An award-winning musical receiving 3 Tonys and 10 nominations has gotten its show adapted fully into 2 movies: Wicked and Wicked: For Good. These two movies cover the two acts of the musical Wicked. The first movie covers act one and came out in November 2024. Wicked: For Good covers the second act and came out a couple of weeks ago in November. Wicked was a fantastic movie, setting the bar extremely high for its sequel, but the sequel didn’t live up to the expectations of the first movie.

Wicked: For Good starts a year later with the yellow brick road on the edge of completion, and Emerald City putting banners of Glinda the Good and Elphaba, which they are only referring to as the Wicked Witch. Next,

We see the yellow brick road opening ceremony where Glinda and Fiyero’s who were dating in the first movie, get married without Fiyero even being asked to marry before it’s announced. At the Wedding, Elphaba shows up and talks to the Wizard to make a deal. The Wizard hides animals that Elphaba finds and turns them loose, breaking the deal they had. Fiyero leaves with Elephaba because she is doing what is right. Madame Morrible makes a tornado to kill Nessa to get Elphaba to visit her sister’s grave. Where she jumped with Fiyero. Fiyero is taken and beaten nearly to death.

I have many highlights from this movie. The music was absolutely amazing for most of it. The acting was amazing, and, specifically, the version of Boq (Tinman) we saw was jaw-dropping. It felt like he loathed the witch with every fiber of his being, begging for the chance to take her down because of the body she put him in. It also has one of my favorite musical sequences I’ve seen: the song “Wonderful.” From the set, to the choreography to the singing, that one song was absolutely fun and so entertaining. It is exactly what I wanted from the movie. I loved the colors and the vocals —they itched my brain. Also, Cynthia Erivo absolutely destroyed her role, especially in the song “No Good Deed” she is a fantastic singer.

There were some lowlights for me. At the beginning of the movie, there’s a reprise of the very first song from the first movie, “Everyday More Wicked”. The ensemble was fantastic, but one of the characters who had a solo couldn’t really sing that well. I also didn’t understand how the flying monkeys ended up joining the Elephaba; it felt like a plot hole to me. It just seemed they were chasing her, and then they were with her instantly. There was a time skip between the first and the second, which was over a year. It was unclear how much time was passing in each scene. I was lost in between the scenes. The timing was weird, but I was still able to understand the events.

I still really enjoyed the movie. Each song had its moments, but some were stronger than others. My favorite songs were definitely “For Good”, “Wonderful”, “March of the Witch Hunters”, and “No Good Deed”. Ariana Grande’s voice was absolutely incredible, and she played the role of Glinda perfectly. She did have experience playing her before this on Broadway, which made her a great choice for the role. Cynthia Erivo’s voice was powerful and strong. “March of the Witch Hunters” song was extremely fun to listen to, with the chant of them wanting to kill the “Wicked Witch” and some characters getting solos.

The Movie stuck with the original extremely well, with only tiny changes. Those changes are like going into Glinda’s back story of when she was a child. The set was not as cool as the first movie, but it was still an insane set. It is definitely worth watching and would be perfect for your next movie night.