I saw someone last night earnestly defending Glinda encouraging the regime to use Nessarose, a disabled woman, as bait to trap her own sister. And the entire argument rested on this idea that Elphaba had somehow ruined Glinda’s wedding night and stolen her fiancé, and specifically that it was justified, and that OP 'would have done worse', (worse than leaning into fascism? are you okay OP?)
and uhh oki, so, let’s breathe for a moment and look at what actually happens and the intent of the story, especially for those who have only seen the adaptations.
Fiyero did not want Glinda. Fiyero explicitly chose Elphaba. There is no theft when a person leaves of their own will.
Glinda knew Fiyero wanted to go to Elphaba.
She knew he loved her.
She knew the wedding was a hollow performance, and she still forced it on him in a desperate attempt to hold on to a relationship that was already gone.
The musical softens this, and the movie honestly softens it even further, but the bones of the story remain.
Gregory Maguire wrote the novel as an anti-fascist critique, and that lens makes Glinda’s choices far more complex. They are not accidents of circumstance. They are the actions of someone who has aligned herself with a fascist regime because the system rewards her for it.
And that is the uncomfortable truth a lot of people getting into Wicked via the musical, and especially the movie, seem to not be willing to engage with from where I'm standing, these discussions do happen, but they are not the ones I am seeing.
Glinda is not innocent.
She is beloved, yes. She is delightful, yes. She is one of the most charming characters ever written.
And she is also, through most of the story a fascist.
It is a story about Elphaba, yes, but it is also a story about Glinda, and it is in particular a story about Glinda walking away from Fascism after having been a longterm participant in the fascist regime.
She's not a fascist because she hates Animals, or because she personally enjoys their suffering, but because the system benefits her, affirms her, and elevates her.
She loves status (Being 'Popular') more than justice, and that is one of Maguire’s central points. Fascism thrives not just on zealots at the top, but on the soft, bright, smiling faces in the middle who choose comfort over conscience.
She knows about the atrocities. She knows about the voiceless Animals, the cages, the forced labor, the propaganda.
She knows enough to feel the edge of guilt but not enough to sacrifice anything meaningful. Even at her wedding, when caged Animals are literally freed from beneath her feet, she does not ask questions. She worries about the spectacle of her wedding, about her image, about the illusion she is working so hard to preserve.
And again, this is not me condemning her as a character!
I adore her. She's one of my favorite characters.
She is compelling precisely because she is flawed. Maguire himself said that Wicked is about the politics of moral relativity, about how systems shape us in ways we do not want to see. He described his interest not in good versus evil but in what he called “the moral conundrum of complicity.” Glinda is meant to embody that. She is the glittering face of a fascist regime built on cruelty, someone who benefits so thoroughly that she cannot imagine stepping outside the machinery without losing herself.
This is why it is so baffling when people watch Wicked & Wicked: For Good and come away insisting that Glinda was justified in clinging harder to fascism because her sham wedding was disrupted.
That reading ignores the entire thematic foundation of the story, the historical fascist parallels Maguire VERY intentionally wove in, and the novel’s explicit engagement with how ordinary people become entwined in oppressive systems.
If your takeaway is that her reaction is understandable because she was embarrassed or slighted or her true love was 'stolen', I say this with kindness;
your media literacy needs a stretch. Maybe even a long walk.
And please please please, if you have never read the source material, I truly encourage you to. It offers a depth and clarity that the adaptations are forced fundamentally to gloss over, and it really paints Glinda as she was intended to be seen, not a villain, not a saint, but a deeply deeply human participant in a monstrous system who chooses comfort, privilege, and popularity over the suffering of others.
That is the tragedy. And that is the point.
