POV: Why I feel like Elphaba and Galinda’s friendship is one for the books!

Wicked was an ode to every woman who believes her relationship with her best friend is no less than magic and the fact that all of us have a little bit of Elphie and Galinda in us!

While Wicked tells the story of Elphaba aka the Wicked Witch of the West and Galinda the Good Witch, before either of them had these titles, they were just Elphaba and Galinda who met at Shiz University. But Elphie and Galinda weren’t always best friends. They couldn’t stand each other when they first met and they had to share a dorm room together on top of that. It only created more friction between the two but the most uncomfortable situations create something so meaningful that stays with us forever. Both Elphaba and Galinda were strong, opinionated women who believed that their way of living life is the right way. Galinda was a privileged only child of a wealthy family and she's never not gotten her way. She loves pink; it’s almost as if she is so in love with life simply because she has never had to go through any hardships. 

Elphaba on the other hand, had to grow up way before she should have. She’s heard every insult possible just because she is green in color and she’s had to step in as a caretaker for her sister Nessa. So when these two girls with polar opposite upbringing were asked to live together, there were of course a plethora of differences in opinion! While they start off on the wrong foot, neither of them were women who wanted to put each other down and that is something that they learn through their crazy journey together. The Oz Dust scene plays a pivotal role in the shift that their relationship takes.

When Galinda is touched by Elphaba’s gesture of putting in a good word with Madame Morrible and when Elphaba shows up at the Oz Dust with the infamous hat that Galinda gives her, they both extend a hand of friendship to one another. But the scene that truly describes the friendship between them isn’t even a scene with any impactful dialogues, it’s the dance that they do at the Oz Dust. Elphaba starts throwing her hands in the air. No one's really able to understand what she’s doing and start laughing at her. Until Galinda aka the Queen bee of school joins her in her off beat dance. The dance was Galinda’s way of telling Elphaba ‘I’m with you, no matter what anyone thinks or says’. At the end of the dance, they were crying and you best believe I was missing my best friend and crying too! It was girlhood at its peak and there’s truly no other feeling that could ever match this! Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande breathe so much life into these characters and create magic on-screen.

As they started their new journey as friends, they became inseparable. They got to know each other on a much deeper level. Sleepovers followed along with much needed makeovers and sharing secrets. When Elphaba was invited to Oz Land by the Wizard of Oz himself, Galinda jumps on the bandwagon quite literally and joins Elphaba on a trip that was full of uncertainty. They say don’t meet your heroes and as we see in the film, Elphaba shouldn’t have either. The Wizard of Oz is nothing like what she had imagined him to be like. Forget magic, he couldn’t even read the text from the prophecy. But Elphaba could and he wanted to use her to harm animals, and she was totally against that.

Hence, when he frames her as the evil Wicked Witch of the West, Elphaba decides to flee and asks Galinda if she wants to come along with her. This is the second pivotal point in their relationship where while the two have immense love and respect for each other, they had to part ways. Elphaba wanted to go against the government, Galinda didn’t. She wanted to be the good witch even though she knew siding with the government wasn’t the right thing to do. Both of them made their respective choices and yet never tried to pull each other down or get the other one arrested. That’s how complex their relationship was. Just when they became friends, life had other plans for them. And still as they went through it all, they always had a special place for each other in their hearts. While they were on the opposite side of history, they always spoke about one another with a little love and pain in their eyes. 

Through Wicked, Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo set a pure and magical benchmark for female friendships on-screen which transcended to their real lives as well. 

Here’s hoping that the characters encourage the younger girls today to be kinder to one another and quit the rat race where the finish line is a myth!

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