The real reason Glinda can’t use magic on villains

Stop your journey down the yellow brick road if you don’t yet know the full story of “Wicked” – there are spoilers ahead!

When we first meet Galinda Upland – played by pop star and actress Ariana Grande Butera – in director Jon M. Chu’s epic musical Wicked: Part One, she is a new student at Shi’s University desperate to prove herself, especially to the school’s students. Dean of Magic, Madam Morrible (Michelle Yeoh). There’s just one problem: Galinda doesn’t have a particularly strong natural inclination toward magic and sorcery, and to make matters worse, her new roommate, the green-skinned Elphaba Throop (Cynthia Erivo), He does He possesses an innate affinity for magical arts.

So, what’s the deal here? Why wouldn’t Galinda, who eventually changes her name to Glinda (in honor of Dr. Delamund, Peter Dinklage’s teacher, a goat who has a problem with the “ah” sound and is cast out when Oz cruelly suppresses the animals in society), a naturally gifted witch—and to this Point being, how could someone who apparently couldn’t perform magic be known as Glinda the Good Witch? (At the beginning of “Villains: Part One,” we see The very end Of the entire story, in which Glinda presides over a group of Oosies celebrating the apparent death of Elphaba, the “Wicked Witch of the West.”) Did Glinda really learn to practice magic or is it all just a clever illusion? Here’s why Glinda struggles to perform spells in the musical “Wicked” and its film adaptations, and whether or not that’s changing. (The simple answer is “maybe.”)

From the beginning of “Wicked: Part One”, we see Glinda – as the Good Witch later in the timeline – “performing” some magic in “No One Mourns for the Wicked”, but based on her time at Shiz University, she is a young woman who Galinda is certainly… It has no connection to magic. Elphaba is constantly unknowingly casting spells and magic, making it very clear to Lady Morrible that she is an extremely talented witch… but Galinda is stuck… Begging The Dean of Magic for a spot in one of her classes (she brags about her research paper on magic wands and whether or not they have a “purpose” to try to force her way into the seminar, which is very funny). As thanks for “helping” Elphaba’s younger sister Nessarose (Marissa Pudi) in pursuing the Puck Woodsman (Ethan Slater), Elphaba convinces Lady Morrible to let Galinda study with them…and when Galinda realizes this, she stops trying to publicly humiliate Elphaba and the two become fast friends.

The most telling moment in “Wicked: Part One,” regarding Galinda’s inherent magical abilities, occurs before Ariana Grande-Butera’s stunning number “Popular,” when Galinda informs Elphaba that she will use her wand to alter the green witch’s abilities. A “dress” or “coat” (which Galinda then calls a “fruit”) in a different item of clothing. Galinda’s attempts at spell casting are played for laughs, but this sequence also betrays a simple truth: Galinda doesn’t seem capable of doing any magic at all.

So is there any explanation for this Why Galinda doesn’t seem to have any natural magical powers? Yes, but it’s in a deleted scene! In the digital release of “Wicked,” fans were able to see a whole bunch of deleted scenes, including one explaining Galinda’s close friendship with Pfanny (Bowen Yang) and Shinshin (Bronwyn James) and another where Elphaba and Puck have a little heart-to-heart about love. Unrequited (Puck carries a torch for Galinda, while Elphaba falls in love with Galinda’s friend Prince Fierro Tigelaar, played by Jonathan Bailey). But what we focus on is It is one of the stories where Elphaba tells Galinda why she does not have an innate way to control magic.

After Elphaba and Fiyero save a lion cub from becoming a test subject for Shiz’s horrific experiments, Elphaba returns to her room to find Galinda attempting to perform a basic flotation spell, only for Galinda to ask why magic is so difficult for her. Elphaba shares a theory that Galinda’s privileged life has been easy… making it difficult for her to access her potential magical powers. Afterwards, Galinda told her friend that she was going to help take care of the lion cub in Fiyero’s place, cementing their friendship. and Galinda’s kind and thoughtful side… “I’ll never leave you behind again,” Elphaba says to her friend. (Unfortunately, that’s not true, but Elphaba doesn’t really know that yet.)

At the end of “Wicked: Part One” – which ends with Elphaba’s powerful song “Defying Gravity”, which marks the same ending point as the first act of the musical – Elphaba He does Leave Glinda (without the “uh”) behind, largely because Madam Morrible and the Wizard of Oz (a completely irreverent Jeff Goldblum) are on their trail after Elphaba makes several disturbing discoveries about the Wizard. (These revelations include, in no particular order, that the wizard is an imposter who cannot read from the magical book known as the Grimmerie, wants to use Elphaba to perform gruesome magic, and believes in subjugating talking animals.) Elphaba creates a flying broomstick and flees from Madam Morrible and the wizard, leaving Glinda to fend for herself By herself; As we see in Nobody Mourns for the Wicked, Glinda has become a spokesperson for the evil wizard’s regime, “celebrating” her friend’s death (although Ariana Grande Butera’s performance includes a few excellent moments where we see flashes of her inner conflict).

So, does any of this mean that in “Wicked: For Good” — the upcoming second “Wicked” movie, named after love couple Elphaba and Galinda — we’ll see Glinda performing real magic? That remains to be determined. Glinda will spend the second half of the narrative largely “at odds” with Elphaba for political reasons before swooping inside her magical pink bubble to seemingly save the day in the end (assuming “For Good” follows the musical “Wicked” as closely as it did.” Part One”) and Madam Morrible and the Magician were arrested for being huge jerks. Wait – let’s talk about that pink bubble for a second.

The whole wizard deal in ‘Wicked’ and The 1939 film “The Wizard of Oz” boils down to the fact that in all versions of this familiar story, he was a giant trickster. He’s not a powerful, all-seeing magical being; He’s just a guy from Nebraska who can’t do magic. (This isn’t meant to be disparaging regarding Nebraska, by the way; he’s just lying about that while also lying about being able to do magic.) With that in mind, let’s consider Glinda’s “magical” floating pink bubble, which serves as her main form of transitivity . Is it really magic created by her big, shiny magic wand, or is it a trick?

It’s too good to be the last. When Glinda arrives in Munchkinland as news spreads that the Wicked Witch of the West is no longer around, she repeatedly “pops” and “pops” her (seemingly soundproof?) bubble so she can talk to the Munchkins. However, based on the fact that the wizard – although certainly non-magical – is an extremely skilled inventor, he certainly could have designed a mechanically controlled flying bubble for Glinda to use. It is too It seems It’s like she’s pressing a button to “pop” and “un-pop” the thing, which might be further evidence that neither the wizard nor Glinda are actually wizards, and that the citizens of Oz should be paying more attention to the man behind the curtain…or the woman In the bubble, as it were.

“Wicked: Part One,” in which Glinda doesn’t perform any real magic that we know of, is available for rent or purchase on major streaming platforms now. “Wicked: For Good” is currently scheduled to hit theaters on November 21, 2025.