Why The Wicked Movies Never Reveal Dorothy's Face

"Wicked," the movie about Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo), the Wicked Witch of the West, and her college friendship with Glinda (Ariana Grande), the Good Witch of the North, blew everyone away at the box office. And its sequel, "Wicked: For Good," is highly anticipated at theaters this November. (Check out the only recap you need before seeing it.) But neither movie would exist without the book that started it all: "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" by L. Frank Baum. That book featured a farmgirl from Kansas named Dorothy Gale, who followed the yellow brick road right into our hearts — whether she was doing so in the novel, published in 1900, or the 1939 movie adaptation that followed. (Although the film "The Wizard of Oz" is actually much different than the book.)

So the question has become: Who plays Dorothy in "Wicked: For Good"? Well, the answer may not be as simple as you'd expect, because despite having such an outsized role in all things Oz-related, Empire reports that we won't see Dorothy's face in the movie. Instead we'll see her from a distance or from behind. This was a strategic choice. Jon M. Chu, the director of both "Wicked" films, told People, "I didn't want to step on who you think Dorothy is in whatever story that you came into this with." So however you envision Dorothy — whether it's as a 16-year-old Judy Garland in the film "The Wizard of Oz," a little girl with pigtails as in the illustrations in "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz," or an 11-year-old Fairuza Balk in the movie "Return to Oz," you won't have any conflict from seeing another Dorothy in "Wicked: For Good." Plus, this helps Chu's "Wicked" leading ladies because the movie "is still Elphaba and Glinda's journey, and [Dorothy] is a pawn in the middle of all of it."

In "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz," Dorothy has a very simplistic view of the Wicked Witch as bad and the Good Witch as good, but in "Wicked: For Good," it may not be so simple. Glinda, for one, may be introduced to Dorothy as a force for good, but she still has her own human impulses, including delaying Dorothy on her journey to the Emerald City. Even though she tells her how to get there, it's far from the most efficient path.

"I love the little bit of shadiness that Glinda has towards Dorothy," Ariana Grande told Empire. "There's a lot going on, and she doesn't really have time to deal with this. She could have told her to take the Emerald City train! But she didn't. That's a little shady, Glinda! So I leaned all the way into Glinda sort of having an eye roll for Dorothy whenever she has to deal with her."

Another thing that we'll learn more about in "Wicked: For Good" is how Dorothy got to Oz in the first place. Jon M. Chu told People that Michelle Yeoh's Madame Morrible, the teacher who becomes Elphaba's enemy, will be part of "an iconic moment we all know from our youth" that will be expanded on in "Wicked: For Good." "We have this amazing moment of the tornado and how it gets conjured, which is not in the ["Wicked" stage] show, really." Whatever the people of Oz really think of her, Dorothy will have a big impact on "Wicked: For Good" when she (and her little dog too) come to theaters November 21.