Wicked For Good Review – Closing Out Oz With a Big, Messy, Beautiful Goodbye

This Wicked For Good review comes from the perspective of someone who is deeply suspicious of studio-safe musical movies. On paper, Wicked: For Good should’ve been the awkward second half of a split story – the homework you sit through after the fun origin stuff. Instead, Jon M. Chu turns the back half of Wicked into a big, emotional goodbye that actually earns the ugly-cry it’s aiming for.

Is it a little bloated? Yeah. Is it also one of the rare blockbusters that feels like it was made for people instead of spreadsheets? Also yes. Wicked: For Good leans hard into friendship, fallout, and what it costs to be “the villain” in someone else’s narrative, and that’s what makes this Wicked For Good review land on the positive side.

Wicked: For Good brings Elphaba and Glinda’s story to a big, messy, emotional close.

Wicked For Good review: the fallout finally hits

Wicked: For Good picks up after Elphaba has fully graduated to “Wicked Witch of the West” in the public eye, while Glinda is now the polished, carefully managed face of Oz. The first movie covered meet-cutes, school drama, and how-the-hell-did-we-get-here setup. This one is about consequences: propaganda, power, and what happens when two people who genuinely love each other get locked onto opposite sides of a rigged system.

Because this is the back half of the Broadway musical, the story is denser and darker. Nessarose’s tragic arc, Boq’s transformation, Fiyero’s fate, the Wizard’s manipulation, and Dorothy finally showing up to blow everything sky-high – it’s all here. The film also uses the fact that it’s a movie, not a stage show, to actually show more of the Dorothy-adjacent chaos instead of keeping her mostly off-screen as a punchline.

Is it streamlined? Not even remotely. But the emotional throughline of this Wicked For Good review is simple: Elphaba and Glinda are both trying (and failing) to live with the versions of themselves the world demands. Even when the plot jumps around, that core relationship keeps it from flying off the broomstick entirely.

Performances that make this Wicked For Good review a rave

If Wicked: For Good works, it’s because Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande refuse to phone in a single frame. As Elphaba, Erivo leans even harder into the raw, exhausted, “I’m done apologizing for existing” energy that Part One set up. Her big numbers don’t feel like polished showpieces; they feel like controlled detonations. “No Good Deed” in particular plays like a full-on break in a person’s soul that just happens to be set to a power ballad.

Grande’s Glinda finally gets to be more than weaponized glitter. The script lets her unravel: the guilt of being the smiling face of a corrupt machine, the fear of losing Elphaba for good, and the slow realization that “good” is not the same as “liked.” She still gets the bubbly comedy, but there’s a tired, brittle edge under the smiles that makes this version of Glinda feel like an actual person instead of just a meme template.

Jonathan Bailey’s Fiyero benefits from the extra runtime too. He reads less like a pretty plot device and more like someone genuinely torn between comfort, duty, and actually doing the right thing. Nessarose and Boq get enough focus for their subplot to land with real weight as well, turning what could’ve been pure melodrama into something that at least feels grounded in how messy people get when they’re lonely and scared.

Music that still hurts (in a good way)

Let’s be honest: most people walking into this movie are waiting for “For Good.” That song has been wrecking theater kids for twenty years, and the film knows it. The entire back half of the runtime quietly rearranges itself to let that scene breathe – and it does. The moment plays small and personal, not mythic: two exhausted women saying goodbye in a way that feels painfully human, not just theatrically huge. It’s the emotional spine of any honest Wicked For Good review.

The returning numbers – “Thank Goodness,” “As Long as You’re Mine,” “No Good Deed,” “March of the Witch Hunters” – all get scaled up with a beefier orchestra and fuller choral arrangements. Crucially, they’re staged for film, not just shot like a pro-recorded stage show. The result is big, but not so glossy it feels fake.

New material mostly works in service of character rather than padding. Elphaba’s quieter beats tie her rebellion back to the idea of belonging, not just defiance. Glinda’s songs lean into the gap between the image she sells and the person she actually is. The movie also keeps the “live on set” vocal philosophy from the first film, so some lines have rough edges – but the trade-off is emotional immediacy instead of auto-tuned plastic.

Oz looks great, even when it’s too much

Visually, Wicked: For Good doubles down on the first film’s approach: enormous practical sets drenched in color, then layered with VFX instead of drowned in them. The tulip fields around Munchkinland, the physical Yellow Brick Road, the looming towers of the Emerald City – it all looks like places real people could actually stand in, even when magic storms and flying monkeys kick off.

The “too much” problem is very real, though. At just over two hours, this thing is stuffed. It often feels like Chu refused to cut a single moment anyone ever loved from the stage version. Side characters pop in, get huge emotional beats, and vanish. Oz-wide politics, personal betrayals, and little nods to The Wizard of Oz all pile on. Sometimes it soars; sometimes it feels like you’re watching a very expensive lore explainer.

The box office suggests audiences are very okay with “too much.” Wicked: For Good opened huge and is already firmly in blockbuster territory, which fits what we’re seeing from fans online. Critics are a little cooler on it than on Part One, but regular humans seem to be coming out of theaters and telling their group chats to go see it – usually the sign you’ve done something right.

Wicked For Good review verdict: was splitting it in two worth it?

Short answer: annoyingly, yes.

The two-film structure lets Wicked: For Good sit in the stuff most musical movies sprint past: how propaganda sticks, how friendships actually fall apart, and what “doing the right thing” costs when the story is rigged against you. This second movie finally feels like the story the first one was clearing its throat to tell.

Is it perfect? No. Some scenes still feel like they’re ticking off “stage musical moment” boxes, and a couple of edits clearly exist just to keep things PG. But as a complete experience, Wicked: For Good is the rare sequel that earns its big emotions instead of just re-skinning Act One.

From a Press X to Skip angle – fan-first, no gatekeeping, no sponsor-speak – this is the kind of big studio musical we actually want more of. It’s messy, specific, and trying to say something about stories, power, and who gets remembered as the hero. If you want to dive deeper into how we talk about movies like this, check out more of our Ctrl Issues reviews after you’re done with this Wicked For Good review.

If you somehow made it this far without seeing the stage show, the original musical is still touring and the long-running Broadway production has all the details you need on the official site at WickedTheMusical.com.

TL;DR For The Skippers

• Vibe: Big feelings, big sets, even bigger goodbye. This is the emotional half of Wicked, not the meme half.
• Performances: Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande absolutely anchor the movie; the major numbers and the “For Good” farewell are worth the ticket alone.
• Music: Classic songs hit harder with expanded orchestration; new cues mostly deepen Glinda and Elphaba instead of feeling like filler.
• Visuals: Real sets plus smart VFX make Oz feel tactile instead of green-screen sludge.
• Issues: Overstuffed, occasionally rushed, and a little too in love with including everything from the stage version.
• Is it worth seeing? Yes. Fans of Part One and the Broadway show get the detailed, maximalist farewell they wanted. Casual viewers get a big, emotional fantasy musical that actually respects their time.
  

  Score: 9/10 – A messy, heartfelt, and genuinely moving close to Wicked’s two-film experiment.

AJ Hanson

AJ Hanson has been part of games media since 2011, writing, streaming, and ranting about the industry long before it was his job. He runs the Galaxy’s Edge Discord, the go-to community for fans of Disney’s Star Wars parks, and works as Marketing Director for the Virtual Cantina Network, helping produce shows, interviews, and fan events. A lifelong Star Wars fan and unapologetic nerd, AJ’s focus has always been on building spaces where people can connect, argue, and celebrate the things they love without all the corporate gloss.