Outraged Wicked Fans Demand Answers After Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo Overlooked by Oscars

Well, here we go again: Oscar nomination season is here and, let me tell you, if you thought last year’s snubs were something, this time they may have dialed it up to 11. ‘Wicked: For Good’—also known as “Wicked 2” for those keeping score—turned up absolutely nowhere on the 2026 Academy Award nominations list. Not a single nomination, not even in those technical categories you barely remember exist. Fans are, unsurprisingly, losing it online—and honestly, I get where they’re coming from.

What Got In, What Got Left Out

So while movies like ‘Marty Supreme’, ‘One Battle After Another’, and ‘Sinners’ racked up nods across assorted categories, ‘Wicked: For Good’ got the cold shoulder from every Oscar branch. Zero. Zilch. And that’s a big swing from the first ‘Wicked’ movie, which picked up 10 nominations and won two statuettes last year (Costume and Production Design, for the record). Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande even grabbed acting nominations the first go around, though both came up short: Erivo lost to Mikey Madison (‘Anora’), Grande to Zoe Saldaña (‘Emilia Pérez’).

The Internet Meltdown

This time, fans clearly expected a repeat—or at least a couple of invites to the party. No dice, and the reaction online has been… let’s call it “enthusiastic.” Scrolling through X (which is what Twitter wants to be called now), you could put together a top 10 list of salty fan reactions in about thirty seconds. Some of my favorites (summed up in my own words, obviously):

• ‘Cynthia Erivo not getting anything for Elphaba? That’s beyond disrespectful.’
• ‘Both should have gotten something! Acting competition is fierce, but there were categories with room for them.’
• ‘Ariana and Cynthia basically carried the movie—what are the Oscars even doing?’
• ‘Cynthia was snubbed by every awards show this season!’
• ‘If you think Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo deserved nominations, like this post—I’m actually taking a poll!’
• ‘How does a movie this good get nothing? Makes no sense.’

Not everyone is fully torched-earth about it, though. At least one optimist popped up to say that, even if the movie got blanked, it was still ‘excellent and enjoyable’—adding, pretty bluntly, that ‘these awards mean nothing anymore.’ (Insert your own “sour grapes” joke here, I guess.)

Wait, the Music People Are Mad Too?

The outrage wasn’t limited to just musical theater Twitter either: pop star Charlie Puth jumped in and said, basically, he doesn’t see a ton of movies, but what Grande and Erivo did in ‘Wicked: For Good’ deserved some official props. According to him, their ‘amazing musicality’ was more than worthy of a nomination.

Why Is This Such a Shock?

The real kicker here is just how well ‘Wicked: For Good’ did at the Oscars the first time around. Ten nominations, including acting nods, with Erivo and Grande both out front. So the sequel getting ghosted by the Academy—even in categories like costumes or production design, which they’d previously won—is, frankly, weird. It’s not like the field was a total dud this year, but you’d expect at least a nod in the “we see what you’re doing” department.

At the end of the day, fans aren’t exactly wrong to be frustrated—this kind of total shutout, especially after so much love for the original, is pretty rare. If you’re feeling burned, at least you’re in good company.