At some point, every glittery franchise fantasy hits the wall where spectacle runs out and story has to do the heavy lifting. “Wicked: For Good” is that wall—an increasingly dull parade of pageantry, narrative stalling, and legacy mythology that collapses under the weight of its own preordained destiny.
“Wicked: For Good” left me in an especially thorny position as both a longtime admirer of Jon M. Chu and a modest fan of the first half, which recently delivered one of the most unexpectedly sensational studio successes of last year. “Wicked” was sheer,uncut fun—brimming with goofy confidence, pitched at exactly the heightened frequency this deeply loopy material requires in order to work at all. It was also far too long, especially when the stage musical itself already proved you can tell this story in a tight two hours and forty-five minutes, intermission included. Still, I walked out pretty satisfied.
‘Wicked: For Good’ is Structurally Weaker
Chu is a filmmaker I’ve long championed as a kind of Vulgar Auteur—a director whose maximalist instincts operate squarely within commercial entertainment but with sincere stylistic conviction. “Step Up 3D” remains a personal gold standard: a vibrant, tactile, euphoric musical that radiates love for movie history and physical performance. That made “Wicked”—despite its harsh over-lighting and occasional digital brittleness—feel like a triumphant extension of his sensibilities. The gamble to split the musical in half always felt risky, though. With “For Good,” that bill finally comes due.
The fundamental problem is one the stage musical has never fully solved: Act II is structurally weaker, messier, and dramatically thinner than Act I. The plot frays into awkward parallel threads, the emotional motivators blur, and the songs rarely approach the melodic or narrative force of the first half. The longer this film sits in narrative dead zones between its major beats, the more the whole thing starts to sag and finally unravel. Even commanding performances can only stabilize so much.
We now follow Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo) after her full defiance of the Wizard, recast as a public enemy operating in the shadows against the polished tyranny of Oz. It’s a society that—in Chu’s gleaming visual grammar—effectively reads as a regime of singing, smiling art deco Nazis. Her activism centers on defending the oppressed talking animals, but the film noticeably flattens and sandblasts the more volatile political ideas from Gregory Maguire’s novel. The dangers of propaganda, the mechanics of authoritarian spectacle, and the moral seductions of comfort over justice all become simplified into broad, digestible villainy.
Fully Incorporating ‘The Wizard of Oz’
The film charts a broad sweep of political and personal collapse across Oz. The Wizard (Jeff Goldblum) continues to consolidate power through charm, spectacle, and manufactured fear, while Elphaba is systematically reframed as a public monster rather than the liberator she’s trying to be. Glinda (Ariana Grande)—caught between image, comfort, and conscience—ultimately aligns herself with the Wizard despite her private moral turmoil. Fiyero (Jonathan Bailey) moves in the opposite direction, quietly undermining the regime from within, while Nessa’s (Marisa Bode) rule over the Munchkins curdles into outright cruelty as power corrodes whatever vulnerability she once had. Each of these arcs is meant to illustrate a different face of complicity under authoritarianism—but the film rarely gives them enough to do to evolve with real dramatic weight.
The film also fully incorporates “The Wizard of Oz” itself—the Tin Man, Scarecrow, Cowardly Lion, and even Dorothy in a reduced, silent role. The dual narrative is clearly designed to interrogate Oz’s original moral mythology, pitting Elphaba’s lived experience against Dorothy’s inherited hero’s journey. But the film never fully synchronizes these parallel tracks. Elphaba increasingly feels like a peripheral figure in her own revolution, reacting from the sidelines while destiny churns elsewhere. The script often seems unsure how to march confidently toward a conclusion whose outcome is already enshrined in pop culture.
Two new ballads were written for the film, but neither meaningfully advances the story. Some returning songs fare better: “Wonderful” lets Jeff Goldblum weaponize charm as comic villainy, while “No Good Deed” remains a volcanic showcase for Cynthia Erivo’s raw vocal force. Yet even here, the visual language often betrays Chu’s strengths—limited choreography and over-processed CGI drain the physical electricity that once defined his best musical work.
Ariana Grande is a Highlight
Where “For Good” most clearly comes alive is when it abandons Elphaba as its narrative engine and locks fully onto Glinda. She is simply the more interesting character at this stage of the story, and Ariana Grande—the film’s true lead performer—is an astonishingly sharp and emotionally precise actress. This is the movie wrestling with the famously strange and volatile second act of “Wicked,” which forces it into genuinely wild storytelling decisions. The result often feels less like “Harry Potter” or “The Lord of the Rings” and more like “Nutcracker and the Four Realms”—a big, glossy fantasy struggling to convince itself its chaos is actually coherence.
Even so, Grande is superb. While Glinda loses some of her outright comic sparkle from “Wicked,” she gains psychological weight: ambition, self-loathing, ideological compromise, and real grief all fighting for dominance behind a perfectly maintained smile. Her arc supplies the film’s clearest emotional throughline and its sharpest moral tension.
Erivo remains ferociously committed as Elphaba, but commitment alone can’t compensate for a structure that steadily sidelines her agency. As the film’s tone sinks into relentless gloom and humor drains from the frame, the movie grows heavier without growing richer.
A Rare Misfire from John M. Chu
Ironically, the same fidelity that buoyed “Wicked,” now becomes a creative restraint. By adhering so closely to the musical’s weaker second act, “For Good” boxes itself into a conclusion that cannot meaningfully reinvent “The Wizard of Oz” in any surprising way. The finale lands not with catharsis, but with a cloud of unresolved thematic debris.
For me, this is a rare, deeply conflicted misfire from a director I genuinely admire. The franchise began with sensational, goofy, overlong joy—but it ends without delivering full emotional or narrative satisfaction. Even with powerful performances and flashes of musical voltage, this finale plays less like a crescendo than a slow, uncertain fade-out like a balloon deflating.
