Fans Theorize That 'Wicked Part Two' Might Be Fake

Wicked Part One hasn’t hit theaters yet, but fans are already buzzing about Part Two. The sequel is set to premiere exactly one year after the first one, and fans have plenty of questions. How could one three-hour musical become two movies with runtimes over two hours? What, if anything, was cut? And most importantly—will there be new songs?

All of these questions will be answered in the coming months, but the marketing of Part One has led some fans to theorize that Part Two might not actually even exist. The trailer and posters notably do not use the words Part One, so if you didn’t already know that director Jon M. Chu planned to split the musical, you might not realize a cliffhanger is coming in November. Some of these conspiracy theorists believe Universal got so much backlash for making two movies that producers recut what would have been Part One into one extra-long film that will just be called Wicked.

🤩 📺 SIGN UP for Parade's Daily newsletter & get the scoop on the latest TV news & celebrity interviews delivered right to your inbox 🤩🎥

Alas, this wishful thinking doesn’t seem to be accurate, because Chu has made it clear he always envisioned the film in two parts. He even addressed the speculation about why the phrase "part one" doesn’t appear in the first movie’s trailers. It’s not because he changed his mind about making a second one. Instead, he omitted Part One because he wanted people to leave the first installment feeling like they’d seen a whole movie.

“This isn't half the homework,” he explained to Entertainment Weekly in September 2024. “If we were going to split it into two, we need to make sure that movie one is emotionally satisfying and by the end, you feel like that was a f--king movie. I don't like movies where you leave and feel like, ‘Well, I’ve got to wait for the next one.’ This should leave you with the highest of highs and so connected to these women.”

Keep reading for everything to know about Wicked Part Two.

When does Wicked Part Two come out?

Wicked Part Two is set to hit theaters Nov. 21, 2025, exactly one year after Wicked Part One debuts. Even the most diehard fans have wondered why director Jon M. Chu decided to split the movie into two parts when the musical itself clocks in at just under three hours, but he’s said that he wanted to ensure fans got everything they wanted from an adaptation of such a beloved property.

“It has to be two parts for it to be something the fans recognize,” he explained during an April 2024 CinemaCon chat with The Hollywood Reporter. “Those two parts have to feel like a movie, you should want more but you can’t be unsatisfied emotionally when you finish the first.”

He also noted that one of his leading ladies, Ariana Grande, helped him decide what had to stay. “Ari is an aficionado on Wicked,” he explained, adding that she would tell him, “That’s bible, you can’t remove that line.”

Related: 69 Best Movie Musicals of All Time, Ranked

Who is in the Wicked Part Two cast?

Cynthia Erivo

The Tony Award winner will star as Elphaba, otherwise known as the Wicked Witch of the West. While she never starred in the Broadway version of Wicked, she’s a veteran theater actress, having appeared in The Color Purple, Sister Act and The Last Five Years. Her movie credits include Widows, Harriet and Bad Times at the El Royale.

Ariana Grande

The pop star plays Galinda, later known as Glinda the Good Witch. Grande got her start as a children’s TV actor, but she hasn’t flexed her acting muscles very much in recent years. She last appeared in the 2021 film Don’t Look Up as (fictional) pop star Riley Bina.

Michelle Yeoh

The Oscar winner will appear as Madame Morrible, who is the headmistress of Galinda and Elphaba’s school, Shiz University. Yeoh last worked with director Jon M. Chu in 2018’s Crazy Rich Asians and won numerous awards for her performance in Everything Everywhere All at Once.

Jeff Goldblum

Goldblum stars as the Wonderful Wizard of Oz, who’s just as much a presence in Wicked as he was in the 1939 film adaptation of L. Frank Baum’s classic novel. Goldblum has appeared in numerous movies and TV shows, including several Jurassic Park films and Independence Day.

Jonathan Bailey

Best known for his role as Anthony Bridgerton on Netflix’s Bridgerton, Bailey will play Fiyero, a handsome bachelor who’s a love interest for both Elphaba and Galinda. Before becoming a film and TV star, Bailey was a prolific theater actor, appearing in productions of Les Misérables, The Last Five Years, Company and more.

Ethan Slater

Slater, who starred as SpongeBob SquarePants in the Broadway adaptation of the cartoon, will play Boq, a Munchkin who becomes infatuated with Galinda while studying at Shiz University.

Bronwyn James

James will appear in Wicked as ShenShen, one of Galinda's friends at Shiz University. James is a British actress who has appeared in TV shows like Harlots, Outlander and Slow Horses.

Marissa Bode

Newcomer Marissa Bode will be playing Nessarose, Elphaba's younger sister who eventually becomes the Wicked Witch of the East. This will be Bode's first feature film appearance.

Bowen Yang

The Saturday Night Live comedian will star as Pfannee, another of Galinda’s friends at Shiz.

Peter Dinklage

Dinklage, best known for his role as Tyrion Lannister on Game of Thrones, is the voice actor behind Doctor Dillamond, a goat who can speak and thus works at Shiz as a professor.

What is Wicked Part Two about?

Wicked as a whole tells the story of Elphaba, aka the Wicked Witch of the West, and Galinda, later known as Glinda the Good Witch. Part One will follow the two women in their early days as students at Shiz University in Oz, where they study the magical arts and sciences.

While it’s not known where Part One will end, the musical’s first act—spoiler alert—ends with Elphaba deciding to leave Shiz over a philosophical conflict with the school’s administration. Part Two is expected to loosely follow the events of the stage production’s second act, which documents the enmity between the two witches famously depicted in 1939’s The Wizard of Oz. (Expect to see a few familiar faces from that classic film pop up in Part Two.)

Who is directing Wicked Part Two?

Jon M. Chu is the director of both Wicked Part One and Part Two. The two films were shot at the same time, with principal photography having nearly finished in July 2023 by the time of the SAG-AFTRA strike. After the strike ended, production resumed in January 2024 and finished that same month.

Chu saw Wicked on Broadway for the first time in college, and he never forgot it. “This idea that this American story could be flipped, and you could see it from the perspective of the Wicked Witch of the West, and that she wasn't so bad. ... That was very compelling to me,” he told NPR in July 2024. “And the production was so big ... It stayed with me. I never thought I would be so lucky to be able to direct it one day, but it always stayed with me.”

Wicked isn’t Chu’s first foray into adapting a Broadway musical for the big screen. He previously directed the 2021 film adaptation of In the Heights, the show that made Lin-Manuel Miranda a rising star long before Hamilton.

Chu is also developing a musical version of Crazy Rich Asians, which is based on Kevin Kwan’s novel of the same name. The film version, directed by Chu, hit theaters in 2018.

Related: 32 of Best Dance Movies Ever

Is there a trailer for Wicked Part Two?

So far, there’s no trailer specifically for Wicked Part Two, but trailers for Part One abound. A teaser for Part Two is likely to debut shortly after Part One hits theaters on Nov. 22, 2024.

How to watch Wicked Part Two

Like Part One, Part Two of Wicked will debut exclusively in theaters next November. Because it is a Universal Studios film, it will likely then head to Peacock after a VOD run.

Where will Wicked Part Two start?

While no one can say for sure where Wicked Part One will end, most fans think it will culminate with “Defying Gravity,” which is far and away the musical’s most famous, climactic song. The number also closes Act I of the stage production, so it’s a logical stopping point for Part One as well.

In terms of the soundtrack, this means that Part Two could start with “No One Mourns the Wicked (Reprise),” as the musical does, but truly anything could happen. Act II is significantly shorter than Act I, so most fans think that there will be a lot of new content in Part Two that wasn’t in the stage production. That could also mean that the second movie doesn’t start in exactly the same spot as the second half of the musical does.

In general, though, it’s safe to guess that Part Two will begin after Elphaba and Galinda have parted ways, with Elphaba leaving the Emerald City following a discovery that has changed the way she thinks about her fellow Ozians.

Will there be new music in Wicked Part Two?

Almost certainly yes. Stephen Schwartz, who wrote the Broadway show’s music and lyrics, confirmed in 2022 that he was working on new songs for the Wicked films. He also noted that anything new won’t take away beloved songs or plot points from the original musical.

“What we have discussed is that changes need to be ‘additive,’ to use [producer] Marc Platt’s term,” he told The Schwartz Scene newsletter. “They need to add something to the story or the characters. They can’t just be changes to do something different.”

Will Wicked Part Two include more plot details from Gregory Maguire’s book?

Wicked the musical is based on Gregory Maguire’s 1995 novel, Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West. As true Wicked scholars know, the stage production compresses a lot of events from the book and leaves other things out entirely. Because Part Two will almost definitely include new material that’s not in the musical, some fans are hoping to see more of those plot points appear on screen.

For example, Elphaba famously leaves Galinda and Shiz University behind at the end of Act I. Major spoilers ahead: she does this because she learns that the Wizard is behind the oppression of animals in Oz, including her professor Doctor Dillamond. Book readers got to see more of Elphaba’s time working with an underground animal resistance group, and with a whole second movie to fill up, that could become a larger section of Part Two as well.

Other sleuths think that Part Two will incorporate more elements from The Wizard of Oz. While characters from that movie, including Dorothy Gale, appear in the musical, they don’t have nearly as much to do as Elphaba and Galinda. An expanded runtime of two movies might mean that viewers get to see more of the events following Dorothy’s arrival in Oz, which is one the central events of Act II.

Related: Kristin Chenoweth Shares Unfiltered Opinion of New ‘Wicked’ Movie After First Watch