Sorry to Stranger Things and my many husbands in that show (Joe Keery, Charlie Heaton, Jamie Campbell Bower, etc.), but Wicked is currently all I care about. And if you, too, left the theater last November crying for reasons related to “Defying Gravity,” you are not alone.

Wicked: For Good is now finally here—but if you're wondering why Wicked was split into two movies to begin with, then we’re here to fill you in.

Director Jon M. Chu explained it pretty succinctly on Twitter way back in 2022, saying, “Here's what happened: as we prepared this production over the last year, it became increasingly clear that it would be impossible to wrestle the story of WICKED into a single film without doing some real damage to it. As we tried to cut songs or trim characters, those decisions began to feel like fatal compromises to the source material that has entertained us all for so many years.”

He added, “So we decided to give ourselves a bigger canvas and make not just one WICKED movie but TWO!!!! With more space, we can tell the story of WICKED as it was meant to be told while bringing even more depth and surprise to the journeys of these beloved characters.”

The director also told Gizmodo, “[Universal] was dancing back and forth and I think that was part of the problem of getting it started. They kept going, ‘Oh, it’s one movie. No, it’s two movies.’ I had to come and be like, ‘We need to make a choice with this.’ You cannot make a good one movie or two movies by dancing back and forth. Commit to two movies right now, otherwise, we’re never making those two movies good. I promise you that.”

Meanwhile, composer Stephen Schwartz explained, “The truth is we tried for some time to make it one movie, even if it had to be one very long movie. But we kept running into two problems. The first is that even as a very long single movie, it required us cutting or omitting things that we wanted to include and that we think fans of the show and the story will appreciate. Secondly, we found it very difficult to get past ‘Defying Gravity’ without a break. That song is written specifically to bring a curtain down, and whatever scene to follow it without a break just seemed hugely anti-climactic.”

He continued, “So, for these two reasons, plus the excitement of doing something that’s never been done before with a musical, we have decided to do two movies.”

There you have it!