5 Reasons The Greatest Movie Villain Ever is a 'Good' Witch
When you think of The Wizard of Oz's cast of villains, you most likely think of the flying monkeys and the Wicked Witch of the West, and maybe the pissy apple trees and the green dudes guarding the WWotW's castle.
Also known as 'Winkies.' True story.
If you've seen or read 'Wicked,' you might have a more sympathetic view of the Wicked Witch of the West. But 'Wicked' doesn't go far enough, since it ignores the fact that the movie features one of the most brilliantly conniving movie villains ever.
It's her, right there.
Glinda, not the Wicked Witch of the West, is the cause for everything that goes wrong for Dorothy and her new friends in the land of Oz, and she starts instigating the film's central conflict the second Dorothy shows up.
The Murder
You remember the story, right? A tornado whisks Dorothy and her house from sepia Kansas to technicolor Oz, where it promptly lands on a witch and kills her. So, as soon as Dorothy walks out of her house, she walks out guilty of manslaughter. Or witchslaughter.
And that's when Glinda the Good Witch floats down and merrily interrogates Dorothy to find out if she is a good witch or a bad witch. Dorothy did manage to drop a house on someone without so much as a scratch, so any reasonable person would suspect witchcraft was afoot. Dorothy, in possession of the sensitivity of a three year old child, responds that she can't be a witch because witches are 'old and ugly.' Glinda, in possession of the logic of an Alzheimer's patient points out that only evil witches are ugly.
"And remember only bad people are disabled, Dorothy"
You caught that, right? Beautiful = good? OK next, Glinda calls out the munchkins to celebrate the death of the Wicked Witch of the East. And not with just a little round of applause and quick moment of silence either, but a full on song and dance routine, parade and mayoral declaration of a holiday. Even the coroner gets in on the party.
"It's like Saddam's execution all over again."
The festivities end when the corpse's sister, the Wicked Witch of the West, shows up, understandably pissed that her sister was killed by a falling building. Here's where Glinda goes from sinister to psycho.
The Set-Up
Right off the bat, the Western Witch wants to know who killed her sister. Fair enough. Glinda smiles blandly while the witch accuses Dorothy, no doubt enjoying the double whammy of a grieving witch's rage and Dorothy's terror.
While the Wicked Witch is busy threatening Dorothy, Glinda interjects, not to defend a shell-shocked farm girl, but to remind WWotW of the ruby slippers on her sister's feet. Now this is important: as far as we can tell, the Wicked Witch of the West is the Wicked Witch of the East's one and only family member, meaning that the slippers rightfully belong to her as the next of kin. So, why didn't Glinda just let the lady have her shoes? Let her grab her one inheritance and go off to mourn in peace? Sure, the Wicked Witch lives, but the real world still has Carrot Top. Sometimes life isn't fair.
The Taunt
Instead, Glinda reveals that she's only reminded the Wicked Witch about the slippers so she can involve Dorothy in a game of monkey in the middle -- teleporting the bereaved Witch's rightful heirloom off her dead sister's feet and onto Dorothy's.
Imagine the audacity it takes to steal anything off a dead person, especially while the body is still warm. And Glinda doesn't just steal her shoes, she somehow magics the WWotE's feet so that they curl into those curly party horns you blew at birthday parties when you were a kid. Nevermind that those feet were the only means the munchkins had of dragging a witch corpse out from under the house so they wouldn't have to smell her decomposing body for forever. Glinda just doesn't give a fuck.
So, Glinda steals the shoes, THEN, she straight sells Dorothy out by telling the Witch that the shoes are now superglued to the girl. Dorothy just stands there like a chump while Glinda whispers that the slippers must be super magic or the Wicked Witch wouldn't want them.
What?! This is like Gandalf stealing the One Ring from Sauron's brother, giving it to Frodo, and then saying "You should hold on to that shit. He totally wouldn't want it if it wasn't powerful."
And to top off everything else she's done, Glinda then mocks the Wicked Witch, laughing at the fact that she apparently has no power in Munchkinland, before telling her to get lost. By this point, the Witch is good and pissed, and Glinda has ensured that she's completely focused all of her well deserved rage on Dorothy. As the scene ends, the rivalry between the Wicked Witch and Dorothy has been set, even though they should both be pissed at Glinda's perky ass.
It's like Tony Soprano's mother decided to use her powers of passive-aggressive manipulation to take over the Care Bears cloud city: Nobody is even half evil enough to understand what she's doing to them. Which is why Dorothy has no ideas that she's about to be turned into a low rent hit man ...
The Lie
So, the orphan girl from Kansas now has Oz's Saruman/Hitler mashup gunning for her, all because the 'Good Witch' got her involved in some kind of grander witch struggle without her consent. Glinda then goes on to explain that Dorothy has made "rather a bad enemy of the Witch." Not really, Glinda made her rather a bad enemy of the Witch. Dorothy stood around like a confused kid -- because she was, you know, a confused kid - while Glinda essentially framed her. So, despite being an innocent third party to the whole thing, Dorothy has just become Oz's version of Neo, only Morpheus is just some dick with his own agenda.
"Have you ever had a dream, Dorothy, that you were so sure was real?"
Once Glinda sets Dorothy up to be the object of the Wicked Witch's rage, she sends her off to find the Wizard, telling her that A) she would be better off getting the hell out of Oz altogether and B) she can only achieve this by going to the Wizard, which means leaving Munchkinland, where, coincidentally, the Wicked Witch has no power. The Wizard, Dorothy is told, is the only one who can help her.
Help you do whatnow?
Unfortunately, that was bald faced lie.
Anyone familiar with the story knows that at the end of the movie, Glinda tells Dorothy to click her heels to go home. Boom. Heel clicks, home. That's it. No wizard necessary. This whole elaborate journey Dorothy is about to embark on is predicated on a whopper. But, more on this in a bit.
The Payoff
So, Dorothy takes Glinda's word that she's got to see the Wizard to get home, and she leaves the one place where the Wicked Witch has no power to get to the Emerald City. Through the course of her travels, Dorothy makes friends with the Scarecrow, the Tinman and the Cowardly Lion.
This is them.
Dorothy and crew somehow make it through an apple tree attack, an encounter with the Witch and a witchy fire ball, an opium overdose and Emerald City red tape to get to see the Wizard, who promptly informs them he won't do a damn thing to help them until they bring back the Wicked Witch's broomstick. And that's when the Scarecrow points out they would need to kill her first.
"No doy."
Riiiiight. So, to recap, Dorothy, the simple farm girl from Kansas, is now getting asked to play the part of a hired assassin. And her reward for her second murder of the day will be (hopefully) a chance to go home. And remember, Glinda is somehow watching over everything, and we know this because she was the one who woke up the gang from their drug overdose.
The Wizard was just bluffing when he sent Dorothy after the WWofW, he didn't have any powers to begin with. But Glinda knew exactly what a trip to the witch's castle meant - someone was going to die.
If you don't remember the movie, here's how things play out: Dorothy and her friends end up in a haunted forest where they are attacked by the Witch's flying monkeys, and those supermonkeys carry Dorothy and Toto back to the Witch's castle. The friends of Dorothy make their way into the castle, too, and in the final showdown Dorothy smites the old witch with a bucket of water, proving that M. Night Shyamalan wasn't even that original when he came up with the shittiest movie alien ever.
When Dorothy and friends return to the Emerald City as heroes, we find out that the entire fiasco could have ended the moment Glinda put the ruby slippers on Dorothy; she was literally walking around in her ticket to instant transport back to her own bed. Glinda's excuse for not telling Dorothy before she was nearly killed and offed Glinda's rival? "You wouldn't have believed me!"
"You could have fucking mentioned it, at least."
So why did Glinda send Dorothy to the Wizard in the first place? Maybe we'll never know. But we think it's pretty convenient that by the end of the movie not only are both chief rivals of the so-called 'Good Witch' dead, but the ruler of Emerald City was out of the picture as well, leaving just one beloved and fully powerful Witch in his place.
The whole thing smells fishy. It's like The Usual Suspects with midgets, no Baldwins and a Keyser Söze who floats off in a bubble.
