Episode 39. Popular to Popped Bubbles: Glinda, Elphaba & the Trouble With Being “Good”
What Wicked: For Good reveals about truth, identity, and the cost of performing “goodness.”
Glinda gets everything she ever wanted—popularity, power, even magic—and still ends up alone. That’s the warning.
Wicked: For Good isn’t just “part two”—it changes how you read the first film and the whole Oz story. In this solo episode, I break down Elphaba’s moral clarity, Glinda’s bubble finally popping, the Wizard’s razzle-dazzle propaganda, and the surprising musical lineage that ties Elphaba’s new song to The Wiz. It’s a conversation about complicity, awakening, and what happens when being “good” becomes performance instead of truth.
Listen to the full episode on your favorite podcast platform.
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“We believe all sorts of things that aren’t true. We call it history.”
In This Episode, You'll Learn
Why Wicked: For Good is the second half of one story—not a sequel.
How Elphaba’s arc is driven by moral certainty, not confusion.
Why Glinda’s bubble symbolizes performative goodness and complicity.
How propaganda works: showmanship, narrative control, and “history.”
What The Wiz adds to Elphaba’s idea of home, identity, and belonging.
Transcript
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Dr. Mariel Buqué (00:00:00):
You are not broken. You are simply carrying around generations of pain and it can make your emotions feel at times unbearable and like healing is impossible. But I can tell you with certainty, you have an opportunity to create a different legacy than what you were handed. You can take that opportunity and transform your life starting today.
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Send this episode to a friend who’s allergic to binary thinking (or who still needs to see the movie).
Key takeaways
Goodness isn’t the same as truth—especially when it’s performed for approval.
Complicity often looks like comfort, access, and “working within the system.”
Integrity costs something—and can also free something.
If “home” isn’t granted, it can be built through self-knowledge and truth.
Stage musical
Film
Film/Stage
Resources
• Wicked (stage musical)
• Wicked: For Good (film)
• The Wizard of Oz (L. Frank Baum)
• The Wiz (film/stage)
• Gregory Maguire’s Wicked (novel)
