The ending of the Wicked: For Good film had us all sobbing. But Elphaba’s ending was even more tragic in the original Wicked book than in the film. Sorry, gals.
At the end of Wicked: For Good, the Scarecrow is revealed to by a transformed Fiyero. He helps Elphaba fake her death, and they run away together to the Land Beyond Oz. But in the novel Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire, Elphaba doesn’t ride off into the sunset with Fiyero. Sozzles. This part of the ending is much sadder.
In order to get to Elphaba, the Wizard has Fiyero (as well as his wife, and one of their kids) murdered. Elphaba doesn’t manage to save him by using a spell from the Grimmerie to turn him into a scarecrow. She’s so sad about him dying that she falls into a coma for a year. As Elphaba becomes more paranoid and delusional, she convinces herself that the Scarecrow travelling with Dorothy is Fiyero in disguise, and that he is coming to rescue her.
I’m afraid it’s all a dream…
(Image via Universal Pictures)
The ending we saw in Wicked: For Good is essentially a fantasy in Elphaba’s head. She sends a swarm of bees picks apart the straw, but doesn’t find Fiyero underneath. It’s up to the reader to decide whether the Scarecrow somehow contains the spirit of Fiyero, or if Elphaba has just lost track of what is real and what isn’t.
Whether the Scarecrow is Fiyero or not, he absolutely doesn’t rescue Elphaba in the way she imagined. During a confrontation with Dorothy, Elphaba lights the end of her broom on fire. A fragment flutters off, and sets Elphaba’s skirt (as well as part of the castle) on fire. Dorothy shouts, “I will save you!” and chucks a bucket of rainwater at her. Dorothy does actually harm her, like in the original Oz books (and the 1939 The Wizard of Oz film). The book says: “An instant of sharp pain before the numbness. The world was floods above and fire below. If there was such a thing as a soul, the soul had gambled on a sort of baptism, and had it won?” She has visions of various characters as she dies.
Wicked: For Good almost seems cheerful compared to all this
(Image via Universal Pictures)
The book ends with: “She was dead, dead and gone, and all that was left of her was the carapace of her reputation for malice. ‘And there the wicked old Witch stayed for a good long time.’ ‘And did she ever come out?’ ‘Not yet’.”
In later Wicked books, there are hints that Elphaba might be around again. She communicates with her granddaughter, and it’s heavily implied she rescues Glinda from prison. But there isn’t a book in which Elphaba gets the romantic ending with Fiyero we saw in Wicked: For Good. Ah, sad times.
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Featured images via Universal Pictures.
