“Wicked: For Good” doesn’t hit theaters until November 2025, but the first trailer is finally here.

In case you’re somehow behind on the entire saga of this film’s release schedule, let me refresh your memory. After years of development and attempts to make it a reality, the first part of the massive “Wicked” movie, based on Stephen Schwartz and Winnie Holtzman’s blockbuster Broadway musical of the same name, came out in November 2024. Helmed by Jon M. Chu (“Crazy Rich Asians,” “In the Heights”), the initial part of the origin story of the Wicked Witch of the West stars Cynthia Erivo as Elphaba Thropp, the young, verdantly-hued witch who gets blamed for all of Oz’s societal ills, alongside Ariana Grande-Butera as her best friend and eventual Good Witch, Glinda. 

“Wicked: Part One” was a box office smash and scored great reviews with critics, and it even earned a handful of Oscar nods, including Best Picture, Best Actress (for Erivo), and Best Supporting Actress (for pop star Grande-Butera, who’s credited by her whole name in the film). (It won two “below-the-line” Academy Awards in March 2025 for its costume design and production design, both of which were wholly deserved.) So, how will the story continue in the sequel, which adopted the subtitle “For Good” in honor of one of the musical’s most emotional duets? People familiar with either the musical or Gregory Maguire’s much darker book “Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West” (which served as the source material for the musical) probably already have some idea about where “For Good” is going. Now, thanks to the trailer, all kinds of “Wicked” fans will be able to see what’s coming this fall.

Where the marketing for “Wicked: Part One” did its best to hide the fact the movie is a musical (one that’s, again, based on a blockbuster Broadway sensation, as silly as that was), the cat is mercifully out of the bag for “Wicked: For Good.” That means we’re treated to snippets of arguably the two most well-known and celebrated songs from the original stage show’s second half here in the forms of “No Good Deed” and the titular “For Good.” They’re both extremely emotional and sweeping tunes at that, though to say more would be to ruin the surprise for all you novices out there who’ve yet to experience this “Wizard of Oz” prequel/re-imagining in its entirety.

What we can say, however, is that “Wicked: For Good” is closer to a political thriller set in the whimsical “Wicked” universe than the coming-of-young-adult-age saga that was “Part One.” You can glean as much from the trailer, which finds Elphaba having fully embraced her Wicked Witch of the West moniker and acting as a freedom fighter intent on exposing the Wizard’s (Jeff Goldblum) lies and delivering justice to the wrongly persecuted Animals of Oz. Mind you, things won’t be getting quite as bleak and grim as they do in Maguire’s original “Wicked” novel, where Elphaba becomes, more or less, an Irish Republican Army (IRA)-styled terrorist/rebel. For that, you’ll have to make due with watching “Say Nothing” and pretending the Price sisters are Elphaba and Glinda.

As for who’s playing Dorothy Gale (who, as we see in the trailer, properly enters the picture at this point in the narrative, along with some other familiar Ozians) in “Wicked: For Good” and what we can expect in terms of the new songs created specifically for this movie, that will have to remain a mystery for the time being. Never fear, though, all shall be revealed when Elphaba, Glinda, and the gang return to the big screen on November 21, 2025.