SO CAN WE ALL FINALLY AGREE: “WICKED'S” ELPHABA WAS A BLACK GIRL THIS WHOLE TIME

For a story as familiar as Wicked, Jon M. Chu’s two-part adaptation feels startlingly new—not because it changes the plot from the stage show (that much), but because it finally clarifies what the story has always been about.

Beneath the spectacle and the belt notes, Wicked is a tale of two young women whose friendship shapes their lives as profoundly as any spell. The films take that bond seriously, reframing it with a sharp cultural lens: what does it mean, after all, for Elphaba—the girl the world is eager to call “wicked”—to be played by a Black woman?

From there, everything else in Chu’s vision comes into focus: the performances that anchor the emotional center of the films, the meticulous beauty of Oz, and the quiet brilliance of turning a long-beloved musical into a thoughtful, ambitious, surprisingly resonant epic.

*MILD SPOILERS FOR "WICKED" & "WICKED: FOR GOOD"

The Best Way to Bring Folks Together is to Give Them a Real Good Enemy.

Based on Gregory Maguire’s 1995 novel Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West and the Broadway juggernaut it inspired, Chu’s films expand the story of two young women who meet at Shiz University in the land of Oz: Elphaba, a gifted outcast with green skin, and Glinda, a charming socialite determined to be adored. Before they become the Wicked Witch and Glinda the Good, they’re college roommates—one searching for acceptance, the other searching for meaning. Their friendship fractures as Elphaba’s resistance to conformity collides with Glinda’s pursuit of perfection, setting off a chain of events that redefines who gets to be called “good.”

The one film is told in two parts. The first part opens in the world of Oz, showing us the aftermath of the “Wicked Witch’s” death and then rewinding to trace the story of Elphaba Thropp (played by the fabulously talented Cynthia Erivo)—born green-skinned, alienated, gifted with power—arriving at Shiz University, befriending the bubbly, privileged Glinda Upland (played by Ariana Grande), and becoming entwined in the political machinations of the Wizard’s regime. The film follows her personal awakening and friendship with Glinda, her sister Nessarose’s struggles, and a climactic turning point that positions her as the “other” in Oz.

In Part 2, Wicked: For Good (which landed in theaters a full year later), picks up where the first leaves off: Elphaba is now demonized as the Wicked Witch of the West, living in exile and still fighting for the rights of the Animals; Glinda occupies her status as celebrated Good Witch under the Wizard’s oversight. The film intensifies the political stakes. The friendship fractures and rebuilds. And the arc moves toward its reckoning.

From the moment Elphaba walks into Shiz, she’s treated as dangerous before she’s even allowed to speak. Students recoil. Professors tense. Madame Morrible clocks her abilities not with curiosity, but with opportunistic hunger. Glinda, meanwhile, floats through the halls on a bubble of blonde privilege, blissfully immune to the rules that govern everyone else. The culture of Oz accepts Glinda’s goodness as a default, the same way it accepts Elphaba’s wrongness.

Watching the friendship unfold against this backdrop is where the films find their ache. Their first real bonding moment—the silly, slumber-party energy of “Popular”—has always been comedic, but here it reads like Glinda giving Elphaba a crash course in survival. A little polish, a little pageantry, the unspoken promise that if Elphaba can just play the game well enough, she might be accepted. It’s girlish and cute, but also lowkey political in a way that the two girls can’t articulate yet.

And later, when their paths diverge, it’s not because they stop loving each other. It’s because the stakes are different. Glinda has options. Elphaba doesn’t.

The fact that Elphaba is green is as paramount to Wicked’s plot as Glinda glamor and popularity. Because she's green, Elphaba is bullied relentlessly, abandoned by her own father, and ostracized from all of Oz. She’s an outsider: unpretty, unappreciated, and unpopular. Yet, it’s a position anyone who’s ever been in spaces with people who don’t look like them can relate to.

I Don't Cause Commotions. I Am One.

In the 30-year history of Wicked, Elphaba has only been played by one Black woman, Alexia Khadime, full-time in the professional production of the musical before Erivo. Khadime played Elphaba from 2008 to 2010 on London’s West End. Now, over a decade later, Wicked’s green girl stepped onto the big screen with micro braids and Cynthia Erivo’s face and suddenly, Elphaba’s greenness isn’t just a symbol. If we’re holding space for the lyrics of “Defying Gravity,” there’s a reason (aside from Erivo’s raw talent) the song feels different when she belts it. Her greenness, finally, feels informed.

Color—literal and symbolic—through Erivo becomes both Elphaba's curse and her protest. She can’t scrub it off. She can’t hide it. She has no choice but to own it. Her sanity depends on it.

On the pink side of the coin, Glinda (formerly known as Galinda) is coded as good because she conforms. Before she gains real magic, her only talent is conformity. Her only power is conformity.

Considering Wicked is an allegory for the often arbitrary nature of discrimination, there’s something particularly impactful about the character being portrayed like this. The fact that Elphaba is proud of her skin is radical in the world of Oz. And it's essential to the overall, yet sometimes heavy-handed (hey, it’s a musical), message of Wicked: that power should be questioned, villainized women of color are usually right, and being different is actually badass. Elphaba’s pride is tied up in the confidence she isn’t supposed to have, and it’s why she’s able to stand up to the Wizard (played with fantastic flare by Jeff Goldblum) when the time comes.

Elphaba’s choice to oppose and expose the Wizard comes from a place of self-assurance and stands in stark contrast to the insecurity she displays a few scenes earlier during “I’m Not That Girl” when she’s doubting that a guy like Fiyero (played by Jonathan Bailey, who's so swoon-worthy, charming, and hot in this role, I can’t talk about him without being inappropriate) could ever love her. “She who's winsome/ she wins him/ Gold hair with a gentle curl/ That's the girl he chose/ And Heaven knows/ I'm not that girl.” This scene destroyed me — not just because I was transported right back to elementary school when I had a crush on a boy who preferred blondes—but because I know in so many scenarios, including the industry Erivo has to navigate, Black women are sold the lie that we aren’t “that girl”, that white women “win” by default and that “wishing only wounds the heart.”

As Someone Told Me Lately, Everyone Deserves the Chance to Fly.

Let's cut to the chase, Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande are the true heart and soul of this two part epic. Erivo’s Elphaba is full of small, sharp details: the way her shoulders tighten whenever someone calls her “Miss Elphaba” in that faux-polite tone; the flat, unimpressed stare she gives Morrible when she realizes the “private tutoring” was actually a recruitment meeting; the tremble in her hands before she takes flight, as if she knows she’s crossing a threshold she can never return from.

And Grande’s Glinda is a revelation. The girl may be all sparkles and breathy soprano vowels, but the performance is threaded with micro-expressions—panic in her eyes when she realizes she’s complicit, a clenched jaw after Fiyero disappears, the softening in her voice during “Thank Goodness”. Ariana gives Glinda a tragic arc disguised as a victory.

The supporting cast plays with similar specificity. Jonathan Bailey’s Fiyero transforms from decorative troublemaker to someone willing to literally walk off the path if it leads him closer to the woman he can't stop seeing clearly. Michelle Yeoh’s Madame Morrible is almost tender until you notice the threat underneath. And Jeff Goldblum (at his most Goldblum) never lets you forget that the Wizard is dangerous precisely because he's so disarmingly charming.

And all of this unfolds inside a world that is almost aggressively beautiful.

Who Can Say If I've Been Changed for the Better?

We’ve seen from Chu's’s previous films, namely Crazy Rich Asians and In the Heights, that Chu is uniquely adept at presenting an enormous song-and-dance extravaganza without getting lost in it. But this time, the story hits differently. Because when Elphaba rises onto that broomstick—braids swinging, green skin glowing—in his hands, her identity is undeniable. And that choice reframes the entire emotional architecture of the films.

It's because underneath all that green is a Black woman. Erivo makes the connection on purpose. She openly discusses it so there's no confusion. And now, with the world of Oz behind us (at least until Wicked: For Good drops on streaming), you can't doubt that identity informed this portrayal of one of the most infamous witches in pop culture history. And thank Oz for that.

4.5/5 ★: Wicked finally becomes the story it was always meant to be and I'm here for it.