The Real Magic of Wicked: Welcoming Back The Green Witch

(image: The Mud Maid by Sue and Pete Hill, Lost Gardens of Heligan, Cornwall)

Watching Wicked 2 with my daughter and our friends at the weekend, I was lightly and beautifully transported into the fictional world of the story — and yet, at the same time, a visceral heaviness sat in my body, stirred by the unsettling echoes of our real world.

Afterwards, as the teens hung out in another room, a reflective conversation unfolded among the parents in the kitchen, about what we were left sitting with. We’d all been pleasantly surprised to have genuinely enjoyed the film — and yet, the unexpected lack of a Disney-esque ending left us feeling both well fed and unsatisfied. Like when you realise you’ve eaten the whole chocolate bar but were sure you had one piece left.

I was left with an uncomfortable sense that something was missing — and yet, strangely, that in itself felt just right, because it reflected a current truth.

What lingered for me was the film’s cultural commentary on how unable we are, as a society, to tolerate the complexities of truth, and how deeply we crave simplified symbolic roles — ‘goodies’ and ‘baddies’, heroes and villains. One of the most powerful aspects of Wicked is how it subverts that binary altogether, offering a far more morally complex world where the so-called “wicked” one might in fact be the most truthful. What disturbed me was the absence of hope — the quiet suggestion that all we can do is accept and live within the limits of this broken reality.

But I don’t want to. I want to believe in another way — a new path for humanity where we love better. And by loving better, I mean having the hard conversations, not just the easy ones. Facing the truths in our lives, even when they undo us.

Sure, maybe I’m being naïve. Maybe the truth — as represented by Elphaba, the green witch, — does need to stay hidden, because humans can’t tolerate opening their eyes to what she represents. But what does she represent?

For me, she represents real magic — the ways of being and knowing that our rational, linear worldview tends to deny or ridicule. She embodies the raw intelligence of instinct, the wild, unspoken language of the body. She speaks with animals and stands up for them, out of care, but also out of a deep refusal to participate in the systems that silence and control. This is the kind of magic we’ve forgotten — the ability, as she says, to ‘look at things another way’ — not with detachment, but with the full force of our feeling, instinct, and truth. She carries the parts of us we’re taught to bury: grief, rage, erotic energy, creative fire, and intuition — the places we’ve been told are too much, too messy, too dangerous.

She embodies repressed aspects of the dark Feminine, long subjugated in patriarchal systems.

She is not evil, but powerful, mysterious, emotionally deep, and long silenced. She threatens established order simply by existing as her full, intuitive self. And crucially, her “wickedness” is not inherent — it is constructed by those in power. The system needs her to be feared, not understood.

And yet, the real danger lies in her absence. In systems that hide truth, divide people, and turn difference into something to fear. In the exploitation of the Earth, the erasure of Indigenous wisdom, the systemic silencing of dissent. In relationships where only the light is expressed, and the dark must stay hidden — so unspoken truths sneak out sideways, in passive-aggressive digs or quiet withdrawal. These are the places that don’t feel truly safe.

This is the cost of disowning the Dark Feminine: connection becomes surface-deep, presence becomes performative, and we fragment ourselves to stay accepted — showing what’s palatable, hiding what’s true.

So why then did the story end there?

After all, this is not the end of our story. Maybe we are ‘unlimited’.

As we step into the next chapters of our human story, what might happen if we welcome her back — the green witch, the phenomenal force that is the dark Feminine? What if we do this slowly, in small and grounded ways, through our everyday lives?

We can call her back in countless simple moments. When we honour our anger rather than suppress it. When we grieve fully. When we say no with clarity. When we create art that doesn’t need to be pretty. When we rest instead of perform. When we reclaim the wild intelligence of our bodies — pausing to listen to how we truthfully feel, and speaking from that place — even when our truth is messy, uncomfortable, or disruptive. This kind of truth is real love, embodied —not the polished kind, but the kind that transforms.

The possibilities are endless, but if we’re still living within the old story — the one that fears her wildness, her fire, her grief, her truth — we have to choose our actions consciously.

This is how we create a new ending — not by closing the book, but by beginning a whole new story for the world. One where we welcome the green witch gently back into our lives, one whispered spell at a time.