This article contains spoilers for Wicked Acts One and Two.
The Wicked movie is officially out and people have opinions. Notably, they have incorrect opinions. If you haven’t been bombarded by absolutely awful hot takes about the characters in Wicked, consider yourself lucky. Unfortunately, I haven’t been nearly as blessed. I swear I lose a year of my life span every time I see a TikTok describing how “maturing is realizing Glinda was the real villain.” I’m not entirely sure where this interpretation of Glinda’s character comes from.
Sure, she has Dorothy walk the yellow brick road and meet a Wizard she knows is a fraud. Sure, at first, she’s not a particularly good person. But that doesn’t actually make her the story’s villain.
Glinda is not the villain
I had thought this was rather obvious. Wicked is very notably a piece about fascism, government control, and systemic issues. The plot clearly frames Elphaba and Glinda as people with very differing backgrounds and expectations for their lives.
Elphaba, who’s been treated poorly her whole life due to her green skin, and Glinda, who’s always gotten everything she’s wanted, have very different beliefs about the world in which they live. Glinda is incredibly privileged and exists in a system that’s always benefited her. It’s not surprising that she trusts it even through the final song of the movie, “Defying Gravity,” and Elphaba’s decision to leave.
It’s important to understand that Elphaba and Glinda are both experiencing the system working exactly as it’s meant to. Oz, like the real world, is set up to favor those with power, status, and influence.
Glinda is a highly manipulative character who absolutely knows what she’s doing. Her interaction with Boq in “Dancing Through Life,” where she distracts him from his quest to ask her out by convincing him to ask Nessarose, is a prime example.
She wields her social status like a weapon, which we can clearly see in the song “What Is This Feeling?” where she unites the school in supporting her in her tirade against Elphaba.
In the climactic moments of “Dancing Through Life,” Madame Morrible provides Glinda with her acceptance into her sorcery seminar and a training wand, something she only does because of Elphaba’s declaration that she will otherwise stop the lessons.
Immediately after, Elphaba enters in the hat Glinda gave her to wear when she invited her to the party in an act of cruelty. For Glinda, this moment is her first indication that she’s not a good person, despite the fact that everyone else seems to believe so. I don’t think that after this moment Glinda is immediately a good person. Her decision to risk social suicide and join Elphaba in the center of the dance floor is her first act of goodness. Befriending Elphaba is her second. But she isn’t a good person yet.
Just because the first movie ends with “Defying Gravity” doesn’t mean the story does. Act Two of the musical sees Glinda get everything she thought she wanted, and through it all, she realizes that she actually doesn’t want it. The opening song of the second act, “Thank Goodness,” plants the seeds of this idea, which we see continued all the way to the end of the show.
We’ve yet to see how the title of Glinda the Good becomes a reality for her character, not just a title thrust onto her to contrast her with Elphaba.
So…Who Is the villain?
One of my biggest problems with the internet’s decision that Glinda is the story’s villain is that it has a tendency to remove the real villains of the story from the conversation. I absolutely think that Glinda being complicit in the Wizard’s propaganda, manhunt for Elphaba, and general evil behaviors is problematic, but I think it’s interesting that so much of the conversation surrounds Glinda being complicit rather than the Wizard or Madame Morrible’s actions. I understand part of it is that Glinda is supposed to be one of our protagonists, but the Internet’s insistence that she’s “the real villain,” rather than the story’s actual villains, is really frustrating.
The story makes it pretty obvious that we aren’t supposed to view the Wizard positively. This tracks well with his characterization in both Wicked and the original L. Frank Baum’s novel, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.
He’s a liar and conman, and he always has been, ever since the first version of his character was released. He’s deliberately stripping the animals of their rights and ability to speak because he decided the people needed a common enemy and pronounced it was them.
Madame Morrible should also not be absolved of guilt. Her weather magic specialty is heavily implied to be the cause of the Great Drought, which caused so much suffering for the people of Oz. In Act Two, she uses her weather magic to create the tornado that brought Dorothy to Oz because she knew that Elphaba would come if something happened to her sister.
Final Thoughts
Look, if you absolutely think Glinda is the villain of the story, I don’t want to take that away from you. Considering this story is set up to parallel real life in many ways, I think it’s absolutely valid to not want to justify the actions of someone who knowingly joins and is complicit in the work of the fascist regime.
The parallels between Wicked and our real world grow more apparent each day, and Glinda’s participation in the government’s acts is not unseen.
But, in my own opinion, directing anger and blame at someone who’s at most a participant rather than the person in control prevents us from seeing our real enemy.
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