There are films you watch for entertainment. Then there are films that quietly walk into your life, sit beside you, and whisper truths you didn’t want to hear. Wicked is the latter.
At first glance, Wicked seems like a musical fairy tale set in a colourful land of magic, spells, and animals. But stay a little longer, and you’ll realize it’s not really about magic. It’s about differences in form and nature and what happens when the world punishes you for it.
Cynthia Erivo gives an aching, soul-deep performance as Elphaba, a green-skinned girl whose only crime is existing too boldly in a world that demands silence and sameness. Ariana Grande’s Glinda dazzles as her opposite: beautiful, beloved, and burdened by the pressure to be everything everyone expects her to be. Their friendship, born at Shiz University, is the heart of the story. And like real life, it is messy, tender, and tested by forces bigger than them.
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What struck me most wasn’t the singing (though it’s beautiful) or the visuals (which are stunning). It was the quiet violence of judgment. The way Elphaba is looked at. Talked about. Excluded. Mocked. Not for what she did, but for who she is. Her green skin becomes a metaphor for everything society labels as “too much”: too dark, too loud, too queer, too poor, too different.
The brilliance of Wicked lies in how it uses fantasy to probe very real issues. Elphaba’s otherness is not just skin-deep; it’s a symbol of all the ways society alienates the different, be it by race, class, sexual orientation, ability, or even species, as we see in the plight of Dr Dillamond, the once-respected animal professor who is slowly being silenced in a world that is systematically erasing animals from spaces of thought and authority. His line, “I’m the last of my kind,” is a quiet scream about extinction, not just of species, but of inclusion, empathy, and memory.
When Elphaba explodes with rage, declaring, “No one should be scorned or laughed at or looked down upon or told to stop jabbering and keep quiet,” it’s more than a line in a fantasy script. It’s a reckoning, a truth that haunts our everyday lives. This is not just about Elphaba. It’s about anyone who has ever been told that their existence is inconvenient, that their voice should be muted, or that their truth is too loud for the comfort of others.
The film’s critique of conformity sharpens further in its depiction of the Wizard of Oz (Jeff Goldblum), not a saviour, but a manipulator whose charm masks cruelty. His plan to silence animals and erase their history is chillingly reminiscent of regimes and ideologies that erase, rewrite, or criminalize the presence of “undesirable” groups. Madame Morrible (Michelle Yeoh) becomes the arm of that system, enforcing fear under the guise of order.
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Even Fiyero (Jonathan Bailey) adds another dimension, the journey of the privileged ally, who starts indifferent, even shallow, but slowly begins to see the cracks in the world he’s been coasting through. His character, like Glinda’s, reminds us that neutrality in the face of injustice is not innocence, it’s complicity.
Watching Wicked, I kept asking myself: Why do we fear the different? Why do we teach children to colour inside the lines, speak only when spoken to, and blend in to survive? What happens to the ones who can’t—or won’t?
This isn’t just a fantasy about Oz. It’s about all the spaces where we push people out for being too much. It’s about racism, queerphobia, ableism, classism, all the ways we build walls between “us” and “them.”
But it’s also about hope. The kind of hope that doesn’t come in bright lights and fairy godmothers, but in quiet acts of resistance. In choosing to speak when silence is easier. In being misunderstood but still standing tall.
Wicked doesn’t offer a perfect ending. It offers something better in the form of a question. One that stays with you: What makes someone wicked? And perhaps more importantly: What does that say about us?
So if you’re watching Wicked just for the songs and sparkle, go ahead. But if you’re ready to feel something deeper, to confront your own biases, to grieve for the ones we’ve failed, to find your own green skin, then this movie might just become a part of you.
Wicked is now streaming on Showmax. And maybe, just maybe, it’s the story we didn’t know we needed.
