Why Wicked: For Good Scrapped Major Glinda Scene With SNL Star Explained By Director

This article contains spoilers for Wicked: For Good.

Wicked: For Good is already shaping up to be one of the first box office hits of the 2025 holiday season. Concluding the story of 2024’s Wicked, the film stars Cynthia Erivo, Ariana Grande, Jonathan Bailey, Jeff Goldblum, Michelle Yeoh, Marissa Bode, Ethan Slater, Bronwyn James, and Bowen Yang.

It follows Elphaba (Erivo) after she discovered the Wizard of Oz (Goldblum) was a fraud and defied him in the first film, as well as her former friend Glinda (Grande) who has become part of the Wizard’s regime. Interestingly, the film brought back Pfannee (Yang) and ShenShen (James), who are sycophantic friends of Glinda from their school days, even though they are absent from the second act of the musical on which both movies are based.

Per director Jon M. Chu, the decision to include them was meant to reflect the public of Oz, even so, he did ultimately cut Yang and James from an early version of Glinda’s redemption arc (via Entertainment Weekly). During the scene in which Glinda decides to warn Elphaba of a mob coming to kill her, Pfannee and ShenShen almost played a role in helping her. He explained: “There was a moment where I was like, ‘Oh, I want them to help her out—to get the horse or open the door or distract the soldiers so she can get out.“

“But then that took away from Glinda’s journey, so I knew that it had to be just Glinda,” Chu added. This moment, Glinda choosing to warn Elphaba, is pivotal to her arc, and it also features a new song, “The Girl in the Bubble.” As such, Chu wanted that scene to be Glinda-focused.

Image via Universal Pictures

Even so, For Good does show a flicker of humanity in Pfannee and ShenShen when they are visibly uncomfortable with the mob heading to kill Elphaba. “We added that for them because I was like, ‘Are they in on this or not? I really don’t want them to be in on this,'” Chu stated. “This is the new generation; I wanted that group of students, no matter how good or bad they were in the last movie, to have the conscience here.“

Previously, Chu noted that “every character has to ask a question about reality at some point and make a choice of which reality they’re going to choose.” Glinda accepts that she has to help Elphaba, while Boq (Slater), has chosen “a reality of hate as a community.”

“I think it’s this idea that we’re both good and wicked,” Chu added. “We’re all of these things, and every day we make a choice about which one we’re going to be.” To that point, Pfannee and ShenShen “even just looking out and watching the witch hunters and being a little bit appalled by that gave us just the little breadcrumb to say, ‘Okay, they’re going to come through at the end.’ it allowed us to know, ‘All right, there’s a conscience.’“

Wicked: For Good is now playing in theaters.