We live in a culture full of spoilers, but we never thought someone would be so cruel as to spoil the entirety of the plot of The Wizard of Oz. The trailer for the upcoming Wicked: Part One does just that, including the biggest spoiler of all: that the wizard (Jeff Goldblum) has no power. In the meantime, it also manages to get through … the entire plot of Wicked: Part One. In the trailer, which came out May 15, Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo) and Galinda (Ariana Grande) start off rocky, become friends, go to the Emerald City, and learn the Wizard is a fraud. That’s just the entire plot of Act One. The trailer also gives us previews of the two most important songs in the show (and perhaps ever written): Grande’s full-voiced version of “Popular” begins the trailer, while Erivo’s take on the “Defying Gravity” riff ends it. But thankfully, our long national nightmare is over, and we get to both see and hear the goat professor Doctor Dillamond.
So what don’t we see? Well, any shots of anyone actually singing. In line with the Wonka and Mean Girls: The Musical trailers last year, the Wicked trailer does not show anybody singing, perhaps in an attempt to get musical-shy audiences into the theaters? Don’t people know that Wicked, of all things, is a musical? If you’d like to learn that fact for yourself, Wicked: Part One is in theaters on Thanksgiving. Or, of course, catch a broom to see it onstage in New York and London and on tour stops across the country.