Wicked: For Good was one of the most anticipated films on the 2025 movie schedule, and the sequel to the Broadway adaptation is smashing box office records. The critics seem overall happy with the conclusion to this Ozian tale, and Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo are getting their well-deserved flowers. While it’s hard to imagine the film shaking out any other way, director Jon M. Chu recently revealed that he originally had Bowen Yang playing a much more pivotal role in the movie, and he explained why he chose to scrap that plan.
In an interview with EW, the Wicked filmmaker discussed the much more expanded roles Bowen Yang’s Pfannee and Bronwyn James’ ShenShen had in the original iteration of For Good. Apparently, Chu planned on having Pfannee and ShenShen help Glinda distract the guards so she could go visit Elphaba and warn her that the witch hunters were coming after her. Ultimately, their involvement seemed to take away from Glinda’s storyline, and Chu decided to script her solo departure from her castle. He explained:
There was a moment where I was like, ‘Oh, I want them to help her out — to get the horse or open the door or distract the soldiers so she can get out. But then that took away from Glinda’s journey, so I knew that it had to be just Glinda.
Ultimately, I think this was the right call. Some audience members were displeased over some of the major additions to the Act 2 storyline in Wicked: For Good, and avoiding straying too far from the beloved text was probably for the best. Also, the movie’s runtime was already pretty long, and adding more would likely detract from Glinda and Elphaba’s central journeys, as Chu said.
However, I do think the sentiment for having Pfannee and ShenShen help the “good guys” in the end would have been a nice one. We see plenty of depictions of the hate and vitriol towards Elphaba in Wicked: For Good. It would have been nice to see more Ozians in support of Elphaba and her cause. Chu explained that involving the two friends of Glinda’s would have shown that there was still some good in Oz, especially within the younger generation. He said:
We added that for them because I was like, ‘Are they in on this or not? I really don’t want them to be in on this.’ This is the new generation…. I wanted that group of students, no matter how good or bad they were in the last movie, to have the conscience here. Even just looking out and watching the witch hunters and being a little bit appalled by that gave us just the little breadcrumb to say, ‘Okay, they’re going to come through at the end.’ It allowed us to know, ‘All right, there’s a conscience.’
In addition to the sentiment and world-building involving these two characters in a meaningful way, it would have also been nice to see more of Bowen Yang and Bronwyn James in general. They were fan favorites in the first film, and they served as excellent comic relief, so I was looking forward to the duo reprising their roles in the sequel.
Unfortunately, with this proposed scene cut, Yang and James are barely in the film at all, despite Lorne Michaels letting the comedian fly back and forth to work on both Wicked and SNL. Maybe eliminating them from such an iconic scene was the right call, but fans did miss them in For Good, and hopefully, there’s another opportunity to see these two together again on the big screen in the future.
You can see Wicked: For Good now, as the film is currently playing in theaters nationwide. Fans can also revisit the incredibly talented Wicked cast in the original film, as it is available with an Amazon Prime subscription.