In Defense Of Wicked: For Good. Elphaba & Glinda’s Love Story Finds Strength In Its Sincerity

L to R: Ariana Grande is Glinda and Cynthia Erivo is Elphaba in WICKED FOR GOOD, directed by Jon M. Chu.

Spoilers ahead. There’s been a lot of talk about the door. If you’ve seen Wicked: For Good, you know exactly which door I mean. During “For Good,” the movie’s title track, Cynthia Erivo’s Elphaba and Ariana Grande’s Glinda dramatically say their goodbyes to each other through a crumbling barrier, and through tears, of course. At the end of this scene, Glinda and Elphaba exchange three words that — until now — were forbidden in the world composer Stephen Schwartz created: “I love you.” 

The moment, like most things in director Jon M. Chu’s Wicked universe, is devastatingly emotional, maximized to elicit big feelings from the audience, and anchored by two performances that, no matter how saccharine the material, pull the film back down to the ground. If “Defying Gravity” was a confrontation between a budding radical and a well-meaning white moderate about how power co