Why Is Dorothy Too Good To Appear In ‘Wicked: For Good’?

Spoilers, obviously …

I love the Wicked musical, and its film adaptation has left me twice blessed. However, I do make a questionable living critiquing art, so I’ve never shied away from expressing my concerns about Wicked’s final act — specifically everything that happens once the character Dorothy drops in.

Of course, Dorothy isn’t much of a character in the Wicked musical or Wicked: For Good. She’s never fully seen — presented as a metatextual allusion to Judy Garland’s performance in 1939’s The Wizard Oz — even though she plays a pivotal role in the climax. I should clarify that this is an issue with the musical and its film adaptations. Author Gregory Maguire’s book is told from the so-called Wicked Witch of the West’s perspective, but Dorothy is a more developed character.

Many Wicked fans online upbraided me for criticizing the musical/film’s narrative choice. Someone on Threads insisted, “[Dorothy is] literally a deus ex machina. She is not important. You learned everything you actually had to know about her.”

The “deus ex machina” — or “god from the machine” — is a famously inept plot device, when a seemingly unsolvable problem is resolved through a sudden and often random intervention. Back in the day, this would literally involve a “god” coming on stage through some mechanical contraption and fixing everything. So, no, Dorothy is not literally or even figuratively a “deus ex machina” because Wicked doesn’t suck. She is the direct consequence of Madame Morrible using her established witchy weather powers to create a tornado for the purpose of killing Elphaba’s sister Nessarose. Dorothy doesn’t resolve the plot, she escalates it once she runs off in Nessa’s shoes.

It’s unfortunate, because Wicked offers a compelling story within the sandbox of the Wizard of Oz mythos, but once Dorothy arrives in the final act, major plot elements are treated like a Saturday Night Live sketch: “LOL, Dorothy’s wearing a dead woman’s shoes!” “LOL, Dorothy can’t get home.”

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Someone else responded to me on Threads: “In the Wizard of Oz we knew nothing of Elphaba, Glinda or the Wizards backstories. This is their backstory. I think not showing Dorothy is smart. She’s Judy Garland. If children are curious of her story- they can watch the wizard of oz.”

But that’s not effective storytelling. Also, The Wizard of Oz itself never introduces characters/plot elements that require outside knowledge to understand. It’s arguably a less complex movie, so “evil witch wants her sister’s powerful magic slippers for the evulz” is sufficient backstory for that character. All the subsequent actions make sense internally.

The Wicked musical could lean heavily on the audience’s existing knowledge of The Wizard of Oz movie (more so than the original L. Frank Baum book), because, well, it’s Broadway. The musical also premiered in 2003, not that long after the movie’s annual airings on network television.

According to the Library of Congress, The Wizard of Oz is considered the most seen film in cinematic history. This is almost entirely due to those annual TV airings. They were major events, with celebrity hosts introducing the film. The Wizard of Oz was first broadcast on television in November 3, 1956. Over the next decade, more American households would start to own a color TV set, and “MGM’s technicolor triumph” was an ideal showcase for the format. From 1959 to 1991, the annual network airing of The Wizard of Oz was a family tradition. For the first few years, the film aired between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Later, it aired around Easter and Passover.

(Enjoy this clip from the 50th anniversary airing where Angela Lansbury describes the tortures of the damned the cast endured to bring you this family classic.)

Ted Turner purchased the MGM film archive in 1986, and The Wizard of Oz made its last appearance on network TV in 1998, when Ariana Grande was 5. It has aired exclusively on Turner-owned properties for almost 30 years. Thus, The Wizard of Oz has gone from network TV airings that reached tens of millions at their peak to cable airings that probably reach a little more than a quarter million viewers.

So, it’s not out of the question that a child or even a young adult could see the Wicked films before Wizard of Oz, and they could reasonably wonder who the pigtailed girl is in the gingham dress.

Something I’ve noticed whenever I mention my issues with Wicked post-Dorothy: The people who dismissively say “Just watch The Wizard of Oz” are the often the same ones who have criticized Marvel movies for requiring “homework” (watching other movies/TV shows) to understand what they’re currently watching.

However, I think Thunderbolts*, for example, still works on its own if you’ve never seen previous Marvel content. There is enough exposition to bring you up to speed. They don’t show a key character from behind or in the shadows with the expectation everyone knows who they are. Most importantly, if someone wonders, “I’m confused about this character and their whole deal,” the recommended “homework” would actually answer the question. Black Widow and Hawkeye offer a direct through line for Yelena’s character in Thunderbolts*. The Wizard of Oz in no way fills in the gaps from Wicked’s final act. Dorothy, for instance, is an entirely different character.

When we first see Dorothy (from behind) in Wicked: For Good, she’s leading Toto around on a leash. This is after the film has firmly established that animals are an oppressed minority in Oz. Of course, the Toto in Wizard of Oz was free range. That’s what caused all the trouble in the first place. It’s why Dorothy’s left behind in Oz. Viewers already can’t emotionally connect with Dorothy because we don’t see her face, but this particular choice from director Jon Chu seems to intentionally make us distrust her.

In the 1939 film, the Wizard just asks Dorothy and her crew for the Wicked Witch of the West’s broomstick. Her eventual death is arguably just a heist gone bad (though still technically felony murder).

In Wicked: For Good, the Wizard straight up demands that the four murder Elphaba. It’s not simply a matter of stealing the broomstick. They set out to kill her! This is not something the Dorothy we know from the classic film would ever do.

(The Tin Man asks the Wizard for a heart in The Wizard of Oz, but in Wicked, we’d assume he’d ask for his human body back. All that tin is a little constricting romantically. In “March of the Witch Hunters,” the Tin Man whips up a lynch mob against Elphaba. This is an especially dark scene that has nothing to do with The Wizard of Oz.)

In the 1939 film, Dorothy doesn’t know that water is fatal to the Wicked Witch of the West and she only hurls it on her by accident while trying to put out the fire she set on the Scarecrow. In Wicked, Dorothy seemingly soaks Elphaba with the full intent to kill. Then she triumphantly holds up her broomstick trophy. This Dorothy is very MAGA.

Yes, as Wicked fans online keep reminding me, Wicked is not Dorothy’s story. The musical and films are about Elphaba and Glinda, but how they treat Dorothy directly impacts their characters. It makes sense that Elphaba would hold a grudge against the brat who robbed her sister’s grave, keeps an enslaved animal on a leash, and willingly joined a vigilante mob tasked with her murder. Glinda’s actions, though, are more questionable.

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It’s long been a running gag that Glinda was secretly evil because she never told Dorothy that the dead woman’s shoes she’s wearing were her ticket home all along. (Enjoy this MadTV sketch that offers an “alternate ending” where Dorothy loses her shit on Glinda.)

Glinda’s sketchiness is somewhat justifiable in The Wizard of Oz because she’s filling the mysterious mentor role. Dorothy can’t go home until she’s answered the call and gone on her journey of self-discovery. Within the Wicked storyline, Glinda is just a jerk. She knows the Wizard is a fraud who has no powers. It’s also unclear how she gets Dorothy back home.

These are glaring plot holes and lapses in characterization, and the film suffers for it. Wicked doesn’t need clever nods to another work from almost a century ago. It just needs to finish its own story.