Moviegoers are returning to Oz with director Jon M. Chu’s 2024 epic musical fantasy Wicked, streaming now on Peacock! Starring Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande as Elphaba (the Wicked Witch of the West) and Glinda (the Good Witch of the East), respectively, the movie tells the first part of their origin story, before the famed adventures of Dorothy, the Tin Woodman, the Cowardly Lion, the Scarecrow, and Toto.

Fans of the stage will be familiar with the story, which is adapted from the beloved Broadway musical of the same name. That musical was in turn based on the book Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, published in 1995 and written by Gregory Maguire. That book, of course, was inspired by the classic 1900 fantasy novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

When crafting the story and the characters for his novel, Maguire noted that the Wicked Witch had no other name in the source material. She was known only for her Wickedness, with a capital W. The original author of the 1900 novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, L. Frank Baum, never granted her an actual name, so Maguire set about giving her one. But it wasn’t an easy task.

The origin of the name Elphaba from Wicked, explained by author Gregory Maguire

Cynthia Erivo as Elphaba in ‘Wicked’, directed by Jon M. Chu. Photo: Universal Pictures

“Elphaba comes from the initials of the original author of The [Wonderful] Wizard of Oz, whose name was Lyman Frank Baum, LFB,” Maguire told WBZ News. L. Frank Baum was a prolific writer, penning 14 Oz books, 41 other novels, and dozens of short stories, poems, and scripts in his lifetime, and Maguire was conscious of that legacy. “I figured if I was going to borrow somebody else’s character and try to maker her my own, then I at least wanted the original author who came up with her to be honored at every address made about her or to her.”

Maguire took those letters, LFB, and played with different ways to pronounce them before finally landing on Elphaba. “I tried Lafaba, I tried Labella, Funnybella, you know, I tried different things. But when I just turned the L into the name of the letter,” Maguire said. “I thought, ‘That’s it!’ Because it’s unusual, it’s not particularly pretty, and yet it’s memorable. So, it works.”

Memorable might be an understatement, considering that Wicked is one of the most enduring stage plays in recent memory, built on a legacy stretching back more than a century. People have been fascinated with Oz and with the characters who inhabit it since Baum first dreamed it up all those years ago. We’ve all been to Oz and we keep wanting to go back.

Why is Elphaba green?

One question fans might also have after seeing Wicked is why, exactly, is Elphaba green in the first place? The answer lies in the green elixir her mother is seen drinking in the film when she becomes pregnant. Presumably the mysterious elixir had an effect on the pregnancy, leading Elphaba to be born green.