All the Changes Wicked: For Good Made to Act 2 of Wicked

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All the Changes Wicked: For Good Made to Act 2 of Wicked

Oh what a celebration we’ll have today, because Wicked: For Good has already started screening in movie theatres. Though the official opening is November 21, fans and members of the press have already seen the film. And among those lucky Ozians are Playbill staffers. Which means yes, we were sat in a dark theatre with a notepad in our hands writing down every change we noticed between the new film and Act II of the Wicked stage show on which it is based.

And at the end of the screening, our hearts (and multiple notebook pages) were full. While Wicked: Part One had some small deviations to the source musical (including extended sequences with young Elphaba), screenwriters Winnie Holzman and Dana Fox added even more material to Wicked: For Good.

Read more below for a very exhaustive and spoilerific breakdown of differences between Wicked: For Good and Act II of Wicked.

Beware of flying monkeys spoilers—you’ve been warned!

Jeff Goldblum and Cynthia Erivo in Wicked For Good
Giles Keyte/Universal Pictures

New Music

Let’s get the biggest item out of the way. Yes, Stephen Schwartz has written new songs for Wicked: For Good. There is a new solo for Elphaba, coming in a new scene where she discovers a group of animals escaping Oz via a tunnel under the Yellow Brick Road. She sings “No Place Like Home” to entreat the animals to stay. Glinda has a new solo called “The Girl in the Bubble,” a moment where she contends with her new public persona versus how she feels on the inside, ultimately deciding to go after Elphaba at Kiamo Ko.

Schwartz also expanded on some existing songs. The sequence that begins with “Every day more wicked, every day the terror grows” has been expanded, with reprises of “The Wizard and I,” “What Is This Feeling,” and “Popular,” as well as a new “We Believe in Glinda” refrain.

“Wonderful” has been expanded from a duet between the Wizard and Elphaba to a trio between the Wizard, Elphaba, and Glinda. The song also begins in a different way, with a very politically pointed verse that also alludes to the Wizard’s carnival past: “Take it from a wise old carney / Once folks buy into your blarney / It becomes the thing they’ll most hold on to.”

Nessa’s solo, “The Wicked Witch of the East” has also been modified from the stage version. She no longer sings about “longing to kick up my heels,” an indication of the film’s more progressive portrayal of disability (more on that below).

Some music has been cut, too. Madame Morrible’s verse “Thank Goodness” (“The day you were first summoned to an audience with Oz”) is gone, which was probably a relief to Michelle Yeoh, who has made it clear that she doesn’t consider herself a singer.

And in a detail that was shocking to this Wicked fan, instead of Elphaba singing “Fiyero” at the beginning of “No Good Deed”—it’s Glinda.

Click here for a deeper dive into the new songs in Wicked: For Good.

Ariana Grande and company of Wicked For Good
Giles Keyte/Universal Pictures

Young Glinda

Wicked: Part One featured young Elphaba, so it was only natural that Wicked: For Good had a young Glinda (the similarly dimpled Scarlett Spears)—whose function it seems is to remind the viewers that what Glinda wants the most in the world is to have magic, and to actually do something meaningful with her life. Both concepts come to the fore at the end of the film and give Ariana Grande lots to sink her teeth into, which we’ll tell you more about later.

Elphaba the Vigilante

While the stage only alludes to Elphaba’s “acts of wickedness,” the movie directly shows them. But it speaks very ill of the citizens of Oz since they aren’t acts of wickedness but heroism—as we see Cynthia Erivo’s Elphaba at the beginning of the film freeing animals who are being forced to build the Yellow Brick Road. She also does a bit of sky-writing, writing out “The Wizard Lies,” which Madame Morrible changes to “Oz Dies.” Who’s truly the wicked one here?

Magical Deficiencies

The origins of Glinda’s mode of transport, a large flying bubble, are made clear in this film: the machine was gifted to her by The Wizard as a way of hiding her “magical deficiencies,” as Madame Morrible has sold Ozians on the idea of Glinda being the force of good magic protecting them from Elphaba’s dark magic. Operated by foot pedal, the machine gives Glinda the ability to appear magical, while she knows, deep down, it’s simply another part of the fraud she has found herself caught up in.

The Wicked Witch of the East

One of the biggest character changes in the Wicked film is to Nessa, whose anger is given far more dimension in For Good, including feelings of desperation and abandonment at the death of her father and disappearance of her sister. When we first see her as the new Governor of Munchkinland, she is in the midst of disrupting the flow of commerce and taking control of the railways: even Barbie from The Barbie Movie would’ve been able to spot the fascist overtones!

But the biggest change for Nessa (likely influenced by Marissa Bode) is that she no longer longs to be abled bodied. Instead of wishing for Elphaba to give her the ability to walk, her desires are emotional, as she sings to Elphaba in a newly written verse: “That night at the Ozdust / Boq danced with me there / And it felt like he loved me then / That night when I felt I was floating on air / I want to feel that again.”

So what does Elphaba do to help her? She literally makes Nessa float on air. Still, Nessa does eventually come back down to Earth and to her wheelchair, signaling that unfortunately, there are some wounds that magic can’t heal.

The Flying Monkeys Get More to Do!

Elphaba’s pretties are in top form in this film. They have much more to do than in the stage show: They tell Fiyero where Elphaba flies off to after “As Long As You’re Mine,” they provide a dramatic backdrop during “No Good Deed,” and at the end of the show, they whisk Madame Morrible off to her very deserved imprisonment.

Jonathan Bailey and Ariana Grande in Wicked For Good
Giles Keyte/Universal Pictures

Glinda’s Wedding

Another big chunk of change occurs around the song “Wonderful.” Prior to that, in a newly written scene, Elphaba goes to see Glinda the night of her wedding to Fiyero. Glinda then follows Elphaba to see the Wizard, which leads into the song, where Elphaba briefly falls back under the Wizard’s spell. After a technicolor dance sequence where Glinda and Elphaba realign, Elphaba promises to stop her underground campaign so long as the Wizard promises to no longer discriminate against animals. He agrees, and has Elphaba set the monkeys free as a way of sealing the deal.

Glinda then leaves to get ready for her nuptials, but when Elphaba discovers Dr. Dillamond and more animals locked up in a hidden room off of the Wizard’s primary chamber, she promises to “fight [the Wizard] till the day I die.” She then sets off an animal stampede just as Glinda is walking down the aisle (another new scene since Glinda and Fiyero never make it down the aisle in the stage show). All of this adds additional emotional heft to Fiyero’s leaving Glinda at the altar to follow Elphaba, and Glinda’s pained decision to help Morrible and the Wizard capture her friend.

And it also give Ariana Grande a tragically beautiful backdrop as she sings the “I’m Not That Girl (Reprise).”

A Little More Dorothy

Just like the Wicked stage show, you will not see Dorothy’s face in Wicked: For Good. But you will see her familiar blue gingham dress, the blue socks, and her (now brown) little dog Toto. Like the stage show, you’ll also see her shadow throwing a bucket of water onto Elphaba. But there are more telling glimpses of Dorothy (played by Bethany Weaver) in For Good. She has Toto on a leash, which may explain why Elphaba and Glinda both dislike her. She is very prominently seen in “March of the Witch Hunters.” And you see her running towards the Wizard’s hot air balloon at the end of the film (though it’s never explained how she gets home, because we know it’s not by balloon!).

Gelphie Shippers Rejoice!

Glinda and Elphaba’s friendship is the foundation of Wicked, and it’s why the “For Good” duet is always a tearjerker. But in the stage show, their last words to each other are harried, as Elphaba tells Glinda to hide herself before she is “melted” by Dorothy. Their final words to each other in the film give a more fitting button to their story, with a heartfelt exchange of “I love yous.” Pardon us for a minute while we take a tissue break.

And for the fans: it is Glinda in the film, not Morrible, who tells the Wizard that Elphaba, “was a child of both worlds.”

Cynthia Erivo in Wicked For Good
Giles Keyte/Universal Pictures

Dillamond Lives!

While in the stage show, the Animal rights subplot doesn’t really come up again after “Wonderful,” the movie brings it back numerous times: the opening sequence, the “No Place Like Home” scene, the heightened prominence of the flying monkeys, and the stampede of animals at Glinda’s wedding.

But the most crucial Animal scene comes at the very end of the film, where Glinda earns her “Good” moniker by reinstating all of the Animals to their previous jobs—including Dr. Dillamond (we don’t hear him speak though). We don’t know what happens to him in the stage version, but at least in the film version of Wicked, our favorite goat gets a happy ending.

Glinda the Good

For Good repeatedly emphasizes that Glinda cannot do magic, most clearly in a new scene where Morrible presents to Glinda her bubble, which she can activate with the touch of a button. As Morrible pointedly remarks: “Don’t fret over your inability to produce any actual magic. This invention will disguise your deficiency.” Ouch!

But then at the end, after Glinda had truly earned her “Glinda the Good” title, we see her placing the Grimmerie down and it magically opening for her, to her. That raises a whole host of questions, mainly: How does magic work in Oz? Are you born with it? Can it be taught? Is it an outward manifestorium of true goodness? All questions that can potentially be answered in a third Wicked movie!

Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande in Wicked
Giles Keyte/Universal Pictures

Bits and Bobs

Here are some other changes we spotted that are small, but are fun details for fans. Glinda’s friends Pfannee (Bowen Yang) and ShenShen (Bronwyn James), and Shiz administrator Miss Coddle (Keale Settle) make brief appearances in For Good; in the stage show Glinda’s friends disappear after “Dancing Through Life.”

We also learn who the mysterious masked rider was at the top of Wicked: Part One: It was Glinda, wearing Elphaba’s shoes and on Fiyero’s horse—who was likely the one who told her that Elphaba was at Kiamo Ko. Though how did the horse know?

We hear the Lion (voiced by Colman Domingo) speak, telling the other Animals about how Elphaba took him from his home and left him in the woods (poor witch truly has no one on her side). In the stage show, we only see his tail in the second act, but the short exchange does show how utterly alone Elphaba is.

Lines in the physical fight between Elphaba and Glinda have also been changed, notably “we can’t all come and go by bubble” has been moved from the fight to the scene where Elphaba sees Glinda before her wedding—and delivered in a more loving way in the film.

Fiyero’s hero entrance into Munchkinland on stage, where he swings in from the wings on an attached rope, did not make it to the big screen. Instead of a dramatic entrance, he simply runs into frame (we guess he was too heavy to be carried in by monkeys).

Finally, the final image of For Good is different from the stage show, while still being an homage to the stage musical. The final image in Wicked the musical on stage is Elphaba and Fiyero walking off together, while Glinda stands alone. In the film, it shows a flashback of Glinda (wearing a hooded white jacket) whispering into Elphaba’s ear—a direct callback to the Wicked musical poster. A wonderful touch to a magical film.

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