Movie Reviews

“Wicked: For Good” has moments of brilliance, but it should never have been made into a standalone movie in the first place.

By Kevin Slane

November 20, 2025 | 1:14 PM

3 minutes to read

If you discount its 15-minute intermission, the 2003 Broadway musical “Wicked” has a runtime of 150 minutes. That’s 10 minutes shorter than “Wicked: Part One,” the 2024 film adaptation of the first half of the stage production.

It was always going to be a challenge for director John Chu to adapt Act 2 of the musical into a standalone film. On stage, it’s a mere 50 minutes long and features none of the production’s most popular songs or most memorable showstopping moments. 

Despite two brilliant lead performances from Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande, “Wicked: For Good” cannot transcend Universal’s original sin of prioritizing profit over storytelling.

“Wicked: For Good” drops viewers into a darker, more fearful Oz. An impressive propaganda apparatus helmed by the Wizard’s (Jeff Goldblum) magical consigliere Madame Morrible (Michelle Yeoh) warns residents of the Wicked Witch of the West (Erivo), a flying menace whose magical powers could cause irreparable harm to their way of life. Indeed, Elphaba has been causing trouble, freeing subjugated animals from the back-breaking work of building the many branches of the yellow brick road, all of which lead to Oz.

To contrast Elphaba, the Wizard and Morrible’s spin machine pushes Glinda (Grande) as a paragon of virtue, whose every move is carefully managed. If “Wicked: Part One” was Erivo’s showcase, “Wicked: For Good” is Grande’s. She captures the intoxicating spell that fame can cast, caught between a genuine desire to make the citizens of Oz feel good and recognizing that because of her relentless people-pleasing, she no longer controls her own story.

The people around Glinda are affected by this growing facade as well, most notably Prince Fiyero (Jonathan Bailey), who has gone from roguish student to the head of Glinda’s royal guard. He’s been unwillingly roped into a wedding that will serve as a capstone event in Morrible’s bread-and-circus campaign. Who cares if he has feelings for someone else? It’s what the people want, Glinda assures him. (Fans who have obsessively dissected every vicissitude in Grande and co-star Ethan Slater’s real-life relationship may fail to recognize themselves in this metaphor.)

Act 2 of “Wicked” (and thus this movie) is also when the story begins to hew more closely to L. Frank Baum’s original “Wonderful Wizard of Oz” stories and the subsequent 1939 film. But the way screenwriters Winnie Holzman (also the musical’s librettist) and Dana Fox handle this integration is choppy and truncated. 

In a 137-minute film that adds two new songs, several reprises of better songs from Act 1, and random CGI fights to pad its runtime, why was the emotional transformation of Elphaba’s sister Nessarose (Marissa Bode) into the Wicked Witch of the East given all of five minutes? That goes double for the origin stories of the Tin Man, Cowardly Lion, and Scarecrow, which have little to no emotional impact. The film even obscures the Scarecrow’s identity for much of its runtime, purposely cutting away before the audience can see his face even when his identity is painfully obvious. 

There is still joy to be found in “Wicked: For Good” if you know where to look. Grande and Erivo remain perfectly cast, and each have plenty of opportunities to showcase their impressive vocal ranges. While there’s no “Gravity” or “Popular” to anchor the film, songs like “Wonderful,” a showcase for Goldblum’s louche charms, and the climactic “For Good,” in which Elphaba and Glinda seal their fates, are plenty entertaining. Most of the film’s technical aspects are best-in-class as well, from Paul Tazewell’s costumes to Christopher Scott’s choreography.

“Wicked: For Good” could have been a serviceable, though still flawed, final hour of a perfectly good movie. But like the deceitful Wizard, it’s forced to rely on smoke and mirrors to distract viewers from the fact that the magic they’re seeking is in vanishingly short supply.

Rating: ** (out of 4)

“Wicked: For Good” flies into theaters Nov. 21.

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