After a full year of “holding space” for Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande, the time has finally come—Wicked: For Good, the second movie of the two-part musical film, was released on Friday, November 21. While you may think thespians would be THE MOST excited about the release of the second installment, I know someone who has been scavenging the internet for spoilers, singing “Defying Gravity” on repeat, and counting down since the release of the first installment, 365 days ago. The girl who claims she has been “changed for good”? It’s Amanda Forman (’27).
Friday morning was a normal morning for everyone, except for Amanda. When the bell rang for the first block, Forman busted into Room 222 dressed as the unofficial mayor of Oz with her green sweatsuit, pink claw clip, and an energy that absolutely no one should have at 8:10 a.m. “TODAY IS THE DAY,” she sang in a theatrical tone as if she had practiced her entrance.
“Do YOU know what today is?!” she asked any acquaintance within a six-foot radius.
“Amanda, we all know what today is. It’s your day,” her friend Hannah Benowitz (’27) said while rolling her eyes and snarling. Confusion and fascination filled my head as I watched the two interact. Why was Amanda so obsessed? How many times has she talked about it to get Hannah this annoyed? Turning towards me, Benowitz added, “Have any questions about Wicked? Just ask Amanda, she’s basically walking ChatGPT.”
What was supposed to be a full hour of brainstorming for our Journalism stories turned into a storytime about the connection between Amanda and Wicked, and I was locked in—Sorry, Mr. Whitehead, the brainstorming could wait; my interest in Amanda’s hyperfixation couldn’t.
Amanda’s adoration of Wicked started long before the Grande/Erivo press tour last year. She first saw the musical at seven, and “immediately fell in love with the characters and music,” which led her to play the soundtrack on repeat. And when I say repeat, I mean it… the songs played “in the car with [her] mom, before going to bed, and as background music while playing with friends.” And while the musical’s popularity lingered, it remained so relevant to Amanda that when part one of the movie adaptation came out last year, she treated the day like a holiday.
With part two’s release being the only thing on Amanda’s mind, she treated that Friday morning like a personal ritual. Just as before, she blasted the soundtrack on the way to school and pranced through the halls like it was her civic duty to tell the whole school that Wicked: For Good was released. By fifth period, the anticipation made her so restless that she “left school early because she had such bad FOMO from everyone on TikTok who had already watched the movie.”
She arrived promptly at AMC Riverside for her 4 p.m. viewing. She immediately gravitated towards the merchandise, grabbing a “green Elphaba cup and a light-up Glinda popcorn bucket” (both of which now reside in her bedroom). Amanda sat in the back row and immediately started singing “Defying Gravity,” and she was not the only one singing. “It was magical,” she said. “People around me were humming and singing along. At school, no one reciprocated the energy I had, but the moviegoers sure did.”
As the credits rolled, so did a tear down her face. The lights rose, but she remained in her seat, taking in the “masterpiece” she had just watched. The second film surely exceeded her expectations, “wrapping up the storyline perfectly, and amplifying the magic of the first movie.”
And while the storyline was finished with this movie, her obsession with it is far from done. She already has plans to watch it again “next Sunday with Hannah” at IPIC, and Amanda will “see it as many times as anyone wants to go, because [she] gets something new out of each watch.”
