Wicked: For Good Still Doesn’t Fix One Of The Broadway Musical’s Biggest Problems

The following contains spoilers for Wicked: For GoodWicked: For Good‘s biggest missed opportunity could have fixed an issue that the musical has had since it was on Broadway. Wicked and Wicked: For Good split the original musical in half, devoting an entire film to both acts of the theatrical show. For the most part, though, the creatives behind-the-scenes don’t change the structure of the story.

Instead, the Wicked movies are fairly faithful in their depiction of the original story. However, one minor tweak from the first film could have snowballed into a more impactful and compelling change to the narrative. It’s a shame the films didn’t commit to the idea, as it could have added a lot of compelling layers to the story.

Madame Morrible Is Wicked’s Real Big Bad

Madame Morrible is quietly one of the more underutilized elements in both Wicked films, which is a shame — because she presented the perfect opportunity for the filmmakers to fix one of the weaker elements of the original musical. Morrible is introduced as an altruistic teacher in Wicked, gradually revealing her darker motivations.

For the most part, Morrible plays a secondary role in Wicked: For Good. However, it is her machinations that set off many of the plot’s darker turns. Morrible is the one grooming Glinda into a new figurehead, hoping to use her to control the public. She’s the one who pushes for Glinda and Fiyero’s engagement, further isolating him.

Morrible summons a twister to kill Nessa, luring Elphaba into a trap. She convinces the Wizard that Dorothy should be sent to kill Elphaba. She’s the chief leader of the push to ostracize the animal community for the sake of the Ozians. She does this all from the background, while Elphaba’s rage is directed at the Wizard.

It’s an element of the story that presents a lot of potential subversion and political commentary, especially as the film plays the Wizard less as a malicious force and more as an overwhelmed grifter. However, it remains downplayed by the plot of the film. Even her eventual comeuppance is quickly resolved, with little actual emotional resolution.

Wicked Has Never Known What To Do With Madame Morrible

Notably, this isn’t just a problem for the Wicked film adaptations. Morrible plays a similar role in the original musical and suffers a similar fate. This is a far cry from the more openly villainous version of the character from the original Wicked novel, where she also suffered a far more brutal fate.

Morrible is too important to the plot of the story to be simply written out, but she’s also not the main draw of the story. As a result, her machinations are largely in the background and her eventual fate feels like an afterthought. It doesn’t feel like comeuppance so much as just a resolution to a lingering plot thread.

Morrible’s arrest would have landed more effectively if she’d been given more time to bounce off Glinda, but the scene is one of their only one-on-one scenes, following an early conversation and then a more threatening confrontation. Glinda never feels like she’s fully falling for Morrible’s arguments, depriving their dynamic of potential complexity.

Even Morrible’s status as a false mentor to Elphaba is more or less forgotten in Wicked: For Good, with Morrible never getting a direct confrontation with the Wicked Witch throughout the film. It’s a shame, too, because the film’s tweaks to the character in the first Wicked laid the groundwork for a far more interesting role for the character.

How Wicked: For Good Could Have Fixed Madame Morrible

Making Madame Morrible a more direct mentor to Elphaba, only to reveal that she was using her the whole time, gave their dynamic in Wicked a greater strength than it had in the original musical. The sequel should have leaned into that element of the story, fully cementing Morrible as the true villain of the story.

Morrible could have been more overt in the efforts to bring down Elphaba, further pushing the narrative to the public that Elphaba was responsible for terrible crimes around Oz. Having Elphaba be more bitter about this could have added more layers to Morrible’s efforts to convince Glinda to become the new public face for the Wizard’s efforts.

Morrible’s manipulations would have felt more personal to the characters and the audience, splintering the central friendship at the heart of the story. It could have also played further into the themes of the story about surface-level presentation hiding more malicious decisions.

All of this would have made Morrible’s cruel decisions in the film, like killing Nessa or convincing the Wizard to have Elphaba killed, all the more impactful. As a result, it would have also made her eventual comeuppance more meaningful both for Glinda and the audience at large.

I’ve never liked how Wicked resolved the Morrible arc, and the films had the perfect opportunity to make her role more important and her defeat more impactful. Instead, Wicked: For Good doesn’t quite stick the landing with the character and instead follows the general arc of the musical for the character.