what is this feeling?

notes on the Wicked movie and the reclamation of joy

If Sandra Cisneros is to be believed, somewhere inside of me, bubble-wrapped in a decade-plus of life experience and grown-up concerns and, I don’t know, bank statements, is a teenage girl who loves the musical Wicked.

And so obviously, I saw Wicked (Part One) (2024) at my local AMC on opening weekend. To do otherwise would have been unfathomably out of character. Given all of this, I should not have been surprised that I just about blacked out as soon I saw the title card. I think I stopped breathing. There was so much adrenaline coursing through me, so much anticipation I could’ve exploded.

It was almost exactly the same feeling as when I saw the stage show on Broadway for the first time aged fourteen, spring-loaded with a year’s worth of all-consuming obsession, the kind that seems unique to young girls and the adults who used to be them. Full of hope and a healthy fear of disappointment but also being unable to believe that the thing is real and happening.

If you are lucky enough to know teenage girls, you know what I mean. If you happened to know me as a teenager, I am so sorry.

I guess I wasn’t quite prepared for the effect that Wicked the movie would have on me. My fourteen-year-old self, what the TikTok therapists so glibly call my inner child, pushed through some of the layers to be a lot closer to the surface; whatever age and time has done to chill me out suddenly canceled out by the re-emergence of Wicked. Rational thought was increasingly replaced by looping musical motifs, by dramaturgical analysis, by a sudden awareness of the blood in my veins, by a ravenous demand for more.

It occurred to me, maybe 30 seconds into the movie, that I was getting the rare gift of experiencing something I held so close as new again for the first time. There were things about something I loved so much that I didn’t know. I could not get enough.

I let it happen to me. I giggled so hard I choked. I bit my lip to keep from squealing with delight. I think my family, who was kind enough to come with me, was genuinely concerned for my wellbeing.

I started listening to the soundtrack and then the score, one song at a time, on repeat.

To write about Wicked, to really engage with it, is to excavate a tender part of my heart and soul. The impact this musical had on my preteen self and my years-long obsession with it, is, I think, inextricable from who I am as a person. Forget a handprint on my heart, Wicked had a vice grip that shaped my prepubescent heart into its own image.

I don’t want to write about Wicked like the precocious theatre kid I once was, and I don’t want to write about the movie like a reviewer with opinions you care about or like a writer who thinks that Wicked is Actually About Something Deep and Important and we should talk about that instead. There are plenty of people doing that on the Internet right now. I want to write about Wicked because I want to analyze my own joyous regression.

I think it’s interesting that Wicked hit theaters right around the time Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour was coming to an end. Both Wicked and Taylor are touchstones in my teenage years that remain regular parts of my life to this day. Somewhere in there, if I were willing to work for it, is a reflection on girlhood and growing up and maturation and transfiguration and co-evolution. How everything has changed and nothing has changed. What would dorky middle school Sarah say if you told her things she loved would be two of the biggest events of the year 2024? A cultural tide is shifting, where loving things unabashedly is cool again, and media is so niche it doesn’t really matter anyway. But also, it’s just plain fun to get to have this much fun.

Which, even as I write that, feels discordant given the state of the world. That extremely teenage feeling of utter abandon to delight suddenly feels childish instead of childlike. Instead of badly screlting The Wizard and I or watching yet another shaky recording of the surprise songs, I should be paying attention to all of the scary stuff.

To quote Taylor: And I’m like, I’m just, I mean, this is exhausting, you know?

Not unimportant, of course. But I wonder if that’s not a tiny part of why something in me decided to chase Wicked down again so hard. Wicked was, undoubtedly, the single most important thing in the world to me in 2014. And that blind obsession that still lives somewhere deep in my bones makes that frequency of joy feel accessible here in 2024. I’m not sure when I lost that. I think I want it back.

Maybe not at full tilt. Maybe 40% would do. Honestly, probably 20%. I could stand to stop getting a headache if I don’t listen to No One Mourns the Wicked at least once every couple hours (this is not at all a joke) or fall asleep without reciting the cornfield scene to myself (also entirely factual). But I really love the part that feels like curiosity and wonder. I’d love it if that could stick around.

I fell in love with Wicked for a million reasons, but one of my favorite parts of that stage of my life was how much I got to figure stuff out. Like, did you know that someone who understudied Glinda for a year in 2007 was in a 2010 off-Broadway play with someone who would later play Boq on the tour in 2013?¹ Wicked sits at the epicenter of just about everything I’ve been interested in for the last decade or so, the nucleus of a universe inside my overactive brain. It’s the glue that binds it all together. I want to learn how to explore like that again.

I loved that element of discovery. Wicked led me to Stephen Sondheim and music theory and disability justice and probably actually my whole entire career but I can’t find a way to write about that without sounding insane so I’m not going to. I miss that kind of optimism and ability to believe the world was big and full of interesting things.

I should caveat here: I’m not unhappy. I love my life. There is plenty of excitement and interest. But it doesn’t feel quite like that anymore. I feel more like the lead of a Hallmark movie during act one, charmed by the snow and the hot cocoa in the town but more concerned with the big project at work at the holidays; I’m trying to live more in act three, after I find out Santa and the magic of Christmas are real and my extremely conventionally attractive high school crush I’ve fallen in love with is an elf.

That analogy kind of got away from me, so let me go back to my first love. I used to joke that I would know I’ve found The One when I like them more than Wicked. Hasn’t happened yet.

I saw the Wicked movie four times in theaters. Three times in thirty-six hours, and then about a week later. I had to. I felt compelled to. It is hard to describe how much I felt like I wanted to crawl out of my skin until I could see it again and again and again.

So, at viewing number four, I settled in. There were maybe ten people in the auditorium. Most looked old enough to be my grandparents. It was noon on a Wednesday, after all. At least one person didn’t know it was a musical when it started. Someone was whisper-explaining things occasionally.

It was the closest I’ve come to a pure experience of the movie. I know the source material too well. After I got over the initial thrill of it all, I was running comparisons and catching references automatically, clocking lines that were changed or cut or reharmonized songs and new orchestrations. This audience had no context for any of that. They were just enjoying a story that I have held so close for years.

There was honest-to-God cheering as the credits rolled. Applause and whoops. “Yassss, girl!” someone cried. “She did that! Cynthia did that!” We all laughed and cheered some more.

I stayed for the credits, for the beautiful score, for the ensemble names I recognized from years of studying them like sports rosters, for the shoutout to the stage companies under one final Defying Gravity motif.

It was for my teenage self, who is also me, because she would die to hear the score so lush, to see microexpressions flash across faces, to hear an alternate Popular ending. The nagging in my stomach, the chills, the immediate need to consume every single podcast and featurette and interview I can find - all an expression of love and passion that I decided was uncool but would have been so freaking proud of twelve years ago. I don’t think I can stay this obsessed with Wicked forever. But I think I can remember what it feels like to like something this much, to believe so deeply in something, to care unreservedly. That’s the feeling I want to keep.

Hey, fourteen-year-old Sarah. We get to see the Wicked movie three times in 36 hours. You’re welcome. And also, thank you. for everything.

1. This, to my knowledge, never happened. I made it up. But I can think of about a dozen similar events.