Fans of Broadway musicals will be thrilled with the ending of “Wicked: For Good.” Spoilers ahead!
‘Wicked’ Recap: All About Oz
“Wicked: For Good” is finally here. Part 1 of “Wicked” ends here.
- ‘Wicked: For Good’ will be released in theaters on Friday, November 1st.
- Even Elphaba and Glinda stars Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande said they were surprised by the ending of Wicked Part 2.
- The final footage of the film will be a huge thrill for fans of the beloved Broadway musical.
Spoiler alert! The following post contains important details about the ending of Wicked: For Good (now in theaters). If you don’t want to know the content, please stop reading.
We all thought we would be sobbing and confused by the end of “Wicked: For Good.”
But we also couldn’t be more pleased with the film’s heartwarming final image, which director Jon M. Chu has deployed perfectly to bring a smile to every theater boy’s face.
Like the Broadway musical, the new film ends with Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo) and her straw man Fiyero (Jonathan Bailey) walking away from Oz into the sunset after the revelation that Elphaba staged her melting death by hiding under a trapdoor.
But before she sets foot in the desert, Elphaba turns around and sings “For Good” one last time with her distant friend Glinda (Ariana Grande), who has been entrusted with the care of Elphaba’s ancient grimoire, Grimerie.
The film then flashes back to Glinda and Elphaba’s school days, with the girls sitting in a poppy field, each wearing a white knit shawl and a black pointy hat. And in the final shot of the movie, Glinda turns around and whispers something in Elphaba’s ear. Lovingly recreated from the Broadway musical’s iconic logo.
When filming the two-part film, the cast did not know when or how the scenes would be used.
“I had no idea,” Erivo told USA TODAY. “We captured the moments of this wonderful day together (in the field). John said he was going to use it somewhere, but he didn’t tell me where. Then when I saw the film, I thought, ‘Oh my god, there it is!'” ”
How the ending of ‘Wicked: For Good’ pays homage to the Broadway show
Very early in the film’s development, Chu wanted to include a whisper somewhere.
“That’s the most iconic thing about ‘Wicked,'” Chu says. “There’s no context for it in the show, but it’s so powerful. The mystery of what they’re saying is so fascinating. I just thought, ‘This is a great poster, that’s genius. Let’s put it into practice.'”
For a while, he tried to incorporate the whispers into other parts of the story, but “it just didn’t work,” Chu says. “It always felt a little performative.”
But then screenwriter Winnie Holtzman came up with the idea for a montage in which Elphaba and Glinda go poppy picking on a hillside with their classmates from Shizu University. They stroll through the fields laughing, and then Glinda rests her head on Elphaba’s shoulder.
“I loved the idea of seeing them all as friends before being torn apart by fate,” Holtzman says. In an early draft of the script, composer Stephen Schwartz even wrote a new song “for us all to sing along on this idyllic outing.”
The picnic scene was ultimately cut from last year’s Wicked Part 1, but part of the footage, including the whispers, was used in a flashback in Wicked: For Good.
Chu remembers filming the scene just as the sun was setting. Without thinking, he asked Grande to lean down and whisper something in Erivo’s ear.
“I didn’t know exactly where I was going, but I thought, ‘This is interesting,'” Chu recalls. “It felt natural to hang out with my friends. But once I put it in the can, I was like, ‘Oh, this has to go at the end of the movie.'” It’s such a beautiful moment. ”
