Kyle Buchanan

That's a really good song.

But it's interesting, too, because as somebody who came to this material very fresh and with a cynical eye of, oh, are they really splitting it in two for maximum profit?

When I watched the first movie, I was surprised at how complete it felt.

Agreed.

It felt to me as though all of the real questions of this property were answered by the end.

I know why she became the Wicked Witch.

So I sort of wondered to myself, what more terrain is there to cover in the second movie?

And I think having seen it, the answer is it doesn't feel necessarily like a complete and urgent movie in the way that the first one does.

But I do think it works as sort of an extended coda with these characters.

If you liked spending time with these two in the first movie...

Well, here you go.

Here's two hours more that you can have to wrap up that experience.

I do think, like, even if it doesn't feel like this film has the same stakes as the original, that people, that audiences will appreciate that extended time that they get with Cynthia and Ariana.

Yeah.

Yeah, even when John decided to split these movies into two, the first script he printed on green pages and the second one he printed on pink, you know, just to sort of indicate that the second film, in a lot of ways, the arc is Glinda's, or at least the most interesting conflict here.

You know, Glinda has sort of bought into this fascist ideal that the wizard is espousing because it means that she gets to wear a lot of pretty pink dresses and be famous.

But within that gilded life, within that bubble,

she's dying inside.

She doesn't have access to her friends.

Everybody's kind of turning on her and she has to keep espousing these lies.