Wizard

Its the eve of the launch of the second film in the Wicked franchise in November 2025 Wicked: For Good (2025) – Part 2. How was the Wicked story inspired and how does it link to one of the greatest films in cinematic history: The Wizard of Oz?

Wicked (2024) – Part 1 was directed by Jon Chu and adapts the first act of the 2003 Broadway musical of the same name. The musical is based on the 1995 novel Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire. This in turn draws on  L. Frank Baum’s 1900 novel and the 1939 MGM film The Wizard of Oz. 

So essentially both Wicked 1 and 2 serve as a back-story or prequel to the Wizard of Oz as it follows the earlier lives of both the Wicked Witch of the West Elphaba and the Good Witch Glinda and takes place in Oz before Dorothy ever thought of arriving. We see familiar visual clues of the Emerald City the Yellow Brick Road and Munchinkinland. Wicked however plays with deeper ideas than the Wizard of Oz such as what does it mean to be “wicked”? How do power and difference interact? Why was Elphaba demonised? It re-casts the “villain” of The Wizard of Oz as a protagonist with a narrative of her own. It is a re imagining rather than a strict prequel to the Wizard of Oz but certainly the stories connect to the great classic as we all know and love and offers depth and complexity to the characters we thought we already knew.