Wicked: For Good Film Review – Not Wonderful

Wicked: For Good takes many huge swings but misses in baffling fashion, making for a technically impressive but disappointing conclusion to the Wicked story.

By all accounts, this is the much more difficult half of the story to pull off, as it’s where the musical in particular gets much denser and incorporates many more direct elements from The Wizard of Oz.

Unfortunately, that difficulty rears its ugly head in Wicked: For Good. As ambitious as this movie is for tackling already-unwieldy source material, those ambitions ultimately don’t pay off. Sometime after Elphaba Thropp (Cynthia Erivo, Pinocchio) is labeled the Wicked Witch for defying the Wizard of Oz (Jeff Goldblum, Jurassic Park), she’s launched many an assault on Oz to free its subjugated animal civilians. Meanwhile, Glinda the Good (Ariana Grande) is the face of hope in Oz despite her continuing love for Elphaba as a friend. The escalating war leads to attacks and fallout on all sides, which soon brings in a farm girl from Kansas who now plays a pivotal role in ending the conflict for good. 

And if you somehow don’t already know who that farm girl is, you’re in for a universe of hurt with this movie. The Maguire novel and Broadway musical are obviously taking the world and characters from 1939’s The Wizard of Oz and bending them into a new, different story. Wicked and Wicked: For Good mainly draw from the musical, only featuring minor details exclusively from the novel. However, you could go into 2024’s Wicked with no knowledge of any other materials and follow along fine. Wicked: For Good, on the other hand? You’ll be more confused than a scarecrow without a brain, because the story is critically reliant on almost all the major plot points of the ’39 classic, most of which happen completely offscreen with no attempt on the film’s part to fill the audience in.

You’d think that because most people have seen The Wizard of Oz, this shouldn’t be a big problem. But Wicked: For Good doesn’t take place in the same continuity as that movie. Enough elements have been changed or rearranged in a way that throws off the assumptions you’d have if you relied on the 1939 film. And yet Wicked: For Good is structured and edited in a way that forces you to use those assumptions to fix critical holes in the story, even when doing so opens up a whole can of worms that has you asking what certain characters are even doing.

For example, Captain Fiyero (Jonathan Bailey, Jurassic World: Rebirth), the love interest of Glinda and Elphaba, all but vanishes from the story of Wicked when he’s thrust into a well-known role from The Wizard of Oz… a role that the film keeps in the dark. But if you tried to fill in the gaps using knowledge of The Wizard of Oz, you’re then met with inconsistencies that don’t make sense no matter what terms you meet the movie on. Additionally, Elphaba has a huge change of heart that, while understandable, comes across as out-of-character and only lasts long enough for her to do what the Wizard of Oz plot demands of her. Yes, this all happens in the stage show as well, which is part of what makes it so tough to get right. But the film’s structure does not let everything click like it needs to.

If you’re already a fan of the Broadway show and like the directions it goes, you may not be bothered at all by how Wicked: For Good faithfully handles the material. However, if you’re totally uninitiated or have these problems with the musical’s Act Two, you may be thrown off by the story’s efforts to fit too many square pegs into round holes. Especially since Wicked: For Good is nearly half an hour shorter than Wicked. Act Two of the stage show is also shorter than Act One, but that is not enough time to cram in so many drastic twists and turns. Even before everything goes completely off the rails, you can feel that rushed pacing in this movie. Because of how quickly everything flies by, you’re not able to soak in as much as the first Wicked despite this one being just as visually impressive.

Still, props to cinematographer Alice Brooks for blocking and lighting the actors exceptionally well against the rich production design of Oscar winner Nathan Crowley. You feel like you’re in this fully realized world thanks to an effective mix of in-camera sets and digital enhancements (barring the laughably fake CG animals). Grande and Erivo don’t get as many moments to excel as the first Wicked, but they make it count when they do. Grande is given the richest material as Glinda is forced to mature and reckon with her complicity as a figurehead of the corrupt Oz. Erivo does her best to navigate Elphaba’s enigmatic swings from poor soul to rebellious fighter to malicious force who buckles under the consequences of her well-intended actions. And of course, both women command the whole screen any time they croon or belt out a tune.

That being said, the songs themselves aren’t very memorable compared to the first film. The easy highlights for me are “No Good Deed,” “Thank Goodness / I Couldn’t Be Happier,” and “For Good,” all of which come from the original musical. The rest of the songs, including the brand-new ones made specifically for this movie, are good. But I don’t see – hear? – them getting stuck in my head any time soon. And for God’s sake, don’t let Jeff Goldblum sing anymore. I thought we were lucky enough to just get a measly two-minute song from him last time.

Because Wicked: For Good shares a lot of the first film’s technical, musical, and acting strengths, I struggle to say it’s a bad movie overall. For about an hour, it’s a very solid if slightly scattershot continuation of the Wicked story. But as soon as the Wizard of Oz plot makes its way in, the entire thing quickly falls apart.

I know many people have these same criticisms towards Act Two of the stage show, so I’ll put it very simply: if you’re one of those people, you’re in for the same problems in this sequel. If you never had an issue with the original musical’s Act Two, then you’ll likely be won over by how it’s handled here. If you just judge Wicked: For Good solely on its own terms as a film, I have no idea what you’ll think. But that’s how I’m personally looking at it. And while I give it credit for bringing such an audacious and emotional story to the big screen, I can’t say that good deed goes unpunished.

Wicked: For Good will be released globally in theatres on November 21, 2025.