ASHEVILLE, N.C. (828newsNOW) — The hotly anticipated sequel to “Wicked,” last year’s witchy “Wizard of Oz” smash, is finally here. Read our review of John M. Chu’s “Wicked: For Good,” starring Ariana Grande, Cynthia Erivo, Jonathan Bailey and Jeff Goldblum, below.

If you haven’t seen “Wicked” yet, read our review of the first film here.

“WICKED: FOR GOOD” (2025, 137 min., directed by Jon M. Chu)

The second act of the “Wicked” Broadway show is famously lackluster compared to the “aaa-AA-ah-AA-aah” highs of part one. I regret to report that the film adaptation follows in those magic slipper footsteps.

For one, no matter how much of a “No Good Deed” true believer you are, the most iconic songs from the musical are all in the first act. Despite the best efforts of the transcendently talented Erivo and Grande and the addition of two new songs, not a single track in “Wicked: For Good” compares to the pop thrill of “Popular,” the catchy choreography of “Dancing Through Life” or the triumphant, tear-jerking “Defying Gravity” finale.

The first new song, “No Place Like Home,” is Elphaba-centric but undeserving of Erivo’s powerful voice. The lyrics are lackluster and trite, but the real issue is the music itself. There is nothing memorable about “No Place Like Home” and it struggles to justify its place in the second act. The song is situated around the issue of animal rights – arguably the weakest part of the first film and given far more oxygen in the second – but feels much more interested in a wheel-spinning homage to the famous “Wizard of Oz” line than pushing the plot forward.

Character posters for “Wicked: For Good”

The second, “The Girl in the Bubble,” is Grande’s moment to shine. Grande as Glinda is the standout of “Wicked: For Good” in every respect, but her new song especially deserves its laurels for platforming Grande’s nuanced performance of the bubbly turned bleak. While I wouldn’t call “The Girl in the Bubble” catchy, per se, it feels like a natural and necessary addition to the “Wicked” songbook, something its sister song can’t claim.

Uninspiring music aside, however, the real issues of “Wicked: For Good” are with the story itself. Each of the principle cast members are just as good – or just as miscast, if you’re Goldblum and Michelle Yeoh – the second time around, but the material itself isn’t up to the task. While the first film made good use of coy nods and cute winks to “The Wizard of Oz,” the second film makes the shallow and underdeveloped decision to bring Dorothy and Co. into the story directly. In the “Wicked” parlance, the results are “confusifying.”

The following contains spoilers for “Wicked: For Good”

In a major retcon of the Oz story, major swaths of “Wicked: For Good” are dedicated to the transformation of Ethan Slater’s Boq into the Tin Man, Marissa Bode’s Nessarose into the Wicked Witch of the East and Bailey’s Fiyero into the Scarecrow, in addition to a cameo voice performance from Colman Domingo as the Cowardly Lion.

The film plays these moments as dramatic, angry tragedies, which is an interesting pivot from the sunnier dispositions of “Wicked” and its “Wizard of Oz” grandpoppy, but undercuts their importance to the plot in favor of “preserving” the twist of the transformations.

Rather than allowing the audience to reckon with the consequences of Boq’s horrific metallization, for instance, Chu instead drifts away from his story for a surprising chunk of the film. Ditto Nessa’s demise. Though the image of the Wicked Witch of the East’s slipper-clad feet under the Kansas farmhouse is stamped into pop culture, when Dorothy’s house crushes Nessa, the camera omits that famous image from the audience. The literal and figurative gap left by Nessa’s demise is instead filled by a clunky, silly wand-and-broom fight between Grande and Erivo.

This sort of thing happens repeatedly in “Wicked: For Good.” A character will be built up, their “Wizard of Oz” connection will be established, and then Chu will leave them behind, presumably to save an even bigger fan service payoff for later.

The most egregious example is Bailey’s. The love story between Elphaba and Fiyero is a big part of “Wicked: For Good,” and even if it didn’t feel unearned and underexplored, after so much time spent on their relationship, Fiyero is virtually abandoned by the film at a particularly pivotal juncture of the story.

Fiyero’s Scarecrow transformation, a shadowy and confusing affair filled with Bailey growing straw and getting walloped in sillhouette, occurs cross-cut with Erivo’s performance of the aforementioned “No Other Deed” – incidentally the only song which received audience applause during my packed screening. However, following his clear and explicit transmogrification, the next we see of Fiyero is at the very end of the film, where his new Scarecrow self is presented as though it were a twist the film had not already revealed.

Wicked: For Good trailer

“Wicked: For Good” is obsessed with emulating elements of “The Wizard of Oz,” but it never actually engages with the changes it makes to the story. This version of the Tin Man is angry, wounded and mob-mongering, which is a pretty far cry from Baum’s gentler depiction. This version of the Scarecrow is far from brainless and clearly obsessed with Elphaba. This Cowardly Lion has his entire origin derived from Elphaba’s actions. These changes could have been interesting if Chu had decided to examine them, but instead, their consequences are left entirely offscreen. How, exactly, did Dorothy link up with Boq, Fiyero and the Cowardly Lion? “Wicked: For Good” won’t tell you.

Speaking of Dorothy, Bethany Weaver plays the “Wizard of Oz” protagonist in “Wicked: For Good.” Her face is never shown, purportedly to preserve the focus of the film on Elphaba and Glinda, but Dorothy’s appearance is emblematic of the “Wizard of Oz” connection writ large: Even if the film isn’t the focus of this story, its references are a distraction from it.

What made the first “Wicked” so effective was the relationship between Glinda and Elphaba – and, in turn, Grande and Erivo. The first movie put the duo at its core and soared for it. The second film is jam-packed with subplots, whether they are “Wizard of Oz” references or other dilettante distractions. The result, like a spell read wrong, is a “Wicked” film that looks and feels radically different from the magical movie which preceded it.

It’s all a change for the worse.

Rating: 2/5