Will ‘Wicked: Part 2’ Follow The Book’s Ending, Or The Musical’s Ending?

Major spoiler alerts for those who haven’t watched the musical or read the book ahead.

Dedicated fans of “Wicked” (both the book and the musical) know that there’s one massive difference between the original book and the stage adaptation: In the book, Elphaba dies at the end.

This leaves a significantly more tragic ending for the least-liked witch in all of Oz. In the musical, she simply runs away, never to be heard from again. But the book version sees Elphaba actually melting when Dorothy throws the bucket of water over her. 

Instead of running away with Fieryo, the two of them both perish (Fieryo doesn’t even make it to become the Scarecrow, by the way — he instead meets a gruesome end at the hand of Oz’s police force, and Elphaba later gaslights herself into hallucinating the fact that he transformed into the Scarecrow and secretly survived). 

Though the “Wicked” movie has stayed canon to the musical thus far, there is room for the filmmakers to pull the most shocking move of all time and actually kill off Elphaba at the end of the film. In both the musical and the book, everyone else in Oz believes that Elphaba is truly dead, regardless of whether she actually dies or runs away. This means that there isn’t much character adaptation the filmmakers would need to do during the second act to kill off Elphaba for good.

So, what are the signs as to whether Elphaba lives or dies?

Well, it’s actually more likely that Elphaba will survive the entirety of the second act than be killed off. For one thing, we’ve already seen leaked set images of Fieryo as the Scarecrow. In the book, Fieryo never becomes the Scarecrow; he dies before he has the chance to. The fact that Fieryo exists as the Scarecrow within the second part of the “Wicked” movie likely indicates that Elphaba will also survive.

Also, in the first part of the movie “Wicked,” you can see a cloaked figure riding away from Oz on horseback. In the musical, Elphaba escapes her untimely demise and runs away from Oz with Fieryo. Though only eagle-eyed viewers will notice this detail in the movie (it happens at the very beginning), the mysterious rider is implicated to be Elphaba — who, at this point in the movie, would have already survived Dorothy’s water bucket and zipped out of Oz before anyone could notice that she faked her death.

There’s really no one else that this mystery figure could be — and the horse being ridden is clearly Fieryo’s horse, to add to the foreshadowing. Fieryo, by the way, is still busy walking the Yellow Brick Road when this sequence is shown, which leaves only Elphaba to be riding his horse.

To add to the idea that Elphaba will survive the movie, the book is significantly more gruesome and explicit than the musical. In it, Elphaba dissolves painfully in an acidic death. 

The reason that water kills her in the book is actually because Elphaba is canonically allergic to water; her skin reacts to it as if it is acid. When she cries, her tears burn her face. She can’t shower or bathe — she has to keep herself clean with special oils. 

In the movie, however, we’ve already seen Elphaba cry a few different times — and her own tears don’t harm her. We even saw her get rained on at one point during the film. This clearly proves that the movie is sticking to the musical’s version of events, wherein water doesn’t affect Elphaba at all. In this case, Elphaba won’t actually be killed by Dorothy’s water bucket.

Although “Wicked” part 2 hasn’t released yet, we’re pretty confident that both Elphaba and Fieryo will survive to see the end of the second film — with a couple key transformations, of course. We’re mostly just hoping that Glinda will receive a happier ending herself, since neither the book or the musical version of Glinda is left with any hope that Elphaba has actually survived.