đ¨đ¨đ¨Warning: This story has major spoilers for the ending of “Wicked: Part 1” and the Broadway musical.
After hearing the final notes of Cynthia Erivo’s powerhouse performance of “Defying Gravity” in 2024’s “Wicked,” fans will have a while to wait to find out what happens next.
“Everyone’s like, ‘This is the longest intermission ever,'” Bowen Yang, who plays Glinda’s friend Pfannee, tells TODAY.com.
“Wicked,” which premieres in theaters Nov. 22, is part one of two films inspired by the hit Broadway musical of the same name. “Wicked: Part 2” is expected to come out one year later, in November 2025.
Part 1 of the film adaptation clocks in at 2 hours and 40 minutes, making it about the same length as the entire “Wicked” musical. But the first film is just half of the story, following the events of Act 1 while giving moments “a chance to breathe,” the musical’s composer Stephen Schwartz says.
Other than expanding certain scenes and adding some dialogue, Part 1 of “Wicked” is largely faithful to the stage musical that inspired it. As for Part 2?
“I want to have the sanctity of the show. I love the show, so to me, that’s first and foremost,” director Jon M. Chu, who is still editing the second film, says. “It will be the DNA of what it is.”
Here’s what’s in store (or could be) for “Wicked: Part 2,” based on Act 2 of the musical.
A time jump
Like the 2024 film, Act 1 of “Wicked” ends with “Defying Gravity.” When the curtain rises again after a 15-minute intermission, a lot has changed.
Between acts, there’s a time jump, although how much time exactly is unclear. (The 1995 book by Gregory Maguire, which has a markedly different tone and adult audience, would suggest it’s a period of about five years.)
In the musical, Act 2 opens with the song “Thank Goodness,” sung primarily by Glinda and Madame Morrible, played by Ariana Grande and Michelle Yeoh in the film.
The song establishes that Glinda has left Shiz University and has officially assumed the mantle of Glinda the Good, meant to uplift spirits, while the rest of Oz is overwhelmed by fear of the Wicked Witch of the West, the enemy of the Wizard. She also announces that she and Fiyero (Jonathan Bailey in the 2024 film), now a captain in the Wizard’s army, are officially engaged.
Yang confirms there will be a time jump in Part 2 of “Wicked.”
“Right when we pick up, Glinda is in this very front-facing position. Pfannee and Shenshen (Bronwyn James) are at her side still, but a lot is in motion,” Yang says. “The world has literally changed, and the landscape of it is very different. There is this campaign against this one person that they’re like the reason for all the problems in the world.
“The story is so flexible with how it relates to our real world,” Yang adds.
A love triangle
Act 2 of the musical also delivers on lingering chemistry and Elphaba’s unrequited feelings for Fiyero.
While Elphaba resigned herself to being “not that girl” in Act 1, audience members learn in the second act that the reason Fiyero joined the Wizard’s army was to take an active role in searching for Elphaba, who has been missing in action but speaking out against the Wizard, his leadership and his treatment of Animals (sentient animals).
When Elphaba tries to free the flying monkeys she accidentally created at the end of Act 1, she runs into the Wizard, who, after a failed attempt to again sway her to his side, turns her in to his guards.
She and Fiyero reunite, and instead of bringing her to the Wizard, he helps her escape and leaves with her, abandoning Glinda.
Glinda then finds herself the third prong of the love triangle and sings a reprise of “I’m Not That Girl.” Meanwhile, Fiyero and Elphaba profess their love to the steamy song “As Long As You’re Mine.”
A transformation
While Elphaba leads a campaign against the Wizard, her sister, Nessarose (Marissa Bode in the film), has taken over as governor of Munchkinland in the wake of their father’s death and rules harshly. Her relationship with Boq (Ethan Slater) has soured, and he stays by Nessarose’s side under duress rather than love.
Elphaba visits Nessarose in Act 2, and the younger sister airs her resentment. Elphaba then casts a spell on Nessarose’s silver shoes, allowing her to walk. Boq responds by announcing his intentions to leave and declare his true affections for Glinda.
Desperate to make him love her, Nessarose tries to use Elphaba’s spell book, the Grimmerie, but her enchantment goes wrong and she shrinks his heart. To save him, Elphaba turns him into a man made of tin so he can survive without a heart. Nessarose then proclaims herself the Wicked Witch of the East.
Bode is the first actor to play Nessarose who uses a wheelchair in real life. She told TODAY’s Donna Farizan in an interview that while she can’t say too much about Part 2, “it is definitely less of a case of my character wanting to be fixed, and more of her just taking in the magic itself.”
Bode also confirms to TODAY.com that in “Wicked: Part 2” her character plays a bigger role in the story. Her character undergoes almost a 180-degree change from the end of Part 1, which sees her happy and in love with Boq, to the start of Part 2.
“What was helpful to me was journaling as my character to fill in a lot of the blanks and to really get in the mindset (of) why my character changed, what her feelings were in the in between and how did she get to where she was today,” Bode says.
New songs
By breaking up “Wicked” into two films, composer Stephen Schwartz and screenplay writer Winnie Holzman had “freedom” to let scenes and moments “breathe.”
“There are a lot of scenes that Winnie wrote, there were a couple of songs that I tried for the first movie that we wound up not putting in the movie, but the essence of what we were trying to accomplish got into the movie,” Schwartz says.
While there aren’t any new songs to Part 1, there will be in Part 2.
“There are two new songs in the second movie because they felt they were dramatically necessary,” Schwartz says.
But will any songs get cut?
“No, I don’t think so,” Chu says. “I don’t know if I can confirm or deny that, but in my first pass of it right now … but you never know, I’m still editing it.
“But I want to have the sanctity of the show,” he adds. “If it doesn’t fit in one place, and I need to find a place where it does emotionally, or we need to change the lyrics, or we need to do things to change â but it will be the DNA of what it is.”
The soundtrack of Act 2 of “Wicked” includes:
- “Thank Goodness”
- “Wonderful”
- “I’m Not That Girl (Reprise)”
- “As Long As You’re Mine”
- “No Good Deed”
- “March of the Witch Hunters”
- “For Good”
- “Finale”
Overlap with âThe Wizard of Ozâ
Act 2 of “Wicked” also turns the story into less of a prequel and more of an alternate perspective on the events of original 1939 film “the Wizard of Oz.”
After Elphaba and Fiyero run off together, Glinda tells Madame Morrible that the way to draw out her former friend is by targeting her sister. So, using her powers to control the weather, Madame Morrible summons the tornado that lands a house on Nessarose, bringing Dorothy Gale to Oz. Like in “The Wizard of Oz,” Glinda gives Dorothy Nessarose’s shoes and instructs her to follow the yellow brick road to the Emerald City.
Elphaba arrives after her sister’s death to a trap, which results in Fiyero being captured. In the song “No Good Deed,” she casts a spell for her beloved to “feel no pain.”
In “March of the Witch Hunters,” Boq is revealed to be the Tin Man from “The Wizard of Oz,” and the lion cub Fiyero and Elphaba saved in Act 1 grows up to be none other than Cowardly Lion.
In Act 2, the citizens of Oz storm Elphaba’s castle, as she holds Dorothy captive to try and get Nessarose’s shoes back. Glinda, realizing the danger of the angry mob against Elphaba, arrives at her friend’s side to try and warn her. Elphaba decides to give up the fight and sings the tearful (and iconic) goodbye song “For Good” with Glinda.
Glinda hides when the mob arrives and hides behind a curtain to witness the shadowy form of Elphaba melt after Dorothy throws a pail of water on her.
How does the ‘Wicked’ musical end?
But weâre missing someone from the original âWizard of Ozâ quartet â the scarecrow.
The finale of âWickedâ reveals that Elphaba wasnât actually killed by the pail of water. Elphabaâs spell to protect Fiyero turned him into a scarecrow. After the showdown with Dorothy, he arrives at the castle to bring his love out of the trap door she was hiding in, and they leave Oz together.
Meanwhile, Glinda confronts the Wizard after witnessing Elphaba’s “death,” bringing the remnants of her melting: Elphaba’s hat and the green bottle she always carried that belonged to her mother.
When the Wizard sees the green elixir, he realizes that Elphaba was his biological child, finally unmasking the identity of the man Elphaba’s mother had an affair with at the very beginning of the story.
Jeff Goldblum confirms that he’s the figure singing in the part of the opening song, “No One Mourns the Wicked,” which shows Elphaba’s mother having an affair. (He’s also credited in the song on the movie’s official soundtrack.)
“You don’t see me,” he says. “I have this drink, and that’s a little mysterious and that will come to light.”
The camerawork keeps the man’s face just out of each frame, so audiences “aren’t supposed to know that it’s me,” he says. But there’s a tiny moment for careful listeners that connect the mysterious man to the Wizard in the first film, he says.
After his introduction in “Wicked,” Goldblum’s version of the Wizard performs a little tap dance and sings, “You’ve got to give people what they want,” in a similar tune to the part he sings in the overture.
“So if you’re listening, and you’re subliminally Easter egg-oriented, you might go, ‘Is that the guy?'” Goldblum says.
So wait, the Wicked Witch of the West is alive?
Yes, deviating from the plot of “The Wizard of Oz,” the Wicked Witch of the West is alive at the end of the “Wicked” musical.
Elphaba’s fate with the scarecrow Fiyero is left unknown.
The musical’s ending also differs from Maguire’s original book, which sees Elphaba actually melt and die at the hands of Dorothy. Maguire went on to write several sequels to “Wicked,” focusing on different Ozian characters, including “Son of a Witch,” about Elphaba and Fiyero’s son.
So could there be a sequel to the “Wicked” musical?
“We actually have a notion for something, and it’s not from Gregory Maguire book,” Schwartz says. “That’s really all I can say right now. It is something Winnie and I are talking about and exploring, but it actually goes back to Baum, not back to Gregory.”
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