Wicked ending explained: Easter eggs, cameos, differences to the Broadway musical, and more
Nov. 22, 2024Your biggest questions answered
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Wicked Part One is out now in theaters, bringing the beloved Broadway musical to the big screen. Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande take on the roles of unlikely besties Elphaba and Glinda, alongside castmates that include Jeff Goldblum, Michelle Yeoh, and Jonathan Bailey. The Wizard of Oz prequel (which tells half the story of the musical and the novel by Gregory Maguire), follows the two witches as they meet at Shiz University and unwittingly set the events in motion that culminates with a bucket of water in the 1939 movie…
If you’ve already caught the movie musical in the multiplex and have any questions about how things wind up for Elphaba, Glinda, and co., we’ve got everything you need to know right here, from Easter eggs to when Wicked Part Two is set to soar onto our screens. Be warned, though: there aremajor Wicked spoilers ahead!
Wicked Part One ending explained
Elphaba and Glinda’s trip to Oz takes a turn once they actually come face-to-face with the Wizard. Elphaba tells him of her wish for the animals of Oz to be free, and he says he will if she can prove herself. The Wizard tells Elphaba that one of his monkey guards is always watching birds out of the palace windows, and he and Madame Morrible get her to look at the Grimmerie, a book of spells that only those with great magical gifts can read. Morrible reassures her that it’s okay if she can only manage a few words, but Elphaba easily reads out a whole spell. As a result, the monkey (and the rest of the guards) sprouts feathered wings in a slow and painful transformation. Outraged by what she’s been made to do, Elphaba realizes that the Wizard doesn’t have any powers of his own and he maintains control of Oz through the creation of a common enemy to unite the people: animals. She refuses to cooperate with him and flees his chambers with the Grimmerie in tow, and Morrible calls for the guards to get her.
Glinda follows Elphaba through the palace and they end up in a tower. They find a hot air balloon there and attempt to hijack it, but the guards foil their plan. The pair ascend higher into the tower into an attic room and bar the door with a broom. Meanwhile, Morrible issues an announcement throughout Oz that Elphaba is a wicked witch and shouldn’t be trusted, and Glinda tries to convince her to go back and apologize to the Wizard and Morrible. Elphaba refuses and tells her that she needs to do what’s right. She tries to use the Grimmerie spell that gave the flying monkeys their wings on herself to no avail but, as the Wizard’s guards break into the tower, a broomstick begins to levitate. As she sings ‘Defying Gravity,’ Elphaba bids Glinda farewell and mounts the broom to escape. The guards reach Glinda and try to detain her, but Morrible gets them to release her. As Elphaba barrels through the window, she begins to plummet towards the ground, but then she sees herself as a child and reaches out towards her. As the two join hands, she begins to soar, and heads into the unknown.
Animals in Oz are oppressed and discriminated against, and Dr. Dillamond the goat is the only animal professor left at Shiz University. During one of his classes, he finds that someone has vandalized his projector screen with the words “animals should be seen and not heard.” After stumbling upon a meeting between him and some other animals, Elphaba learns that there’s a conspiracy to stop animals from speaking and many are fleeing Oz before things get even worse. During their next class, Dillamond is removed from the university and replaced with a new human professor, as animals have been banned from teaching. The new professor has a lion cub in a cage and tells the class that these cages are new contraptions designed to keep animals under control.
In order to maintain power in Oz, the Wizard and Morrible have instigated a hate campaign against the animals. “The way to bring folks together is to give them a real good enemy,” he tells Elphaba, and animals like Dr. Dillamond are used to do just that. However, once Elphaba defies the Wizard and sets out to do what’s right, the focus shifts to her, and the pair set out to make her the common enemy of Oz: the Wicked Witch of the West.
Wicked Part One is a pretty faithful adaptation of Act One of the Broadway musical, but there are a few minor changes. For starters, the flashback to Elphaba’s childhood at the start of the movie isn’t in the musical. Plus, in the musical’s version of ‘Defying Gravity,’ Elphaba doesn’t fall before she flies, and she and Glinda don’t try and hijack the Wizard’s hot air balloon, either. Other scenes are also slightly extended – ‘Popular’ and ‘Dancing Through Life’ run slightly longer than their musical counterparts – while Elphaba joins in with ‘Something Bad’ in the musical but is eavesdropping in the movie.
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I’m an Entertainment Writer here at GamesRadar+, covering everything film and TV-related across the Total Film and SFX sections. I help bring you all the latest news and also the occasional feature too. I’ve previously written for publications like HuffPost and i-D after getting my NCTJ Diploma in Multimedia Journalism.
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