Wicked: For Good’s Ending Creates a Major Wizard of Oz Plot Hole

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The highly anticipated film adaptation of the Broadway hit Wicked has arrived with Wicked: For Good, concluding the story of Elphaba and Glinda. The movie attempts to seamlessly connect the popular Wicked prequel with the original 1939 film, The Wizard of Oz. However, the ending introduces a problem with Dorothy’s return to Kansas. In The Wizard of Oz, Glinda famously tells Dorothy to click her heels and say, “There’s no place like home.” But Wicked establishes that Glinda doesn’t have any magical powers. While the film suggests Glinda might develop magic later, it happens after Dorothy has already left, creating a contradiction.

Because Glinda isn’t powerful enough to use magic, she can’t magically send Dorothy home to Kansas using the ruby slippers.

How Did Glinda Know About the Three Clicks?

What makes Wicked so clever is the way it retells the story of the witches we’ve known since The Wizard of Oz in 1939. However, this new take creates a problem that the ending, For Good, tries—but doesn’t quite succeed—in fixing. Throughout both the movie and the Broadway show, Glinda’s character is largely defined by her lack of magical ability. By the end of For Good, she decides to become Glinda the Good and lead Oz, fulfilling her promise to Elphaba. She stays to fight the corruption left behind by the Wizard and Madame Morrible, which means she has to focus on politics and public image rather than magic. The final scene emphasizes this: Glinda is down-to-earth, deeply feeling, and dedicated to a political life inspired by Elphaba.

Glinda’s biggest growth comes from dealing with her feelings, especially her connection to Elphaba and her sadness over what happened to Elphaba and Fiyero. However, revealing so late in the movie that she might learn magic someday feels wrong when you consider the Glinda from the original Wizard of Oz. That Glinda is a powerful, accomplished witch – she travels in a bubble, speaks with confidence about magic, and fully understands how the Ruby Slippers work. This is a stark contrast to the Glinda we see in the film, grieving and saying goodbye to Elphaba.

The Glinda portrayed in For Good doesn’t have any magical abilities, yet she’s expected to be able to send Dorothy home – a feat that requires powerful magic. The movie asks viewers to believe that this important political figure in Oz can perform a complicated spell despite having no magical training. While For Good suggests Glinda’s later role is more symbolic than practical, she simply doesn’t have the skills needed for the famous heel-clicking spell. This creates a problem with the story’s ending, making Glinda’s spell from The Wizard of Oz feel unbelievable and weakens the overall impact of the Wicked story.

Glinda Lacks Both Knowledge and Magic

As a huge fan of The Wizard of Oz, I’ve always wondered about Glinda’s role, especially with the whole ‘sending Dorothy home’ thing. It seems Wicked – and now For Good – tries to solve this by suggesting the Ruby Slippers actually work based on what the wearer wants most. Basically, Dorothy just wanted to go home, so the shoes did the trick automatically! That’s clever because it means Glinda didn’t have to magically send her. But here’s what bugs me: how would Glinda even know about the whole ‘click your heels three times’ thing? For Good tries to explain it away by saying Glinda just gave Dorothy the slippers because she was desperate to help, with no real plan. It feels like a bit of a weak explanation, honestly. It doesn’t really address how Glinda figured out the shoes’ power in the first place.

If Glinda doesn’t actually have the magical ability to make the enchanted slippers or understand their power on her own, then she must have learned about the secret three-click code from another source. The question is, who told her?

The silver shoes originally belonged to the Wicked Witch of the East, Nessa, who was killed when a house fell on her. The only time the shoes are shown to have magic is when Elphaba casts a spell on them, allowing Nessa to float.

Glinda couldn’t have possibly learned how to use the slippers’ magic between when Elphaba enchanted them and Dorothy’s return home, and even if she did, she doesn’t have enough magical ability to actually use them. The way the slippers work – relying on a strong desire to travel to other worlds – suggests the secret should be either widely known throughout Oz or exclusively held by the Thropp family, who own the shoes. If everyone knew how to use them, Dorothy’s trip to see the Wizard would be unnecessary, as the Scarecrow or Tin Man could have easily explained what to do. This is especially true considering Fiyero (the Scarecrow) and the Tin Man (Boq) both had connections to the Thropp sisters – Fiyero with Elphaba and Boq with Nessa.

Because this information isn’t widely known, Glinda must have learned it either through a lucky guess or a sudden understanding. But this creates a problem, as the story of Wicked tells us Glinda doesn’t have magical powers. This leaves audiences wondering how she actually sent Dorothy back home. The advice Glinda gives Dorothy in the original movie now seems, thanks to Wicked: For Good, like either an unexplained bit of knowledge she somehow received, or just a fortunate coincidence that keeps the story of The Wizard of Oz going.

Glinda’s emotional journey in For Good feels less impactful because of what her role requires in The Wizard of Oz. The movie portrays her goodbye to Elphaba as definitive, which creates a problem: Glinda is the only one who could realistically help Dorothy enchant the ruby slippers, but she lacks the magical ability to do so herself. This leaves the explanation solely dependent on the slippers being inherently magical, a concept the film never properly establishes or explains.

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2025-11-26 03:11