Maeve Bidonde, Staff Writer
Everyone, there is an announcement: Wicked: For Good has finally made it to theaters a year after part one came out. Wicked fans have waited for this release with bated breath and theories on how it could go. Some fans have seen the musical and know how it ends while others have not, so consider this an official spoiler warning if you haven’t seen the movie or you don’t know how the story ends.
While watching the film, the scenes that flashback to the first film connecting the plot dots were done quite well except for one towards the end of the film where the Wizard realizes that Elphaba was his daughter because of the green elixir bottle. They flashback to a scene from the opening number from the first film, “No one Mourns the Wicked,” where an unknown man has a liaison with Elphaba’s mother. During the first movie the audience never finds out who the man is as they keep his face covered the whole time. When they flashback to the scene, we get to see Jeff Goldblum with a not-so-great CGI job to make him look younger.
The awkward CGI took away from what is supposed to be one massive plot twist in a series of plot twists. Otherwise, the scene was done in a way that is unique to the film industry because you cannot do flashbacks like that in a musical.
A positive about the film is how emotional Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo made the song “For Good.” The song is already written to be emotional as it is about knowing someone who changed your life for the better and being changed permanently. The scene in the film bleeds emotion through their voices and their tears as this is their final goodbye before Elphaba commits her disappearing act with Fiyero.
Fans had been holding their breath to see how Jonathan Bailey brought Fiyero turned Scarecrow to life in the film. The way the makeup and costuming was done for Scarecrow kept the facial features of Jonathan Bailey in the character allowing fans to recognize who had been transformed into Scarecrow as it is implied Fiyero becomes Scarecrow in “No Good Deed” but fans don’t see if he is until the ending of the movie.
The final thought about the move is how they drag out the ending. They show Glinda getting the last laugh over The Wizard and Madame Morrible and getting justice for Elphaba, but it felt like they were keeping the movie going because they did not want it to end. While it was nice for it to end with Glinda clarifying that Elphaba and her were friends and connecting the ending of the story to the beginning, it felt like a cheap way to end it.
Overall, the film was amazing to watch and the way they concluded the story was masterful with all the connections back to the first film. Additionally, some added scenes show the friend group, Nessa Rose, Boq, Glinda, Fiyero, and Elphaba, were done well. What really made the ending so special was the last scene of the film where Glinda is whispering something in Elphaba’s ear recreating the iconic art from the Wicked playbill cover.
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