The following contains massive spoilers for the “Wicked” musical.

Read at your own risk.

Following up from the thread in my previous post, what jars me the most out of “Wicked” is that a great deal of Act 2 doesn’t make sense from a storytelling point of view, and according to some people I’ve asked, doesn’t make sense to others who at least know about Oz through the MGM musical.

I realise now that I made a mistake in my previous post. In the musical, Elphaba does do one pretty bad thing of her own accord (though the definition of ‘bad’ is subjective): she turns Boq into the Tin Man. While this twist makes no sense to people who’ve read Frank Baum’s “Wonderful Wizard of Oz” and know the Tin Man’s real backstory, it does serve its purpose in the musical, giving the audience that little jolt of surprise. I know I heard people gasp when I watched it in the theatre. Even so, this event happens long after Elphaba has supposedly been established as the Wicked Witch of the West in Oz, so it’s a little late to try proving why she instills terror wherever she goes.

It makes even less sense following this, because when Dorothy arrives and meets both Witches for the first time outside her fallen farmhouse, Elphaba is still good. It’s only after this confrontation that Elphaba loses it, and announces that decision in the powerful No Good Deed. When I first bought the recording and listened to the music, I was under the impression that No Good Deed takes place before Dorothy arrives in Oz, so that when she crash-lands, the little farmgirl’s first impression of the Wicked Witch of the West is that of an Elphaba who has already been skewed beyond all recognition from the wide-eyed Elphaba who appears at the beginning of Act 1.

The show also has a tendency to insert jokes into highly inappropriate moments. The West End version does away with most of those jokes, which is a tremendous relief, but it’s worth mentioning that some of those jokes do not belong in moments of gravity, such as the kung-fu wand move on the site of Dorothy’s farmhouse. It’s hilarious, and on its own I love the joke, but really, Elphaba had just lost her sister, and her corpse is still (presumably) right there within view under the house, and to insert a chuckle at that moment leaves a bitter aftertaste. Nessarose is just as much a tragic character as Elphaba, and it makes me uncomfortable that even in death, she isn’t given any respect.

I’ll skip over the other small things and move on to the finale, which contains the ultimate twist: Elphaba was never allergic to water, and actually survived the final ‘battle’ with Dorothy.

I understand why a happy ending was chosen. I’m assuming the argument is that since the audience has become so invested in Elphaba and her life-journey, it would be too heartbreaking for her to die in the end. To that I say: whoa, what a Hollywood-style cop-out. Quite a few people prefer the happy ending, but for me personally, it has just undone everything that was powerful and mesmerizing about the journey we just witnessed Elphaba go through. It’s not a tragedy anymore, and all the foreshadowing has come to nought.

I would have much preferred to mourn over the loss of this character I’d fallen in love with, because that would have definitely cemented her memory. Sad endings don’t destroy a story – look at Les Miserables, Romeo and Juliet, Gone with the Wind and, though I’m loathe to say it, the ridiculously successful Titanic film. But this is my own personal view of the matter, and that’s what I’m writing about.

On the flipside, I feel that the real tragedy of the musical lies on the shoulders of Glinda, who funnily enough, ends up being fleshed-out more than I thought she would be. Intentional or not, I personally believe that in the opening number when she sings, “Goodness knows the wicked’s lives are lonely; goodness knows the wicked die alone” she’s actually singing about herself, and the wicked things she’s done, especially her turning on Elphaba for her own gain. It’s actually fascinating that her opening number of Act 2, Thank Goodness has a darkness creeping just underneath the chirpy lyrics as she quietly admits to herself how she’s betrayed Elphaba, but cannot (or does not) want to do anything about it.

Speaking of creepy, surely there are others who’ve realised that in the finale, Glinda let her best friend die. No matter that Elphaba told Glinda to stay out of the sight, the fact that Glinda heard Elphaba scream and saw shadows of what happened means that as far as Glinda knows, Elphaba died and she did absolutely nothing about it. This bothers me a great deal, because the whole show is built around the friendship of these two characters, and allowing your best friend to die isn’t very nice. Elphaba’s just as guilty, faking her own death and then letting Glinda go the rest of her life with survivor’s guilt. Their actions undercut everything they’d declared in the touching duet For Good.

In my own personal version of the musical, when they sing For Good, it’s in the style of An American Tail’s Somewhere Out There, with Glinda far away at the Emerald City, and free from the sin of inaction.

I’d mentioned previously that the ending itself of Elphaba living happily ever after with Fiyero makes no sense, but it’s worth repeating that again: the Scarecrow is too busy ruling Oz from the Emerald City to run off in secret with his fugitive lover.

In conclusion, “Wicked” is a highly enjoyable show, and I’m very glad of its success, but to ignore its flaws would be to wear the biggest blinders and disrespect L. Frank Baum’s original story.