKED: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF THE WICKED WITCH OF THE WEST by Gregory Maguire.

Both WICKED films are also directed by Jon M. Chu and scripted by stage book writer Holzman and Holzman & Dana Fox (Holzman’s solo writing credit here means she wrote drafts by herself and the ampersand credit means she and Fox collaborated on other drafts), with music and lyrics by Schwartz.

The movies are fairly faithful to the stage WICKED, with some added material. This is almost certainly because making WICKED as a single film would result in something that would run well over three hours, whereas breaking it in two with no additions would create a duo of too-short parts, to say nothing of putting the brakes on the kinds of visual flourishes Chu adds in the cinematic medium.

The additions are largely assets. These include the new song “There’s No Place Like Home,” an exhortation to stand and fight the forces attempting to change one’s homeland beyond recognition, as opposed to fleeing. We also get time for a more expansive, fully-imagined world that is still lively and gorgeous, albeit with a little more gloom as oppression is taking hold.

WICKED: FOR GOOD assumes that its audience will be familiar with WICKED, at least the first film if not the stage version or the novel. This is a reasonable expectation, but if an uninitiated viewer somehow enters the theatre, there’s not much in the way of recap.

WICKED: FOR GOOD starts essentially where WICKED ended. Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo) has used her magic to fly away from capture in the Emerald City. In the palace, the Wizard (Jeff Goldblum) and Madame Morrible (Michelle Yeoh) scheme to hold onto power by keeping the populace preoccupied with their fear of “the Wicked Witch of the West” and by demonizing Oz’s talking animals.

Seeking to put a charming face on their agenda, the Wizard and Morrible are using the nationally beloved Glinda (Ariana Grande-Butera) as their spokesperson. Glinda would like nothing more than to broker peace between her old college roommate Elphaba and the Wizard, but both sides seem intractable.

Glinda’s big secret is that she can’t actually do any magic; anything attributed to her is covertly handled by Morrible. Meanwhile, Elphaba has more magical power than anyone else in Oz – she alone can decipher the spells of the mystical Grimoirie book.

Elphaba wants to restore animals to their rightful place of Ozian equality, and WICKED: FOR GOOD begins as she liberates some buffalo-rhinos from having to work construction on the Yellow Brick Road.

Elphaba and Glinda both long for the resumption of their friendship. Meanwhile, there’s the quadrangle of Elphaba, who is in love with Prince Fiyero (Jonathan Bailey) but assumes he loves Glinda, Glinda, who also assumes Fiyero loves her, Fiyero, who hasn’t been forthcoming, Boq (Ethan Slater), who is in love with Glinda but has gotten himself in deep with Elphaba’s sister Nessarose (Marissa Bode), and Nessarose, who is in love with Boq and, insecure about his devotion, is making things tough for folks as the current governor of Munchkinland.

We eventually get to what we recognize as the plot of THE WIZARD OF OZ, with several of its main characters evolving from well-established yet surprising sources. We barely glimpse Dorothy, but this isn’t her tale at all, and it makes sense that she comes away believing her version of events.

The WICKED stage musical brightened things up considerably from Maguire’s much darker novel and that is true of the films, although WICKED: FOR GOOD is more somber than the first installment, with a lot of mortal peril.

The romance, when we get to it, is satisfyingly sweet and humane. However, the heart of WICKED remains between Elphaba and Glinda. When Erivo and Grande-Butema’s voices soar on their duet “For Good,” it’s larger than life, but undeniably affecting.

There are a number of plot questions that seem like they could have been answered without ruining anything, especially a big who-knew-what-when impacting the last act. Smaller ones include why it’s so important one character doesn’t know a fact, whether the character finally learns that fact anyway, and, on a really nitpicky note, exactly how long those animals spend making up their minds in that tunnel entrance.

At two hours and seventeen minutes, WICKED: FOR GOOD is shorter than the two-hour-and-forty-minute WICKED. It feels longer, though, perhaps because it’s got less humor and more angst. Even so, it is a fulfilling climax to a saga that makes for a pretty glorious whole.

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