{"id":1151160,"date":"2025-06-09T05:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-06-09T09:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thoughtcatalog.com\/?p=1151160"},"modified":"2025-06-06T15:57:21","modified_gmt":"2025-06-06T19:57:21","slug":"how-will-wicked-for-good-end-like-the-book-or-musical","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thoughtcatalog.com\/nina-sterle\/2025\/06\/how-will-wicked-for-good-end-like-the-book-or-musical\/","title":{"rendered":"How Will ‘Wicked: For Good’ End\u2014Like The Book Or Musical?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Major spoiler alerts for those who haven\u2019t watched the musical or read the book ahead.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dedicated fans of \u201cWicked\u201d (both the book and the musical) know that there\u2019s one massive difference between the original book and the stage adaptation: In the book, Elphaba dies at the end.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This leaves a significantly more tragic ending for the least-liked witch in all of Oz. In the musical, she simply runs away, never to be heard from again. But the book version sees Elphaba actually melting when Dorothy throws the bucket of water over her. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Instead of running away with Fieryo, the two of them both perish (Fieryo doesn\u2019t even make it to become the Scarecrow, by the way \u2014 he instead meets a gruesome end at the hand of Oz\u2019s police force, and Elphaba later gaslights herself into hallucinating the fact that he transformed into the Scarecrow and secretly survived). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Though the \u201cWicked\u201d movie has stayed canon to the musical thus far, there is room for the filmmakers to pull the most shocking move of all time and actually kill off Elphaba at the end of the film. In both the musical and the book, everyone else in Oz believes that Elphaba is truly dead, regardless of whether she actually dies or runs away. This means that there isn\u2019t much character adaptation the filmmakers would need to do during the second act to kill off Elphaba for good.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, what are the signs as to whether Elphaba lives or dies?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, it\u2019s actually more likely that Elphaba will survive the entirety of the second act than be killed off. For one thing, we\u2019ve already seen leaked set images of Fieryo as the Scarecrow. In the book, Fieryo never becomes the Scarecrow; he dies before he has the chance to. The fact that Fieryo exists as the Scarecrow within the second part of the \u201cWicked\u201d movie likely indicates that Elphaba will also survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Also, in the first part of the movie \u201cWicked,\u201d you can see a cloaked figure riding away from Oz on horseback. In the musical, Elphaba escapes her untimely demise and runs away from Oz with Fieryo. Though only eagle-eyed viewers will notice this detail in the movie (it happens at the very beginning), the mysterious rider is implicated to be Elphaba \u2014 who, at this point in the movie, would have already survived Dorothy\u2019s water bucket and zipped out of Oz before anyone could notice that she faked her death.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s really no one else that this mystery figure could be \u2014 and the horse being ridden is clearly Fieryo\u2019s horse, to add to the foreshadowing. Fieryo, by the way, is still busy walking the Yellow Brick Road when this sequence is shown, which leaves only Elphaba to be riding his horse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To add to the idea that Elphaba will survive the movie, the book is significantly more gruesome and explicit than the musical. In it, Elphaba dissolves painfully in an acidic death. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The reason that water kills her in the book is actually because Elphaba is canonically allergic to water; her skin reacts to it as if it is acid. When she cries, her tears burn her face. She can\u2019t shower or bathe \u2014 she has to keep herself clean with special oils. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the movie, however, we\u2019ve already seen Elphaba cry a few different times \u2014 and her own tears don\u2019t harm her. We even saw her get rained on at one point during the film. This clearly proves that the movie is sticking to the musical\u2019s version of events, wherein water doesn\u2019t affect Elphaba at all. In this case, Elphaba won\u2019t actually be killed by Dorothy\u2019s water bucket.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although \u201cWicked\u201d part 2 hasn\u2019t released yet, we\u2019re pretty confident that both Elphaba and Fieryo will survive to see the end of the second film \u2014 with a couple key transformations, of course. We\u2019re mostly just hoping that Glinda will receive a happier ending herself, since neither the book or the musical version of Glinda is left with any hope that Elphaba has actually survived. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Major spoiler alerts for those who haven\u2019t watched the musical or read the book ahead.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":186664081,"featured_media":1151162,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"thoughtcatalog_call_to_action":"","tc_post_redirect":"","thoughtcatalog_is_sponsored_content":"0","footnotes":""},"categories":[603203627],"tags":[603230292,603230291,603230119,603230293,603230289],"anchortext":[],"posttemplate":[],"adcampaign":[],"coauthors":[603230217],"class_list":["post-1151160","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tv-movies","tag-ariana-grande","tag-cynthia-erivo","tag-movies","tag-musicals","tag-wicked"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thoughtcatalog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/wicked.jpg","author_meta":null,"photo_credit":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thoughtcatalog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1151160","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thoughtcatalog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thoughtcatalog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thoughtcatalog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/186664081"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thoughtcatalog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1151160"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thoughtcatalog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1151160\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1151163,"href":"https:\/\/thoughtcatalog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1151160\/revisions\/1151163"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thoughtcatalog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1151162"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thoughtcatalog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1151160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thoughtcatalog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1151160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thoughtcatalog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1151160"},{"taxonomy":"anchortext","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thoughtcatalog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/anchortext?post=1151160"},{"taxonomy":"posttemplate","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thoughtcatalog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posttemplate?post=1151160"},{"taxonomy":"adcampaign","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thoughtcatalog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/adcampaign?post=1151160"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thoughtcatalog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=1151160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}