Prince Mario-Max Schaumburg-Lippe: Wicked: For Good Sings Its Way Home

Some finales coast on the goodwill of part one. Wicked: For Good does not. Universal Pictures released the film on November 21, 2025, and audiences turned up in the kind of numbers usually reserved for superheroes: 150 million dollars in North America on opening weekend, 226 million dollars worldwide, and an A grade from CinemaScore. Those numbers matter for a simple reason. People did not just buy a ticket. They came back for a friendship.

Director Jon M. Chu closes the two-part adaptation of the 2003 Broadway musical by Stephen Schwartz and Winnie Holzman, itself drawn from Gregory Maguire’s novel. The running time is 137 minutes, the rating is PG, and the shape is familiar to anyone who knows the stage show. This is act two. Elphaba, now branded the Wicked Witch of the West, lives in exile in the Ozian forest and campaigns for the Animals who have lost their voices. Glinda lives in the palace in Emerald City, polished and adored, preparing to marry Prince Fiyero while Madame Morrible shapes her public image. A girl from Kansas is on her way. Everyone can feel the weather changing.

Two performances hold the center

Cynthia Erivo plays Elphaba with a quiet that keeps catching you off guard. She can fill a theater with one note, and everyone in the building knows it, so the interesting choices are the small ones: a pause before an answer, a look held half a second too long. Her Elphaba is tired of being explained. That weariness gives the big numbers their weight, because the singing never feels like a display. It feels like someone finally saying the thing out loud.

Ariana Grande, as Glinda, gets the harder assignment this time, and she is wonderful. The comedy is still there – the toss of the hair, the practiced smile for a crowd – but the film keeps finding the cost underneath it. Glinda has everything she asked for at Shiz University, and Grande lets you watch her do the arithmetic in real time. Her scenes with Jonathan Bailey, who returns as Fiyero with an easy warmth, have a gentle ache to them. Bailey makes goodness look like a decision rather than a default, which is exactly what this story needs from him.

Families who loved the big-hearted ensemble energy in GOAT will recognize the pleasure here. It is a large cast, clearly enjoying the same film.

The music, old friends and two new songs

Schwartz wrote two new songs for this film, and both earn their place. Erivo performs “No Place Like Home,” a plea for the Oz Elphaba still believes is possible. Grande answers with “The Girl in the Bubble,” a softer, sadder number about living inside an image other people built for you. Neither song stops the story to show off. Each one arrives where act two of the stage show always had a gap, and the screenplay by Holzman and Dana Fox uses that space well.

The returning numbers land, too. “No Good Deed” is staged as a genuine breaking point, all green light and flying pages, and Erivo tears into it. Then the film does the bravest thing a large musical can do: it slows down. The title duet, “For Good,” is sung simply, two friends on the floor of a tower room, and John Powell’s score stays out of the way. In a packed screening, that is the moment the sniffing starts. It is also the moment the whole two-film project justifies itself.

There is a kindred spirit between this film’s musical mischief and the rebellion in our review of Bad Fairies, though Chu keeps his tone warmer and his endings kinder.

An Oz you could walk through

The craft work is first rate, and it builds on a strong base. The first film earned 10 Academy Award nominations and won for Costume Design and Production Design on its way to 758 million dollars worldwide. This chapter keeps the same tactile approach: real sets, real fabrics, crowds that look like crowds. Cinematographer Alice Brooks gives Emerald City a bright, slightly brittle shine, while the forest sequences go amber and shadowed. You can always tell, at a glance, whose Oz you are standing in.

A supporting cast with room to shine

Jeff Goldblum returns as the Wizard, all charm and evasion, and Michelle Yeoh makes Madame Morrible frightening precisely because she never raises her voice. Ethan Slater brings a sad sweetness to Boq, Marissa Bode gives Nessarose a steel that the story needs, and Peter Dinklage is back as the voice of Dr. Dillamond. Colman Domingo joins as the voice of the Cowardly Lion, a casting choice that pays off in a single, beautifully read scene. Chu also keeps his promise about Dorothy: she is present, as she must be, but her face is never shown, so the film stays where it belongs – with the two witches.

Younger viewers who responded to the sincere heart in Hoppers will find the same sincerity here, aimed a little older and sung a lot louder.

The verdict

Wicked: For Good is a generous, beautifully sung finale, produced by Marc Platt and David Stone with the care of people who knew the audience would check their work. Erivo and Grande do the finest screen work of their careers so far, the new songs belong, and the last 20 minutes are as moving as anything in a movie musical this decade. See it on the largest screen you can find, stay through the final harmony, and bring someone you have known a long time. Some stories really do change you for good.

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