‘Wicked: For Good’ Review: A Sweeping, Shadowed Finale That Finds Its Power in the End

Jon M. Chu brings Oz home with an uneven but ultimately stirring finale, where Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande anchor a darker, more deliberate chapter that lands its emotional payoff when it counts.

The surprise of Wicked: For Good is how confidently Jon M. Chu shifts the center of gravity without destabilizing what worked the first time. If Part One belonged to Cynthia Erivo — and it absolutely did — Part Two is where Ariana Grande steps fully into the light, not by overpowering Erivo, but by meeting her. Matching her. Elevating the emotional stakes in ways that the stage show, for all its iconic songs, never entirely managed. The doubts that swirled around splitting the story into two films are still there in theory, but the commitment to character and the scope of the design make this continuation feel earned. It’s bigger, broader, occasionally overstuffed, but its emotional clarity — especially regarding Glinda — is the difference.

Erivo remains a force. Her Elphaba is still an open wound wrapped in iron will, and Erivo doesn’t take a single shortcut. She sings like she’s emptying her chest cavity. She plays the role not as a misunderstood villain, but as someone who has never seen the world do anything but punish goodness in women who refuse to stay quiet. Her performance is unbroken — steady, emotional, raw without theatrics — and the film’s moral spine never wavers because she never wavers. But in For Good, she’s no longer the only gravitational pull.

Grande takes Glinda from caricature to character, and she does it with a kind of sincerity that undercuts every preconceived assumption about casting a pop star in a role this emotionally exposed. What’s most striking is how quiet she is when the film needs her to be. Her performance lives in her breath, her timing, the way she looks at Elphaba before she speaks. Grande’s Glinda is still vain, still performative, still used to being adored, but now there’s a fissure in the façade. The vanity cracks early, and the vulnerability underneath is what carries her through the film. You feel her unraveling one disappointment at a time — romantic, political, personal — until the woman who once floated in a bubble has to figure out what her purpose is when the air is gone.

There’s a moment midway through the film when Glinda finally sees through Madame Morrible’s manipulations, and Grande lets the realization play across her face with real hurt. Not melodrama — hurt. Michelle Yeoh leans into Morrible’s bureaucratic cruelty with the kind of cold precision that doesn’t need volume, and the scenes between her and Grande become some of the most compelling in the film. Morrible sees Glinda’s goodness as a weakness; Glinda starts to realize it’s the only meaningful thing she has left.

What Chu does well — sometimes subtly, sometimes with maximalist flourish — is deepen the sisterhood at the center. The musical has always been about two women whose lives orbit and intersect and collide, but For Good makes that connection feel lived-in. Glinda finally feels like someone who has grown in the shadow of Elphaba’s bravery. Elphaba finally feels like someone who has allowed herself to be known. Their relationship is no longer a story beat; it is the core of the film’s emotional architecture.

When the title song arrives, the moment is not big — it’s soft. Their voices blend less like a showstopper and more like a confession. The press screening I attended had audience members quietly crying behind me, not because the song is inherently sad, but because the movie takes its time getting these two women to a point where the lyrics feel earned. Chu lets the camera linger without spinning for once, and the stillness gives the moment its power.

The film is less graceful elsewhere. Chu cannot resist visual abundance, and while Alice Brooks’ cinematography makes Oz shimmer with kaleidoscopic richness, the choreography sometimes clutters the frame. There are sequences so full they start to compete with themselves. You forgive it partly because of the sheer craft — Nathan Crowley’s production design is a spectacle of shapes and scale, and Paul Tazewell’s costumes remain some of the most inventive in contemporary studio musicals. There is beauty everywhere you look, even when the movie doesn’t leave room to breathe.

Storywise, this installment leans heavier into the intersection with The Wizard of Oz, and it’s handled with surprising restraint. Dorothy is present without being present — glimpsed from behind, through shadows, as a disruptive force rather than a protagonist. Chu and writers Winnie Holzman and Dana Fox use Dorothy not as nostalgia bait but as commentary: a reminder of how stories change depending on who is telling them. The Cowardly Lion’s origin, the Tin Man’s sorrow, the Scarecrow’s emergence — all quietly interwoven, none overwhelming.

Jonathan Bailey finally gets to play Fiyero as more than a noble flirt. The character’s conflict lands with more weight here, and Bailey’s scenes with Erivo have a weariness and warmth that deepen both characters. Ethan Slater’s Boq, increasingly tragic, provides one of the film’s more emotional subplots as Nessarose’s bitterness calcifies. Marissa Bode brings a sharp, bruised edge to Nessarose that makes the Wicked Witch of the East moniker feel less like mythology and more like inevitability. Goldblum continues to play the Wizard with amused self-loathing, perfectly fine because the Wizard is meant to be a hollow man.

Grande’s breakout moment — “The Girl in the Bubble” — is not the film’s best-written song, but she makes it one of its most affecting scenes. It’s the first time Glinda tells the truth about herself, and Grande sings it like someone finally letting air out of a long-held breath. The performance is grounded. Controlled. Emotional without decoration. It gives Glinda the dimensionality she’s rarely been afforded, and it gives the film a sense of balance Part One didn’t quite achieve.

For all its spectacle, Wicked: For Good is most compelling when it strips itself down to two women trying to carve out a path that the world insists on making impossible. The film’s emotional intelligence, more than its visual grandeur, is what carries it to a bittersweet but satisfying close. The ending retains the stage show’s melancholy, but it gains something too — an acknowledgment of Glinda’s evolution that feels earned rather than obligatory.

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The real magic of For Good isn’t scale. It’s sincerity. Grande reveals depths people underestimated. Erivo reaffirms that she is one of the most commanding musical actors of her generation. And together, they turn a five-hour, two-part experiment into something far more intimate than its size suggests.

Chu overreaches at times, but he also understands something essential: Wicked endures not because of its spectacle, but because it makes outsiders feel seen. For Good honors that legacy with a finale that’s moving, imperfect, ambitious, and anchored by two performances that give the story its beating heart.

Ariana Grande owns this chapter. Cynthia Erivo remains its soul. And the film, for all its excess, lands exactly where it needed to.

RATING: ★★★★☆

CREDITS

Release date: Friday, Nov. 21| Universal Pictures
Cast: Cynthia Erivo, Ariana Grande, Jonathan Bailey, Ethan Slater, Bowen Yang, Marissa Bode, Michelle Yeoh, Jeff Goldblum, Bronwyn James, Sharon D. Clarke, Colman Domingo
Director: Jon M. Chu
Screenwriters: Winnie Holzman, Dana Fox
Rated: PG | 2 hours 18 minutes

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