I Watched Wicked For The First Time, And There Was One Character I Expected To See More Of

I went almost one year past the release date before I saw Wicked, all thanks to my sister using her Peacock subscription to throw it on when I stayed at her house over the holidays. If only I'd read CinemaBlend's glowing review of the movie, I would've watched it a lot sooner. I was a fan of the movie adaptation of the beloved stage musical, though I was shocked I didn't see one character as much as I expected to.

With such an all-star cast in Wicked, I guess there isn't room to feature all the stars the entire time. That said, I definitely thought there would be a bit more scenes set up for one star, and while I haven't seen Wicked: For Good yet, I'm just going to take a shot in the dark and say there's not much of him in there either.

Bowen Yang's Pfannee Is Hardly In The Movie

Musicals aren't really an interest of mine, but with the way Wicked has pumped out merchandise and marketing for this movie, it's almost impossible to avoid learning about it. As such, I went in aware of a good chunk of the cast involved, and was pretty hype to see Bowen Yang as Pfannee.

Pfannee is one of Glinda's friends, so I expected him to have a solid role in the movie and be featured quite a bit as a supporting character. After all, he's in a bunch of marketing for it, and there are all these stories of him juggling filming with his duties on Saturday Night Live. Just to be completely candid, I think if Pfannee were removed from the movie entirely and I watched a cut without him, I'm not sure I'd notice anything changed.

I Hope There Are Bigger Plans For Pfannee In The Future

I hope that because Bowen Yang is featured so prominently in Wicked marketing, that means Universal is bullish on keeping him involved in future projects. With Saturday Night Live under the NBCUniversal umbrella, there's obvious corporate synergy in promoting a star that's involved in both, and considering I haven't heard people complain about him being so heavily involved in the marketing, I assume people would like to see more of him.

That may be true, but I know there are plans from Universal to expand the Wicked universe, and we just learned about a Glinda prequel happening. I can't imagine that's the only idea being cooked up, and if Universal wanted to make a Peacock series set in the wonderful world of Oz, who would be the perfect actor to lead that?

Bowen Yang would be a great choice as an actor who would be talented enough to lead a Wicked series. He could be the Saul Goodman to Wicked's Breaking Bad, if that makes sense, and truthfully, I'd be 100% on board to watch an adventure with him at the lead if someone were to pitch an idea.

For now, I'll just continue to enjoy what little I see of him in Wicked, and hopefully I'll find my way to a theater to see him in the sequel here soon enough. We'll see what new projects pop up in 2026, and how many of them actually make it into production by this time next year.