Elphaba and Glinda’s heartbreaking final reunion wasn’t included in Wicked: For Good

The ending of Wicked: For Good had everybody bawling. But the original ending for Elphaba and Glinda was even sadder. Elphaba and Glinda have a heartbreaking reunion in the Wicked books, after the events of Wicked: For Good. I would get the tissues ready before you read it.

So, in Gregory Maguire’s Wicked books, we don’t see Elphaba escape with Fiyero. It’s a lot more ambiguous what happens to her. Elphaba does have a granddaughter called Rain, who is basically a mini Elphaba. Glinda decides to protect Rain from everyone who hated her family. She hires Rain as her chambermaid. They bond, and start using the Grimmerie together to make magic spells and get involved with the war in Oz (honestly, the books get wild). It’s all super touching. After this war, Glinda is sent to a prison called Southstairs. This is the very last we see of Glinda, in the book Out of Oz:

This isn’t the last we see of them in the book
(Credit: Universal Pictures)

“In her cell, Glinda woke up with a start. The lumbago was more punishing than the incarceration, but a sense of spring had filtered all the way down the open canyon roof of Southstairs, and she caught a whiff of freshness, of arrogant possibility. Her glasses had broken a year ago. She didn’t need them anymore, not really. She knew who was turning the door handle of her cell. She called her name sleepily, and added, ‘You wicked thing. You’ve taken your own sweet time, of course.'”

Most Read

Love Is Blind’s Zack changes ‘creepy’ caption for anniversary with Bliss after backlash

Aitch and Shona’s huge age gap revealed, as ‘jungle romance’ blossoms on I’m A Celeb

People have translated the tragic spell Glinda was shown at the end of Wicked, and I’m bawling

The very next word in the book is in fact “Elphaba”. (After a paragraph break, the narrator describes her old broom). Surely, he knew what he was doing when he put her name next.

So, the two possible interpretations of Glinda’s ending are that a) Elphaba resurfaces, rescues Glinda from prison, and they disappear off together b) Glinda dies in prison because she helped Elphaba’s granddaughter, and she has a vision of Elphaba guiding her into the afterlife.

#Gelphie
(Credit: Universal Pictures)

Elphaba and Glinda’s relationship is more explicitly romantic in the book than in the musical or either Wicked films. In the book, they actually kiss after Elphaba decides to rebel against the Wizard. The author also joked in an interview with Them: “Perhaps because a novelist can’t write every scene, perhaps when the lights were out and the novelist was out having a smoke in the back alley, the girls had sex in the bed on the way to the Emerald City.”

Either way, it might be a good thing that Elphaba and Glinda’s final reunion didn’t make it into Wicked: For Good. I may have never recovered from seeing it on screen.

For more like this, like The Tab on Facebook. 

Featured images via Universal Pictures.