A Fan Created An Awesome Wicked Thread That Explains What Book Fans Should Know That Movie Fans Didn't Get

With the stunning box office success of the first Wicked movie, it seems that there are now more fans of this Wizard of Oz story. The movie, as many people likely know at this point, is based on a Broadway musical, which itself was based on a novel by author Gregory Maguire. As is the case with any adaptation, the screen version had to cut a fair amount of content. For anybody who doesn’t want to read the whole book, social media has come to the rescue.

An extensive thread has gone viral on the site formerly known as Twitter, which delves deep into the parts of Wicked that you won’t know if you’ve only seen the stage musical or the movie. It adds a great deal of context to the story, regarding both what the musical's versions leave out and what they outright change.

Wicked The Play Changes A Lot From The Book

I actually read Wicked years ago, but it clearly didn’t leave much of an impact. That's because a great deal of the information in the thread regarding what the play and movie changed is news to me as well.

There’s a significant amount regarding Elphaba’s childhood that is obviously cut for time in the film. Additionally, there are side characters omitted, and the film doesn’t focus too much on Elphaba’s parents. That said, there is one significant and disturbing change. I'm referring to the fact that the encounter between Elphaba’s mother and her biological father, who is strongly implied to be the Wizard, is a clearly consensual affair in the film’s opening number. The consent of the situation is less clear in the book.

The political situation in Oz is a key part of Wicked in general, but it’s also far more complex in the books. There are multiple underclasses in the book that are key to Elphaba’s story, which are left out of the play. Only the plight of the Animals is seen in Wicked: Part One.

The Elphaba/Glinda Relationship Is Significantly Different

Of course, the part of Wicked that matters to most fans is the relationship between Elphaba and Glinda. (Some might argue that was handled better in the movie than in the play.) It might be interesting to some, then, that the relationship has fairly significant differences in the book compared to the play and the film.

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Specifically, Glinda’s character arc is quite different in the book. The play, and so far, the film, have shown Glinda maturing and changing, starting out as a fairly shallow person, but eventually maturing into a person with a good heart. However, that's never really the case in the book. Glinda and Elphaba do have a connection in the text, but it never really becomes the friendship we see in the movie.

Considering that Wicked: Part One had a runtime on par with the entire stage musical, the movie will be in the unique position of actually having more time to tell its story than the work it is adapting. It'll be intriguing to find out if fans end up seeing more elements from the book make it into Wicked: For Good when it hits theaters on November 21 as part of the 2025 movie schedule.