Who Is Really ‘Wicked’? A Catholic LGBTQ+ Examination

It all began with L.Frank Baum’s book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900), later adapted into the iconic 1939 movie. In 1995, Gregory Maguire wrote Wicked, a parallel novel on Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West, which imagines her backstory. The theatrical adaptation of Maguire’s book followed in 2003, with Stephen Schwartz’s songs, and finally in 2024 and 2025 we got to see the movie of this play, directed by John M. Chu.

Born in 1954, Gregory Maguire stands in the tradition of Catholic fantasy writers such as J.R.R. Tolkien and Mary Doria Russell. Fantasy, as a genre, unsettles our rational certainties and opens windows onto deeper truths. By shifting our imaginative landscape, it invites us to reconsider our moral intuitions and our relationships.  [Editor’s note:  Maguire wrote a personal essay in Bondings on the gay and Catholic roots of Wicked.]

Maguire’s novel isn’t an allegory, yet it is profoundly shaped by his Catholic imagination. Gay and raised in a Catholic community in Albany, New York, the author uses Elphaba’s story to explore the slippery boundary between Good, Evil, and our perception of them.

Baum’s book and the 1939 movie carry an uplifting message: believe in yourself, and happiness will follow. Goodness, in the end, prevails. Maguire’s book is darker. Wicked does not ask where evil originates, but itt interrogates the very act of deciding that someone or something is evil.

So why, exactly, is Elphaba wicked? Early in the book, Dorothy and her companions speculate about that  she might be “possessed by demons”, “born hermaphroditic, or maybe “entirely male”, “a woman who prefers the company of other women”, “the spurned lover of a married man” and even that “She is a married man.”

From the outset, Elphaba’s perceived sexual and gender identity is part of her supposed danger. She’s not only marked by her skin color. There’s something more in her that others can’t really understand – something tied to sex, gender, and nonconformity. This dynamic resonates deeply with LGBTQ+ people, who recognize in Elphaba’s mistreatment echoes of their own stories.

In Wicked, everyone is quick to identify who is wicked: the ones who are different. Elphaba has been an outcast since her birth because she’s “green as sin”, with sharp teeth and an unusual power stirring inside her. Her family hoped for a boy so they interpret her arrival as a mistake. Her father Frex, a religious leader, performs an exorcism to change her skin color. Her nanny washes her in cow’s milk to turn her white. Her mother Melena considers drowning her. They try to correct her because they are convinced she embodies evil. The same happened and still happens to many queer young people within their own families. Hearing of all these horrible “remedies,” the real questionis who is truly wicked

Illustration by Lorenzo Russo, a queer Catholic illustrator. Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/l.russo_art/

In Maguire’s story, evil is closely tied to a lack of imagination. Oppressive governments thrive in the narrative because people cannot envision another way of living. “The truth is not a thing of fact or reason. The truth is just what everyone agrees on” sings the Wizard in Wicked: For Good.

Through populism and propaganda, he controls Oz by turning those who are different (Elphaba and her friends the Animals) into enemies. The citizens of Oz cannot resist because they cannot imagine a more just society. As the Wizard admits in Wicked: Part I, “Where I’m from, the best way to bring people together… is to give them a common enemy”. This has happened many times in our LGBTQ+ reality too. Just think of the AIDS crisis or the current hatred towards transgender people.

So is Elphaba truly evil or merely portrayed as such? Is she so sinful that water can destroy her? She is cast out of society, and her humanity is most fully recognized by those living even further on the margins: the Animals.

Elphaba devotes her life to their cause. She seeks justice relentlessly, sometimes through force, because, as she sings in No Place Like Home, “Oz is more than just a place. It’s a promise, an idea, and I want to help make it come true”. This longing for justice speaks powerfully to many LGBTQ+ people and especially to LGBTQ+ Catholics, who continue advocating for dignity in both society and a Church that often resists their presence.

On the other side stands Glinda, a secondary character in Maguire’s novel. She’s officially titled “the Good”. She becomes an instrument of propaganda, supporting the dictator, even passively, by choosing comfort over courage. She longs to be liked and fears stepping outside the bubble that protects her. Many LGBTQ+ people of faith will recognize this golden cage, a place where belonging seems secure but authenticity is stifled.

Her bubble, however, is not only imposed upon her. It is also shaped by her own choices, especially her complicity with dictatorship. Eventually she reaches the moment when “it’s time for her bubble to pop”, as she sings in The Girl In A Bubble.

Elphaba persists even when the struggle isolates her, when she stands alone, and even when the people she loves most (like Glinda) are distant because of their differing convictions. In the musical and movies, Elphaba rarely speaks explicitly about faith, yet her actions reveal a deep moral compass. In Maguire’s novel, she reflects openly on belief, and her spirituality is inseparable from her commitment to justice.

As Maguire explained in an interview with RNS:

 “Religion teaches us to be collaborative and communal (by churchgoing and respecting others who may not be like us), but also to be independent, and in possession of our own moral guidance system. We’re meant to own the behavior of our own souls, and we’re meant to belong to a community and make it better”.

Elphaba becomes the keeper of her own soul, even when she doubts she has one. At the same time, she makes radical choices on behalf of her community, placing herself, and even her cause, in danger. Once she sees the extent of the Wizard’s violence, she can no longer remain complicit. The only path forward is resistance. This resonates deeply with LGBTQ+ Catholic activists who work tirelessly for justice in the Church: often feeling isolated or unheard, yet persisting because they know what is right.

Near the end of the novel, Elphaba takes part in a symposium where scholars debate the true nature of evil. She concludes: “The real disaster of this inquiry is that it is the nature of Evil to be secret”.

Wicked is not a handbook for separating Good from Evil. Instead, it reveals the limits of our labels and the moral ambiguity woven through human life. It invites us to discern, to imagine, and to take a stand, because goodness requires commitment and justice requires courage.

—Elisa Belotti, New Ways Ministry, December 9, 2025