I HAVE TO SAY…

Soo, if you don’t know, I started a podcast, and it’s actually linked to this blog!

The first episode was tied to this blog post about my takeaways and lessons from 2025. The second is tied to this post about my obsession- Heated Rivalry.

This third episode is about Wicked & Wicked: For Good. Well, more so about Glinda’s role in these movies. Below is a slightly (not very much) edited version of the podcast episode. Thank you for reading and/or listening!

So, today, I have to say…Glinda is a villain!  I don’t care, I don’t care, she’s a villain in my eyes and I have to speak my truth.

I’m not saying I don’t like her character. I do! She’s funny, she be hitting her notes, Ariana Grande did a great job portraying her, but I fear her action (and inaction) gets tossed aside and swept under the rug and I will not stand for it any longer! You’re falling for propaganda people! I say as respectfully as I can.

I will only be talking about the movies and there’s no way for me to talk about this without spoiling some details.

About Wicked

So, there are two main characters in Wicked, Glinda, The Good Witch, who always wears pink and Elphaba, The Wicked Witch, who is green.

The movies are narrated by Glinda, and the beginning of the first movie shows everyone celebrating the death of the Wicked Witch as Glinda visits them to confirm the news. Someone asks The Good Witch if it’s true that they were friends, to which Glinda says yes, and then corrects herself to say that they knew each other.  And then we go back in time to learn about how they met. 

In the first movie, we learn how Elphaba gets the title of “Wicked Witch” and in the second movie, we see Elphaba try to evade capture, spread the truth, and free the animals.

Friendship???

I think we can all agree that Glinda is selfish and vain. Selfishness and being vain may not make her a villain, but it does give some background into her character and an explanation behind some of the choices she makes, and doesn’t make, throughout the movie. It’s actually part of why I think she’s not a good friend to Elphaba.

One of my main issues with this movie is that the press tour focused so much on the friendship in this universe, but the friendship isn’t actually portrayed on screen. I promise I’ll get to the villain of it all, but first, I need to set the scene. 

In Wicked For Good, I believed that Glinda and Elphaba loved each other, but I really think that’s because of Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande’s acting, because I didn’t understand why they loved each other so deeply. I think the writers of the movie were relying on the IP and the fans to do some heavy lifting in regard to their “friendship.”

Glinda was a bully in the first movie, joining in if not leading in ridiculing and outcasting Elphaba and she only stopped because Elphaba did something kind for her, which Galinda honestly didn’t deserve. And after Elphaba’s good deed, Glinda decides to take her under her wing and that’s when we get the “Popular” song. A great song, but a song where she wants to change Elphaba’s appearance like all good friends do.

But seriously, what does Glinda do for Elphaba in either of the movies? Elphaba continuously says Glinda’s name and invites her into the rooms she is in, when it comes to learning magic and meeting the wizard, and what does Glinda do for her?

Not turn her in? Sure…but she doesn’t help her either. She doesn’t make progress towards completing Elphaba’s mission of freeing the animal until the very end, and it took Elphaba’s death for Glinda to get there.

I don’t fault Glinda for not getting on the broomstick with Elphaba or going on the run with her. Glinda’s hesitance to literally leap into the unknown and be painted as an enemy of the state is a human and realistic response. If we’re being honest, I’m pretty sure more of us in real life would not make that leap and not everyone is meant to be an activist in that way.

But, seeing where we pick up in the second movie, seeing Glinda’s response and Glinda and Elphaba reconnecting after all this time they spent apart, it just made me wonder more about their friendship.  Because the second they reconnect, Glinda wants to broker a meeting between Elphaba and the person partially responsible for the public campaign against her, who is lying to the entire town, and has been shown not to care about anyone who is a threat to his power.

And yes, Elphaba did take Glinda’s man, but 1) to me, that was a PR relationship at best and I personally don’t think Glinda or Fiyero actually loved each other. Glinda was drawn to his looks and his status in my opinion. And 2) that is not justification for selling out your FRIEND’s SISTER.

I’ve seen and heard the reasoning. She didn’t know that Madame Marbel was going to kill her. She didn’t mean for her to get hurt, and it’s just a willfully naive excuse. Glinda knows these people are calling for a hate campaign at best, public execution at worst of Elphaba and are engaging in mass manipulation for power, and you thought they were going to do what exactly??

Even if Glinda’s idea that Madame Marbel was going just to threaten harm against Elphaba’s sister, not end her life, that is still a wild thing for a friend to do!

Dig Deeper

“But the point of the movie is that people aren’t all good and all bad. Glinda made bad choices but in the end, she did the right thing.”

Sure. In two movies and at least 4 hours, and again, after her friend’s death, Glinda finally did decide to speak up and use her voice for good. The Grimmorie opened up for her, and things ended on a hopeful note. 

But to be honest, I actually hated this ending. And I’ve seen some arguments that neither Glinda or Elphaba truly got a happy ending, because Elphaba had to leave the land she called home and Glinda was pretty much left alone to rebuild Oz. And while I can see that, all Galinda wanted was attention and magic.  The first half of the first movie shows how much Glinda loves being the center of attention and the second movie shows her stepping into her role of being the spokesperson of OZ that people can look up to and seek her for comfort. 

And it’s a role she has only got because Elphaba brought her into the fold.

Even though Glinda ends up alone, without her *clears throat* best friend, she did end up getting what she wanted, just at the expense of other people and resulting in her loneliness. To me, this is more like a “be careful what you wish for situation,”  because at the end of the day, she can still rebuild her life in her home. It’s not all bad for her.

But back to your point, about the movie being about how people aren’t all good and all bad.

I think that’s a fair takeaway from the movie. In trying to do good, sometimes you accidentally do harm, like Elphaba wasn’t all good. If we’re gonna be real the cowardly lion was annoying, but he was a representation of this, because you’re not really “saving” anyone if you do not give them the resources to survive without you. 

At the same time he wouldn’t have been able to speak about this transgression if they didn’t save him in the first place, which is ironic.

But at the end of the movie, Elphaba embraced her “wickedness.” She was both good and bad or neither good or bad depending on how you decide to look at it. At the same time, Glinda was both harmful in continuing to spread propaganda about her friend but also was comfort to the citizens. So, in that way you can say she was good and bad as well.

But, as I posted on threads, I do think this idea that people have many sides to them, that people are multi-faceted and capable of both good and bad or good and harm is a surface level takeaway from these movies and there is room to dive deeper.

Because people having good and bad within them doesn’t automatically make them neutral. The good and the bad don’t always negate each other when decisions carry their own weight and we can really take this conversation into ethics territory and talk more about morality. 

Because Glinda’s bad choices include not using her platform, and while eventually she does, it doesn’t erase the losses that occurred because of how long she waited to do so. And maybe she did feel unsafe and that’s why she never did, but if she did feel unsafe, I don’t think the movie captured this well enough to work as a justification for me on why she was silent for so long. 

It’s engrained in my mind how in the beginning of the second movie, Glinda and Fiyero have a conversation where Fiyero questions how she can lie to everyone about Elphaba so easily.

And Glinda says it’s hard, but people look up to her and then Fiyero says something along the lines of Glinda just liking the attention and Glinda says, “what’s wrong with that?” In this moment, Fiyero tries to wake Glinda up, to get Glinda to look at her position in the world and she chooses not to, which is why I find Glinda to be naive and willfully ignorant.

Willfully ignorant

Throughout the movie, Glinda is positioned to be dumb and to not really know what is going on, but I just can’t, or maybe I’m refusing, to see a world where Glinda didn’t understand her position in the world and the reality of the situation.

We already know the Glinda is selfish and likes attention, and she admitted herself there’s nothing wrong with enjoying the fanfare she’s gotten, so I don’t think it’s a reach to say that if she truly didn’t understand what was going on, if she didn’t understand that she was a spokesperson against Elphaba and if she didn’t understand why Elphaba was on the run, it’s simply because she didn’t want to understand it.

It’s hard to admit when you’re perpetuating something harmful, and easier to just pretend you don’t see how exactly it is harmful. 

But the thing is, Glinda is shown the harm being done throughout the movie. How could she know that her friend is on the run and not understand the severity of the situation? How could she have that conversation with Fiyero, who straight up asks her to help him find Elphaba, and then continue telling the public how wicked Elphaba is. How could she know the wizard has no real power and is locking up animals, and then ask Elphaba to meet with him.

Her thought process makes no sense to me, and the only way I can see her not connecting the dots is because she chooses not to. Glinda is not a citizen of Oz, who is only believing what is being fed to her. She knows the truth, she has the pieces of the puzzle and chooses not to put it together, even when she is being shown how the pieces fit. Instead, she stays in her bubble

Propaganda

So, yes, friendship is technically a theme in the Wicked movies, even though I don’t really believe in their friendship. Another theme could be that people all have wickedness in them. People are capable of both good and bad and it’s not so black and white.

But, Wicked is about propaganda. The entire movie is about how easy it is to fall for propaganda, and contribute to propaganda, and spread propaganda. The movie shows how propaganda can ruin lives and how it is used by those in power and their justifications for doing so.

The wizard tells Elphaba people won’t believe them if they just admit that  the wizard doesn’t have any magic.

And…really quick, I hate that line. I mean it works perfectly in the movie, and it can apply to real life, but I mean I hate that it’s the justification the wizard uses to continue lying to people. Maybe that’s by design. Because while I find it to be true, it strips the entire situation and puts the fault on the Ozians when the wizard has been brainwashing them for years. He created a situation for people to put their full trust in him, created a scapegoat in the animals, and discredited and attempted to silence and Elphaba and anyone who speaks out against him and then wonders why it would be so hard for people to reconcile the truth with their belief system when they’ve been brainwashed. 

The line takes away his accountability, and maybe it’s meant to, but it’s only part of the story.

Anyway, I’m going on a tangent, this movie is primarily about propaganda. So even though the cowardly lion and the tin man’s anger seems misplaced, it makes sense when they have believed this lie about Elphaba the entire time.

Why I don’t leave much room for Glinda is because she is one of the few characters who knows the truth. She has had a front row seat to everything. She knows Elphaba, they were close, they were friends, and she continues playing the game to keep her position. And as I say that, I could see a world where she plays the game to keep herself safe, but that would mean Glinda would be acknowledging the harm that she’s caused and the harm that could fall on Elphaba if she was caught, and that’s just something I don’t remember being shown in the movie.

Fiyero is Glinda’s mirror. Fiyero also cares deeply for Elphaba. Fiyero is in a position of power. And you know what, Fiyero doesn’t even have the full truth the way that Glinda does, but he saw something wrong once and he knows Elphaba’s character, and decided to use his power to find Elphaba and protect her. Fiyero didn’t buy into the propaganda, which means it is possible not to fall for it, and he went against the grain when presented with the opportunity to do so.

Glinda is like a celebrity figure or a politician in that world. She has influence. She knows people trust her and believe in her, and I wholeheartedly believe if she changed her messaging, telling the truth about the wizard, or even just told the truth about how she was Elphaba’s friend and Elphaba wasn’t wicked, there would be people who listened to her because she was a big piece of the propaganda machine even as a puppet and people look up to her. 

Is Glinda a Villain?

So back to villainy. A villain according to Google today 1/16/26 is a character whose evil actions or motives are important to the plot. By Mirriam-Webster, it’s defined as a character in a story or play who opposes the hero, a deliberate scoundrel or criminal, and one blamed for a particular evil or difficulty.

People have disagreed with me about Glinda being a villain because they don’t find her intentionally harmful, but motives are only some of it. I find her inaction to be evil. Maybe if Elphaba wasn’t painted as her friend, maybe if the movie embraced a PG-13 rating and showed Glinda in tough situations with Madame Marble or struggling more with her role as a puppet, I could actually sympathize with the position Glinda was in. I personally didn’t feel that much sympathy for her. 

I just feel like she always conveniently finds herself in the positions she wants to be in and off the back of Elphaba, which I don’t appreciate.

I also believe, in the movie specifically, Elphaba is the hero. The movies are about Elphaba and her journey. We see her outcasted her entire life, and struggle and grow with her magic. Elphaba discovers truths and is manipulated, she accidentally causes harm  and  fights for injustice, even if she is the only one fighting. She falls in love, and is heartbroken, and finds ways to start over again.

Wicked is Elphaba’s story, she is the “hero” and if at the forefront of this movie, is Elphaba and Glinda, would that make Glinda the villain? At least a little bit?

Okay maybe, that’s a reach but Glinda’s role is important in the story and her actions (or inactions, yes I will keep saying that) are also important, filling the requirements of being a villain by definition.

If Glinda wasn’t white, thin, and blonde, i don’t think her role as written in the movie would be given so much grace. 

In America, we like to victimize white women, consciously or unconsciously, and I think Glinda’s character very much shows a “white women’s mentality.” 

Not once, except for the end when she freed the animals, did she think or care about them because it didn’t affect her.  And the ending is a little ambiguous though we see her announcing everyone is welcome, we have no way of knowing how that actually plays out. Even when she confronted the wizard, she still had Elphaba’s help with the green bottle left behind.

Glinda didn’t turn in Elphaba and gave her the opportunity to run whenever she could, but she also started fighting her in the street after giving away her sister’s shoes, the sister whose death she helped to coordinate, whether she meant to or not. 

I just find Glinda’s selfishness and inability and unwillingness to think things through to be out of control, and I refuse to give her the benefit of the doubt when all she has to do is speak up.

@babbity.kate on Tik Tok made some points about the ending for Glinda that I agree with, and I think is part of why I have been so hard on her as a character in this movie.

Simply put she says that the ending of the movie positions her in a way that she gets to be the one who fixes everything without having to do any of the work. Glinda gets the glory of righting things in Oz with a simple announcement that the animals can live freely, and they come out and everyone lives in harmony and that’s the end. 

This and the grimorrie opening for Glinda waters down her character arc to me, because it feels like Glinda gets rewarded for speaking up when it’s easy to and not when it’s necessary. 

And also, I don’t fully understand why she has to live with the lie that Elphaba was wicked.

Maybe the truth would be disorienting to the Ozians, but that doesn’t justify letting them live with the lie. She’s even asked directly if they were friends, so that means there are whispers that they were, and glinda downplays it when she doesn’t have because she ran Madame Marbel and The Wizard out of town. Also, there’s still a portion of animals who can’t talk, so even if they do get to live together in harmony or whatever, they’re not disabled because of the system she helped contribute to. 

Conclusion

So, before I let you go, I want to shoutout Elphaba, because she did the right thing, even when it was hard and even when she was alone. Cynthia Erivo’s portrayal of her has made me cry multiple times and her and Ariana Grande’s singing was on point.

I also want to shoutout creator @abaetol on Tik Tok and @notwildin on tik tok because their takes on Tik Tok helped validate my feelings about the movie as well and helped me feel sane as well. I was fighting for my life on threads.

I had a great time with this movie after walking out of the theatres, but as I sit with it, and even months later, parts of it bother me, including seeing how people talk about Glinda as a character.

Of course, Glinda is likeable and funny, but that’s kind of the point. She comes across unassuming and innocent, but I think that’s what makes her dangerous. Because she actively perpetuated propaganda against her friend, stayed silent about injustices occurring, and then she cried a few times, spoke out once, and all is supposed to be forgiven? 

It just doesn’t sit well with me when she really did the bare minimum and only after her friend died. 

We can say that the part of wicked is acknowledging everyone can be harmful and helpful. Everyone has good and bad moments, but if you say that, you have to really examine all parts of the spectrum, and not just the palatable ones. She may be a hero in some people’s stories, but that would also make her a villain in others.

And as I said, for me different choices and different outcomes carry different weights and I carry more weight to what she didn’t do, because she caused a lot of harm and not enough time passed for her to right her wrongs in my eyes.

Glinda reminds me of a certain political group that has some of its members waking up thinking, “What did I do?” when the damage has been done. That’s not to say it’s good that Tr*mp supporters are finding out he’s a ***** and the ***** ********* and a ***** ** **** but I do side eye them for taking so long to figure it out.

I personally find Glinda to be a villain, and you may disagree, but I hope we can all agree, as viewers who live outside of their world and have a full picture of what’s going on, she’s not a hero either.

Listen to the accompanying podcast episode, here or wherever you get your podcasts.