Wicked: For Good Ending Breakdown: Dorothy Casting Revealed, Ruby Slippers Mystery Solved, and the Post-Credits Scene Explained

Quick heads-up: big spoilers for Wicked: For Good ahead. If you have not seen it yet and want to stay unspoiled, turn back now. For everyone else: yes, the sequel goes for it. Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande steer this one straight into the heart of Oz politics and personal fallout, and the movie ends by flipping a bunch of your assumptions without losing the point of the story.

So... what actually happens at the end?

The finale mirrors The Wizard of Oz in broad strokes, then swerves. Glinda pushes back against the Wizard. Elphaba makes a choice that looks like surrender but plays more like strategy. And the film leaves the door cracked for more Oz without promising anything.

• Elphaba is not dead. Oz believes she melted. She set that up using the local superstition that water kills her kind. Dorothy tosses water, and while everyone freaks out, Elphaba slips through a secret castle passage Fiyero pointed out earlier.
• Fiyero, now the Scarecrow, orchestrates the whole thing. He gets word to Elphaba via Chistery so she knows exactly when and where to vanish.
• Why bail? Because Elphaba knows Oz will never accept her as anything but the villain. By stepping out of the spotlight, she gives Glinda room to actually fix things.
• Glinda ends up holding The Grimmerie. She can not do magic, but the book cracks open by itself, which the film frames as either Glinda leveling up morally or Elphaba nudging from far away.
• Elphaba and Fiyero leave Oz altogether, heading for an unnamed place beyond its borders. The last glimpse is them trekking across a barren, windswept landscape.
• Glinda takes charge: she sends the Wizard home, locks up Madame Morrible, and restores animals to their rights and roles in society.
• Dorothy, the Cowardly Lion, and Boq barely factor in. Dorothy goes back to Kansas, and Boq does not look set to matter in whatever comes next.
• The movie hews close to the stage musical, not Gregory Maguire’s novels. Key differences in the books (around who survives and how certain transformations play out) are not the movie’s roadmap.

Dorothy is in the movie... but you barely see her

The film finally confirms who is wearing the gingham: Bethany Weaver. She is a U.K.-based actress, dancer, and Pilates instructor who graduated from London’s Urdang Academy in June 2018. Fun bit of fate: in March 2022 she posted an Instagram video belting The Wizard and I and said she was aggressively manifesting a Wicked job. Cut to 2025, and here we are.

Weaver’s face is never shown, she has no lines, and the camera keeps her mostly in wide shots or from behind. Director Jon M. Chu told PEOPLE he wanted your version of Dorothy to stay intact rather than swap in a new definitive face.

'I did not want to step on who you think Dorothy is in whatever story you came into this with... she is a pawn in the middle of all of it.'

Cynthia Erivo backed that approach in an interview with Empire in September 2025, calling it a smart way to let everyone keep their own mental image of Dorothy. Also worth noting: Weaver skipped the press tour even as the rest of the cast made the rounds.

About those not-ruby slippers

Yes, Dorothy’s shoes are silver, not ruby. That is both a nod to L. Frank Baum’s original novel and a clean legal path around MGM’s 1939 ruby slippers. In the film, Nessarose inherits her mother’s silver shoes, and Elphaba enchants them to fly. After Nessarose dies, Glinda passes the jeweled pair to Dorothy, so you still get the Yellow Brick Road imagery, just... reframed.

Costume designer Paul Tazewell told Esquire: 'They are crystal and silver as opposed to the classic ruby — literally due to a copyright rule. But I am still using similar imagery so that it will trigger a memory of what it was to experience the original film.'

It is a neat balance of nostalgia and practicality, and it works on screen.

No post-credits scene, but the door is cracked

There is nothing after the credits. Do not wait. That said, Chu has ideas percolating. At the New York premiere he told Variety that his 8-year-old has already pitched him a whole opening for a potential follow-up.

'There is a lot of ideas flying around right now... But let us enjoy this ride first.'

Universal has not announced a new film, but if they want to keep pulling from Gregory Maguire’s shelf, Son of a Witch or A Lion Among Men are sitting right there. For now, Wicked: For Good closes the loop: Elphaba survives off the board, Glinda grows into actual leadership, and Dorothy’s brief, quiet appearance still nudges the story exactly where it needs to land. The movie stays focused on what Wicked has always been about: how slippery good and evil can be, what home actually means, and why that Elphaba/Glinda friendship is the point.

Team Glinda or secretly rooting for Elphaba’s return? Drop your take. Wicked: For Good is in theaters now.