It was waiting for us.
When Wicked re-entered pop culture as a cinematic event, it didn’t feel like a revival.
At first, I thought Wicked was doing what pop culture has been doing a lot lately.
You know — taking the villain, putting her at the center of the story, softening the edges.
Like Cruella. Like so many recent narratives where the new moral seems to be: don’t hate the villain, understand her.
A musical version of that trend.
Entertaining. Stylish. Harmless.
But Wicked isn’t that.
It felt like a revelation.
Because Wicked isn’t rewriting The Wizard of Oz.
It’s exposing the system that was always hiding in plain sight.
Oz, or how patriarchy survives through illusion
In The Wizard of Oz, power looks theatrical.
A booming voice.
Smoke.
Spectacle.
The Wizard appears as a benevolent ruler — charming, impressive, untouchable. But behind the curtain, there is no magic. Only control.
Wicked takes that illusion and names it.
The Wizard is no longer just a fraud.
He is a patriarchal figurehead: the kind of leader who claims authority through charm, myth and performance, while quietly manipulating the system to benefit himself and a select elite.
He doesn’t rule by force.
He rules by narrative.
When female power becomes a threat
Elphaba is not dangerous because she is violent.
She is dangerous because she is powerful and uncontrollable.
Her intelligence, her magic, her refusal to obey — all of it destabilizes the carefully maintained order of Oz. And like every patriarchal system faced with female autonomy, Oz responds the same way:
It reframes her power as chaos.
It renames her resistance as wickedness.
This is the central mechanism Wicked exposes:
women’s agency is not erased — it is rebranded as a threat.
The witch as a political label
In Wicked, the word witch is not a description.
It’s a weapon.
Elphaba doesn’t become wicked — she is made wicked by those in power. By the Wizard. By Madame Morrible. By a system that cannot tolerate dissent.
Her story mirrors a pattern as old as patriarchy itself:
-
speak out → be demonized
-
resist → be isolated
-
refuse to comply → be rewritten as dangerous
The label exists to silence her.
Not because she is wrong — but because she is right.
Glinda, gender roles, and the comfort of compliance
One of Wicked’s most nuanced insights is that patriarchy doesn’t survive through men alone.
It survives through rewarded femininity.
Glinda begins the story as the perfect product of the system:
-
admired
-
beautiful
-
popular
-
harmless
She is valued not for her power, but for her performance of it.
Glinda isn’t evil.
She is complicit.
And that’s what makes her arc so modern. Wicked doesn’t shame her — it shows how women are often encouraged to uphold the very structures that limit them, because safety and approval are offered in exchange for silence.
Divide, control, repeat
Patriarchy in Wicked is not only about gender.
Oz is built on systemic oppression:
-
speciesism
-
othering
-
fear of difference
Elphaba’s green skin becomes a visible marker of marginalization. Her power intersects with her difference, making her an ideal scapegoat.
By turning certain groups into enemies, the system distracts from the real imbalance of power — a strategy as old as empire.
Divide the marginalized.
Protect the elite.
Male power, but redefined
Even male characters in Wicked are trapped by the system.
Fiyero begins as a product of the male gaze — shallow, performative, emotionally disengaged. His evolution isn’t about dominance, but about unlearning entitlement.
In contrast to the Wizard’s hollow authority, Wicked offers a new vision of masculinity:
-
relational
-
accountable
-
capable of change
Power is no longer about control.
It becomes about alignment.
Why Wicked speaks so clearly now
What makes Wicked so striking today is its clarity.
This isn’t a story that only adults can decode.
Even a child can understand who is lying.
Who is manipulating.
Who is telling the truth and paying the price for it.
And maybe that’s the most unsettling part.
The Wizard of Oz hinted at a world beyond patriarchy — but it wrapped that idea in fantasy.
Wicked removes the wrapping.
It shows how systems stay in place:
through charm, fear, and carefully constructed enemies.
Not a villain. A revelation.
By the end of Wicked, something shifts.
Not because Elphaba is redeemed.
But because the illusion collapses.
The real villain was never the woman who refused to comply.
It was the system that needed her to be hated.
And maybe that’s why Wicked feels so powerful today.
Because it’s not asking us to feel sympathy for a villain.
It’s asking us to recognize a lie we’ve been told —
and how easily we believed it.