2025 Wicked: For Good
(Warning: Spoilers Ahead)
Glinda is a very charming villain. She wants to be popular and liked by everyone, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. In life, no one is perfect. Under normal circumstances, if someone makes a small unintentional mistake, empathetic people will step in to help smooth things over. However, when this empathy gets out of control and unfairly favors one side, it can turn the hard-earned "stability and harmony" into a shallow, hypocritical pretense. It's like the wizard in this story. When he first arrived in the magical world, it wasn't by choice. He didn't intend to deceive, rule, oppress, or become a dictator. But after tasting the sweetness of power, he became a habitual liar. He projected his own insecurity onto the intelligent animals and tried his best to discredit them, sowing discord and destroying the originally happy, cooperative ecosystem of this magical world. Because by creating "enemies" and "enemy problems," he could solidify his status as the "savior" in the minds of the foolish and cowardly people. This allowed him to further inflate the fame he had obtained by sheer luck. On the other hand, Glinda, at the beginning, was also lucky. She was born into a good family with excellent looks and a quick wit. This allowed her to continually justify herself: she was naturally deserving of being loved and anyone or anything she desired should be her privilege. But luckily, she met the Wicked Witch Elphaba early on and felt pity for her, which kept her from losing her conscience entirely. And Elphaba, too, didn’t become a true world-destroying villain because of her encounter with Glinda. Instead, she spared the lives of those foolish people who believed in the wizard. She never truly "waged war" or sought vengeance on those who had wronged her. When I was a child and watched The Wizard of Oz, I thought it was an inspiring story. Dorothy, the little girl who wanted to go home, along with the "heartless" Tin Man, the "cowardly" Lion, and the "brainless" Scarecrow, went on an adventure. Guided by "fate," they destroyed the root of the problem that everyone was against, like Mulan quietly "returning home with honor" and cherishing simple, ordinary days. But now, after seeing the story centered around the magical world and Dorothy’s inexplicable "outsider" adventure, I feel that the author is more satirizing the naive readers who, without understanding what makes the story good, blindly praise it for its "depth." Why don’t readers ever dig deeper to think about where these characters come from? How did this story become so popular? What deeper meaning lies behind it?
Is it really so easy to just enter the magical world, wander around, defeat the villain, and become a hero? If that’s the case, should we all just go die and try reincarnation? Is there really such an easy bargain in this world, and would it fall to you or me?
This story reminds me of the Harry Potter fanfiction series I’ve been working on. Although I’ve stopped updating it for over a year now, and looking back, I didn’t really put much effort into it—saving words where I could and writing as I thought of it. I didn’t want to spend too much time or energy on something that didn’t make any money, just a small hobby.
However, it’s also a good exercise in reflecting on human nature. Maybe through the inner growth of the characters in my writing, I can help myself perform better in my next job, aka role-play better in the next scene.
And may oneday when I "transmigrate" again to another workplace next time, I know that I will still face more pain "guided by fate," encounter more "strange creatures" as companions, and be manipulated by the "true villain" until I’m spinning in circles. But that’s life—once you're here, you have to struggle to survive. And then, inevitably, things might develop to a point where you accidentally have to become two-faced to survival and suddenly experience a kind of Schizophrenia, right?
Last but not the least, if I were in the story, I could never do what Glinda did. To rise in status by indirectly stepping on her friend’s reputation, while still convincing herself that it has nothing to do with her and that she bears no responsibility—willingly becoming a pawn used to restrain her own friend.
Does she truly believe that she could become a highly praised role model through her own abilities—her talent for deception—rather than through the “value” of being someone who can be used against the only person who truly understands her—her friend, who sees through her but is not willing to speak up cruelly? Perhaps she can even be as a potential hostage, or a source of information waiting to be tested and exploited, in her superior's eyes?
That’s why I think the ending of this storyline is still oversimplified and idealized, ignoring the complexity of the real world. But who else would do what I do—always look for logic in such "unimportant places"?
