Jon M. Chu's Wicked: For Good has found an unexpected second life on Netflix, climbing to the top of the U.S. streaming charts shortly after its digital debut. The film, which serves as the second half of Universal's ambitious two-part adaptation of the Broadway smash, arrived on the platform to a surge of viewer interest that its theatrical run never quite matched.
The numbers tell a complicated story. Wicked: Part I opened in November 2024 and rode a wave of critical praise to 540.8 million globally with a $147 million domestic opening, and walked away from awards season empty-handed. For a franchise that had become a cultural phenomenon, the drop-off was hard to ignore.
The film picks up after Elphaba, played by Cynthia Erivo, flees the Emerald City having exposed the Wizard (Jeff Goldblum) as a fraud and discovered her own latent magical powers. What follows is a darker, more politically charged chapter as the Ozian government launches a propaganda campaign to brand her the "Wicked Witch," scapegoating talking animals along the way. Ariana Grande, credited as Ariana Grande-Butera, returns as Glinda, the once-shallow socialite forced to choose between her privileged position and her conscience.
Critical reception was notably chillier this time around. Where the first film earned near-universal praise, For Good drew mixed notices. Some critics, including reviewers at major outlets, praised its political ambitions and its exploration of how propaganda manufactures villains. Others found the tone uneven, with would-be dramatic moments landing as unintentionally silly within Oz's candy-colored world. Reviewer Justin Chang was particularly scathing, writing that the narrative retconning that felt "breezy" onstage became "close to an abomination" when blown up to IMAX scale.
Even the film's defenders admitted the sequel had structural problems. Part I contained the stage musical's two biggest showstoppers, "Popular" and "Defying Gravity," leaving For Good to adapt what is generally considered the weaker half of the source material. New scenes added for the film adaptation, meant to deepen the story, struck many viewers as extraneous padding.
Yet the Netflix numbers suggest audiences do not care about the critical divide. The film's streaming dominance points to a few likely factors: the built-in fanbase of the Broadway original, the star power of Erivo and Grande, and the simple reality that viewers who skipped theaters are now catching up at home. For Universal, the streaming performance is a useful consolation prize. For Netflix, it is another reminder that a title's theatrical reputation and its streaming success are increasingly separate metrics.
What happens next for the franchise is unclear. There is no third Wicked film on the schedule, and the two-part adaptation was always intended as a complete telling. But if Netflix viewership stays strong, the studio may well reconsider whether Oz still has stories left to tell.