Wicked Week and the Witch’s Mirror — When Old Magic Returns to Hollywood

NBC’s Wicked Week is not just another promo event.
It’s a spell disguised as a talk show.

When The Tonight Show announced a week dedicated to celebrating the sequel Wicked: For Good, the internet lit up — but few realized what this moment truly represents. Behind the green lights of Oz, the laughter, and the Broadway nostalgia lies something far older:
a mirror, a myth, and a question humanity keeps asking itself.

What do we see when we finally look at our reflection?

Two Witches, One Reflection

In The Wizard of Oz, witches were either good or evil.
In Wicked, they are mirrors — one glowing with light, the other covered in shadow.

Glinda shines — loved, admired, perfect.
Elphaba hides — feared, rejected, misunderstood.

Yet both are trapped by the same mirror: the world’s gaze.
Wicked flips the story we thought we knew. It turns the “villain” into a mirror of ourselves — the part that doesn’t fit, the side we try to hide.

And maybe that’s why it resonates so deeply with us. Because deep down, we all know what it’s like to be both the light and the shadow.

“She wasn’t wicked. She was just seen through a cracked mirror.”

The Ancient Myth Behind the Magic

Long before Hollywood existed, witches in old myths used mirrors to see the truth.
In Celtic folklore, a sorceress could read the future in still water — but risked seeing her own death instead.
In Greek myths, Circe’s mirror showed people who they truly were — not who they wanted to be.
In Slavic tales, Baba Yaga’s mirror judged every soul that dared to enter her house.

The mirror was never kind.
It didn’t flatter. It revealed.

It’s the same mirror Wicked holds up to us today — through song, color, and story. Elphaba’s green skin isn’t a curse; it’s a reflection. A reminder that difference is not darkness.

“The witch’s mirror doesn’t lie. It only asks: are you ready to see yourself?”

 Pop Culture as Modern Myth

Why are millions obsessed with Wicked?
Because it’s not just a movie — it’s a ritual.

In the age of social media, our screens are our mirrors.
We scroll, we compare, we filter — and we still feel unseen.
Wicked gives that emptiness a face and a voice.

When Elphaba sings Defying Gravity, she isn’t just rising against the sky — she’s rising against judgment, against the reflection that said she couldn’t.

Pop culture, at its best, doesn’t escape mythology. It revives it.
Every generation needs a mirror to ask the same old question in a new language.

 The Eternal Duality

Every myth has its opposites:
Light and shadow. Heaven and earth. Silence and song.

Glinda and Elphaba are not enemies — they’re balance.
One needs the other to exist.

In Chinese philosophy, it’s yin and yang.
In ancient Greece, it was the twin faces of Hecate.
In Native American stories, it’s the trickster and the healer.

When Wicked paints these two women as reflections of each other, it does what ancient stories did best:
it teaches us that contradiction is sacred.
That being both soft and strong, broken and brave, is not hypocrisy — it’s humanity.

“The mirror breaks so that the truth can breathe.”

Why We Still Need These Myths

People between 18 and 34 don’t just want content.
They want meaning that feels.
They crave emotion disguised as art — and Wicked delivers exactly that.

The story works because it’s not about spells or flying monkeys.
It’s about the oldest kind of magic there is: seeing yourself and not looking away.

Every myth, every movie, every song is a mirror.
And the real magic begins when we stop fearing what we find there.

 Conclusion

So when NBC calls it Wicked Week, remember — it’s more than marketing.
It’s the celebration of an ancient mirror, reborn in green light and melody.

The same mirror the witches used.
The same reflection we keep avoiding.

Maybe the real spell is not about changing who we are.
Maybe it’s about learning to see our whole reflection — cracks and all.

The witch’s mirror still works.
And if you dare to look, you might find that the magic was never in Oz —
it was always in you.