Stop your journey down the yellow brick road if you don’t yet know the entire story of “Wicked” — there are spoilers ahead!

When we first meet Galinda Upland — played by pop star and actor Ariana Grande-Butera — in Jon M. Chu’s epic musical adaptation “Wicked: Part One,” she’s a new student at Shiz University who’s desperate to prove herself, especially to the school’s Dean of Sorcery Madam Morrible (Michelle Yeoh). There’s just one problem: Galinda doesn’t have a particularly strong natural inclination towards sorcery or witchcraft, and to make matters worse, her new roommate, the green-skinned Elphaba Thropp (Cynthia Erivo), does possess an innate affinity for the magical arts.

So, what’s the deal here? Why isn’t Galinda, who ultimately restyles her name as Glinda (in honor of Peter Dinklage’s Shiz professor Doctor Dillamond, a goat who has trouble with the “uh” sound and is ousted when Oz cruelly cracks down on animals in society), a naturally talented witch — and to that point, how does somebody who apparently can’t perform magic become known as Glinda the Good Witch? (At the beginning of “Wicked: Part One,” we see the very end of the entire story, where Glinda presides over a group of Ozians celebrating the apparent death of Elphaba, the “Wicked Witch of the West.”) Does Glinda ever truly learn to do magic or is it all simply a clever illusion? Here’s why Glinda struggles to perform spells in the “Wicked” musical and its film adaptations, and whether or not that changes. (The answer, simply put, is “maybe.”)

Right from the beginning of “Wicked: Part One,” we see Glinda — as the Good Witch later in the timeline — “performing” some magic in “No One Mourns the Wicked,” but based on her time at Shiz University, a young Galinda definitely doesn’t have any affinity for witchcraft. Elphaba constantly casts spells and enchantments without meaning to, making it quite clear to Madam Morrible that she’s an enormously talented sorceress … but Galinda is stuck begging the Dean of Sorcery for a spot in one of her classes (bragging about her paper on magic wands and whether or not they “have a point” to try and squeak her way into the seminar, which is admittedly very funny). As thanks for “helping” Elphaba’s younger sister Nessarose (Marissa Bode) pursue Boq Woodsman (Ethan Slater), Elphaba convinces Madam Morrible to allow Galinda to study with them … and when Galinda realizes this, she stops trying to humiliate Elphaba in public, and the two become fast friends. 

The most telling moment in “Wicked: Part One,” as far as Galinda’s inherent magical abilities are concerned, happens just before Ariana Grande-Butera’s showstopping number “Popular,” when Galinda informs Elphaba that she will use her wand to change the green witch’s “frock” or “coat” (which Galinda then calls a “froat”) into a different item of clothing. Galinda’s attempts at spell-casting are played for laughs, but this sequence also betrays a simple truth: Galinda does not appear to be able to do any magic whatsoever.

So, is there any sort of explanation as to why Galinda doesn’t appear to have any natural magical powers? Yes, but it’s in a deleted scene! On the digital release of “Wicked,” fans got to see a whole bunch of deleted scenes, including one that explains Galinda’s close friendship with Pfannee (Bowen Yang) and ShenShen (Bronwyn James) and another in which Elphaba and Boq have a little heart-to-heart about unrequited love (Boq is carrying a torch for Galinda, while Elphaba is in love with Galinda’s boyfriend Prince Fiyero Tigelaar, played by Jonathan Bailey). The one we’re focusing on, though, is one where Elphaba tells Galinda why she probably doesn’t have an innate way to control magic.

After Elphaba and Fiyero save a lion cub from becoming a test subject for horrific experiments at Shiz, Elphaba returns to her room to find Galinda trying to perform a basic flotation spell, only for Galinda to ask why magic is so hard for her. Elphaba shares a theory, which is that Galinda’s privileged life has been easy … which makes it harder for her to access her potential magical powers. After that, Galinda tells her friend she would have helped with the lion cub in Fiyero’s stead, further cementing their friendship and Galinda’s kind, thoughtful side … and Elphaba tells her friend, “I won’t leave you behind again.” (Unfortunately, this isn’t true, but Elphaba doesn’t really know that yet.)

At the end of “Wicked: Part One” — which ends with Elphaba’s power ballad “Defying Gravity,” marking the same endpoint of the musical’s first act — Elphaba does leave Glinda (without the “uh”) behind, largely because Madam Morrible and the Wizard of Oz (a perfectly irreverent Jeff Goldblum) are hot on their heels after Elphaba makes several unsettling discoveries about the Wizard. (In no particular order, these discoveries include that the Wizard is a fraud who can’t read from the magical book known as the Grimmerie, he wants to use Elphaba to do nefarious magic, and he believes in the subjugation of talking animals.) Elphaba creates a flying broomstick and escapes Madam Morrible and the Wizard, leaving Glinda to fend for herself; as we see in “No One Mourns the Wicked,” Glinda becomes a mouthpiece for the Wizard’s evil regime, “celebrating” her friend’s death (though Ariana Grande-Butera’s performance includes a few excellent moments where we see flashes of her inner conflict).

So, does any of this mean that in “Wicked: For Good” — the upcoming second “Wicked” film, which is named for Elphaba and Galinda’s emotional duet — we’ll see Glinda perform real magic? That remains to be determined; Glinda will spend the second half of the narrative largely “at odds” with Elphaba for political reasons before swooping in within her apparently magical pink bubble to save the day at the very end (assuming “For Good” follows the “Wicked” stage musical as closely as “Part One” did) and arrest Madam Morrible and the Wizard for basically being huge jerks. Wait — let’s talk about that pink bubble for a second, though.

The Wizard’s whole deal in “Wicked” and the 1939 film “The Wizard of Oz” boils down to the fact that, in all versions of this familiar story, he is a giant fraud. He’s not an all-powerful, all-seeing magical being; he’s just a dude from Nebraska who can’t do magic. (That’s not meant as a slight regarding Nebraska, by the way; he just lies about that while he’s also lying about being able to do magic.) With that in mind, let’s think about Glinda’s “magical” floating pink bubble, which serves as her main form of transit. Is it really magic created by her large, flashy magic wand or is it a ruse?

It very well might be the latter. When Glinda arrives in Munchkinland as news spreads that the Wicked Witch of the West is no more, she repeatedly “pops” and “unpops” her (seemingly soundproofed?) bubble so that she can speak to the Munchkins. However, based on the fact that the Wizard — while decidedly non-magical — is a very shrewd inventor, he certainly could have engineered a mechanically controlled flying bubble for Glinda to use. It also seems like she’s pressing a button to “pop” and “unpop” the thing, which could be another clue that neither the Wizard nor Glinda is actually magical, and that the citizens of Oz should pay more attention to the man behind the curtain … or the woman in the bubble, as it were.

“Wicked: Part One,” where Glinda doesn’t do any real magic that we know of, is available to rent or buy on major streaming platforms now. “Wicked: For Good” is currently scheduled to open in theaters on November 21, 2025.