Plot, Song List & Stage vs. Screen
Act by act, song by song — the complete narrative of Wicked, and a look at how the two principal interpretations of the work (the 2003 stage musical and the 2024 film) tell it.
The first act covers Elphaba's arrival at Shiz University, her reluctant bond with Galinda, the silencing of the Animals, and the discovery that the Wizard of Oz is a fraud. It ends on a single defiant note: Elphaba, on a broom, defying gravity itself.
| # | Song | Performed by |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | No One Mourns the Wicked | Glinda & Citizens of Oz |
| 2 | Dear Old Shiz | Students & Glinda |
| 3 | The Wizard and I | Madame Morrible & Elphaba |
| 4 | What Is This Feeling? | Glinda, Elphaba & Students |
| 5 | Something Bad | Dr. Dillamond & Elphaba |
| 6 | Dancing Through Life | Fiyero, Glinda, Boq, Nessarose, Elphaba |
| 7 | Popular | Glinda |
| 8 | I’m Not That Girl | Elphaba |
| 9 | One Short Day | Elphaba, Glinda & Emerald City citizens |
| 10 | A Sentimental Man | The Wizard |
| 11 | Defying Gravity | Elphaba, Glinda, Morrible & Ozians |
The second act spans Elphaba's life as an outlaw, the rise of the public myth of the Wicked Witch, the tragic end of Nessarose, the transformations of Fiyero and Boq, and the two women's final farewell.
| # | Song | Performed by |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Thank Goodness | Glinda, Morrible & Citizens of Oz |
| 2 | The Wicked Witch of the East | Elphaba, Nessarose & Boq |
| 3 | Wonderful | The Wizard & Elphaba |
| 4 | I’m Not That Girl (Reprise) | Glinda |
| 5 | As Long as You’re Mine | Elphaba & Fiyero |
| 6 | No Good Deed | Elphaba |
| 7 | March of the Witch Hunters | Boq & Ozians |
| 8 | For Good | Elphaba & Glinda |
| 9 | Finale | Glinda, Elphaba & Ozians |
★ = signature song / major showstopper. The score is heavily thematic, with two main leitmotifs: Elphaba's theme (originated from Schwartz's 1971 work The Survival of St. Joan) and the “Unlimited” theme (which incorporates the first seven notes of “Over the Rainbow” as a tribute to Harold Arlen).
Wicked exists in two principal forms. Both are complete works; both tell the same story; both draw on the same songs, the same characters, the same arc. But they are written in two very different visual languages.
The stage musical is a single, continuous theatrical event: roughly two hours and forty minutes including intermission, sung through, told on a single abstract set that transforms in front of the audience. The 2024 film is a two-part cinematic work: the first part covers Act One and ends on “Defying Gravity”; the second part completes the story. The split was made not because the story required it, but because the visual world being built is too dense to compress.
The stage show uses color as its primary visual vocabulary — green for Elphaba, pink for Glinda, gold for the Emerald City — and a single rotating set with a giant clockwork gear (the “Time Dragon”) that rises from the stage to mark transitions. The 2024 film builds a literal, full-scale world: the craggy towers of Shiz, the train to the Emerald City, the poppy fields of Munchkinland, the dark Gothic spires of Kiamo Ko.
The cast of supporting characters is mostly identical, with a few notable expansions in the film. The stage show's Pfannee and Shen Shen are a pair of Glinda's admirers; the film's Pfannee is gender-swapped (originally conceived as a different role). The film also introduces a new character, Miss Coddle, the Wizard's assistant in his audience chamber. Doctor Dillamond, a full-costumed performer in the stage show, is voiced only in the film (his physical presence is implied rather than shown).
Stephen Schwartz's score and Winnie Holzman's book remain the foundation of both versions — every song listed above is in both the stage and film forms. The fundamental arc, the political subtext, the relationship between the two leads, and the central question (are people born wicked, or is wickedness thrust upon them?) are identical. Wicked in either form is a story about how a society decides who is the monster, and what it costs the people who decide.
Elphaba is green. The story is, at its surface, about a girl whose body is treated as the sign of her nature. The green skin is not a curse she chose; it is a fact about her, and the rest of Oz reads it as a verdict.
The Wizard's regime works because he controls the narrative. The Animals can speak — until he decides they can't. Elphaba is good — until he decides she's Wicked. Wicked is, in part, a play about who gets to write the official story.
Elphaba and Glinda's friendship is the play's emotional spine, and the play's most uncomfortable question: can a friendship survive one friend's complicity in the other's ruin? Glinda's choice — to stay, to be Glinda the Good, to mourn her friend in public while celebrating her in private — is the choice that haunts the second act.