I don’t go looking for politics.

It finds me. Like trouble.

Good trouble, though—the kind Kamala Harris likes to name.

I went into Wicked: For Good expecting competence, maybe spectacle. What I didn’t expect was depth—nor the way its metaphors would land harder this time, sharper and less forgiving.

I’ve read the novel by Gregory Maguire—or most of it. I stalled somewhere around eighty percent on my Kindle, telling myself I’d finish it someday. (I still might.) But the films have their own language, and this sequel speaks fluently in allegory.

The first installment already established the core themes: animal welfare and rights, the vilification of women who refuse acceptable shapes, and the dangerous comfort of spectacle—of believing in a wizard because believing is easier than thinking. The mythic man behind the curtain has never felt more contemporary.

Here, those ideas don’t merely continue. They intensify.

Feminism? Off the charts.

Women in Wicked are not required to choose between goodness and power, beauty and menace. They can be radiant in pink or feared in black—and still soar. That’s what unsettles the world of Oz most: female power that is morally complex and emotionally grounded. Feminine power that can be tender and relentless.

We see it in Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo), whose terrifying mercy saves Boq by transforming him into aluminum. We see it in Madame Morrible (Michelle Yeoh), whose cruelty is weaponized as weather, setting the canonical tragedy in motion. This is not sanitized magic. It is consequence-driven power.

And then there’s the Wizard.

Casting Jeff Goldblum (as the Wizard) was inspired. Goldblum specializes in layered performance: serious, mock-serious, and mock-mock-serious—sometimes all at once. He can be ironic about irony. (His single-line cameo in Annie Hall—“I forgot my mantra”—says it all.) He also has a gift for the supporting turn that quietly steadies the room: in The Switch, he plays the wise and wisecracking best friend—the kind who leads his horse to water not by the rein, but by humored and gentle persuasion. It’s generosity without showboating, and it serves him well here.

In a story fundamentally about propaganda, Goldblum is exactly the magician you want pulling the levers.

The score—music and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz—is one of the great achievements of modern musical theatre. My favorite piece is “For Good,” the duet between Elphaba and Glinda (Ariana Grande). What makes it radical is not sentimentality, but refusal. These women do not become enemies over loving the same man. They choose loyalty over rivalry, memory over resentment.

Together, they are unmanageable. Unstoppable.

And then there is Fiyero (Jonathan Bailey). The prince does not fall for the princess in the tiara. He falls for Elphaba—the woman the world fears, misunderstands, and erases. In doing so, he learns to see differently. Beauty, here, is not conventional. It is perceptual. The crucial line shared between them—it’s not lying; it’s learning to see differently—lands with softness and sincerity.

The ending (yes—spoilers) reframes everything we thought we knew. Dorothy does not simply arrive as an innocent force of chaos. The film strongly implies she is part of the ruse. The bucket of water becomes collaboration, not accident.

So we have three feminine archetypes working in concert:

the Wicked Witch,

the Pretty Princess,

and the Innocent Child.

Together, they outwit the Big Bad.

The women remain friends.

The child goes home—or wakes up.

The lovers walk into the sunset.

The animals are freed.

And the citizens finally learn the truth.

Wicked: For Good is not subtle. But it is sincere. It insists that difference is not danger, that power does not require cruelty, and that solidarity—especially among women who follow their instincts and open their hearts—is the most formidable force for change, and also our best hope.

And honestly?

That feels like exactly the story we need right now.