Welcome to the Sunday special. I'm Gilbert Cruz.

Wicked is back. Wicked for Good has just been released. This is film number two. The first movie,

simply titled Wicked, came out almost exactly one year ago today.

And Wicked for Good is going to be one of the biggest films of the year.

Joining me to talk about it is Kyle Buchanan, who covers Hollywood for the Times, and who recently

profiled Ariana Grande, one of the stars of the film.

Hello, Kyle.

Hello, Gilbert.

And Madison Malone Kircher, who covers internet culture for the times, but more importantly, for the purposes of this conversation, is an Ozian. She is a wicked enthusiast. Yeah, we'll go with that. Hello, Madison. I'm thrilledified to be here. We're going to try not to spoil too much of this movie, but we are going to talk about

some specific scenes. So if you're the type of person for which that is important, keep that in

mind. All right, to get started, I think listeners should have a sense from all of us of where

we stand, wicked-wise, in relation to wicked, how wickified are we, how wicked-pilled are we? I've never seen the Broadway show, but I've seen the first movie several times. I enjoyed it, saw the second movie, listen to the music. Kyle, we're going to start with you. What's your relationship to Wicked? You know, I came to Wicked as something of a virgin. I had never seen it on stage,

which made me feel like a little bit of an aberration. But I actually think that gave me a very

sort of clean perspective on the movie project itself. And also, this may well be how people come to Wicked in the future because

the movies are such a phenomenon that I think a lot of people and future generations will

experience this as a movie first situation. Madison, you are slightly... Perhaps slightly more,

or less green, I guess, in this particular.

A little different from Kyle here.

You were familiar with the musical.

I am familiar with the musical.

I have seen it on the Broadway.

When Wicked returned after the pandemic shut down,

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