I love a good musical. Whether it’s on the stage or on the big screen, give me a compelling story with likeable characters bursting into toe-tapping song, and I’m happy. Naturally, this affection for the genre means that I loved 2024’s cinema adaptation of the Broadway phenomenon that is “Wicked.” It’s easily the movie I’ve rewatched the most over the past 12 months, and I’ve already booked my tickets for the upcoming sequel “Wicked: For Good.”
Arriving in theaters on November 21, this follow-up again stars Cynthia Erivo, Ariana Grande and Jonathan Bailey, and will adapt the second act of the stage production. With two new original tunes and some fan-favorite tracks, including “No Good Deed” and the spine-chilling title number, there’s a lot of reason to be hyped about this sequel to the Oscar-nominated “Wicked.”
However, most intriguingly, “Wicked: For Good” actually has a golden chance (maybe that should be an emerald chance) to surpass its source material. Because even the most dedicated Broadway obsessive will probably agree that the stage show has a pretty significant flaw in its rushed second act. Here’s how the feature film adaptation could fix this long-running issue.
“Wicked: For Good” could fix Act 2’s infamous flaw
I’ve seen "Wicked" on stage multiple times, from London’s West End to New York’s Broadway, and the first act is simply magical. It’s a collection of fantastic songs, many of which have rightfully become iconic even beyond musical theatre fandom circles, and it does a marvellous job setting the scene and building up to the show-stealing "Defying Gravity" moment. The entire audience goes into the interval on a high note and eager for more.
The second act of Wicked is rushed. Really rushed. While the first half act serves as a prequel to “The Wizard of Oz,” exploring the untold story of The Wicked Witch of the West, the second is set before and during Dorothy’s time in the Land of Oz. It jumps across locations, sets up some major Oz characters like the Tin Man and Scarecrow, and, of course, concludes Elphaba and Glinda’s story. That’s a lot of ground to cover in just one hour.
“Wicked: For Good” has the luxury of resolving this common complaint. The movie is confirmed to run 137 minutes, and even accounting for what are sure to be lengthy credits, that’s still more than double the runtime of the stage production’s spin on Act 2. If director Jon M. Chu has smartly utilized this extra time to let important plot moments breathe, the movie could actually become the definitive way to experience Wicked’s second half.
It’s also been confirmed that “Wicked: For Good” will incorporate some new story elements and add two new songs, “No Place Like Home” for Erivo’s Elphaba and “Girl in the Bubble” for Grande’s Glinda. These could also be used to make the musical’s character arcs richer and expand on the emotional headspace of its two leads as they face testing challenges.
Of course, this is all speculative at this stage, until I’ve seen “Wicked: For Good” on the big screen for myself in a few weeks, I can’t confirm whether it falls into the same pitfalls as its stage-set source material. However, considering the quality of the first “Wicked” movie, I have high hopes that “For Good” will work out some of the kinks in the theatre production.
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