POV: Why Wicked means a lot to me as a Wizard of Oz fan!

Wizard of Oz walked so Wicked could run and the movie’s release gives the inner-child in me the closure it deserves!

As an early 2000s kid, when Bollywood was at its peak and cinema houses were running full, there wasn’t a lot of room for other movies to make space in my life. But still, somehow, Wizard of Oz made its way to mine like it was always meant to be. I was gifted a DVD from a relative of mine who had returned from the US and little did I know that the movie would inculcate my love for cinema and shape who I am today. Trust me, this story isn’t overly stretched or dramatic, when I say I was obsessed with it, I was ‘I won’t eat my lunch without it running on TV’ kinda obsessed with it. I was so fascinated by the yellow brick roads that Dorothy was asked to follow, I know how desperately I wanted the ruby red heels that had to be tapped thrice to teleport anywhere, I remember how the Tin Man was my favourite out of Dorothy’s friends and I know how scared I was of the Wicked Witch of the West and her evil laughter. 

Also Read: Wicked: For Good: What to expect from the highly anticipated musical sequel!

But that was the beginning and the end for me when it comes to this story. I had no idea there was more to this than what I was shown as a kid. That there is an entire back story about GlindatheGood Witch and Elphaba - the Wicked Witch of the West, and Dorothy was simply just a small part of a much larger picture. The fact that the two witches were friends before life tore them apart, was in itself big news to me last year, when the rest of the world probably grew up reading the book or saw it on Broadway - something I did not have access to of course! After a good 20 years when I accidentally stumbled upon someone saying ‘It’s a prequel to Wizard of Oz’, my heart stopped and I thought to myself, there’s more?

When I went to watch part one, all by myself, I felt like I was a kid in a candy store! It felt as if I had opened doors to a whole new world. There was so much colour, there were songs I could sing along too, Glinda’s pink costumes made me want to steal them from the screen, and above all their vocals were straight out of heaven! But above all, I remember feeling, this is the closure I always deserved as a Wizard of Oz fan. I finally knew the whole story and it felt like life had come full circle. It's as if I watched Wizard of Oz everyday, so Wicked could come into my life when I was an adult and much more capable of understanding a complex but beautiful story like this! So with part two’s release just on the horizon, I feel the inner-child in me, who gets excited and finds joy in the smallest of things is ready to feel alive again and hopefully sing along to all the songs from start to finish!

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