Wicked Fans Are Saying The Same Thing About Scarecrow's Look

Spoilers follow for "Wicked: For Good" and a musical that first premiered in 2003, so if you're not familiar with these stories ... step off your broomstick and come back later!

If you went to see "Wicked: For Good" during its massively successful opening weekend, you know what happens to the handsome Winkie prince Fiyero Tigelaar, played by "Bridgerton" alum Jonathan Bailey. The faux-paramour of Glinda (Ariana Grande-Butera), the resident "good witch," and real lover to Elphaba Thropp (Cynthia Erivo), the newly christened Wicked Witch of the West, Fiyero's fate is heavily foreshadowed in Jon M. Chu's first "Wicked" film, 2024's "Wicked: Part One." During his big number "Dancing Through Life," Fiyero says, "life is painless when you're brainless." Remember which character desired a brain in the 1939 film "The Wizard of Oz?" That would be the Scarecrow, played by Ray Bolger.

Yes, thanks to a spell Elphaba casts in a moment of sheer desperation that's ostensibly supposed to prevent Fiyero from being killed (which I guess technically does work), he turns into a man who can't bleed or die and is made of straw. People on the Internet, as they are wont to do, have some feelings about Fiyero's post-Scarecrowification, and they think he looks like a Marvel superhero.

On the social media platform X, user @ferryboatderek posted a shot of Fiyero's transformation and simply wrote, "you're telling me this ISN'T Ryan Reynolds." @ohhhhhherewegoo expressed an almost identical sentiment, quipping, "Why does Jonathan Bailey as Scarecrow look like Ryan Reynolds ...we need to open an investigation." There are, honestly, so many posts talking about how much Bailey's makeup and costuming in this scene make him look like "Deadpool" star Reynolds, though some, like @canandfilm, noticed that in certain lights, he also looks like Walton Goggins. (Fiyero contains multitudes, apparently.)

If you ask me, I think Jonathan Bailey's Scarecrow Fiyero is actually giving more of a Karl Havoc vibe, but I digress. He does sort of look like the unmasked Deadpool played by Ryan Reynolds in both his standalone movies and Marvel juggernauts like "Deadpool & Wolverine," which threw Hugh Jackman's clawed mutant into the mix and crushed the box office back in 2024. While part of the similarity is almost certainly because Fiyero's burlap skin resembles Wade Wilson's scarred visage, it's also sort of darkly funny and unsettling that people noticed this, because it might speak to a larger issue in modern blockbusters.

Apart from the Scarecrow's look, quite a lot of "Wicked" fans have been complaining, in the aftermath of the release of "Wicked: For Good," that the movie ... doesn't look great. I can't argue with that. Even though I had a good time during "Wicked: For Good" by the time the credits rolled — the pacing and length of this movie are a separate issue that I won't get into here — I would never deny that the colors look flat and sludgy a lot of the time, and Fiyero's eleventh-hour transformation is no exception. The fact that the mix of prosthetics and CGI makes Bailey look like two completely different actors is legitimately ridiculous, and from my vantage point, it highlights a uniformly smudgy, flattened look we're seeing in a lot of blockbusters nowadays.

Still, I'd also like to argue that none of this matters. Why? Fiyero and his "true love," Elphaba, aren't even the main couple of the movie. Elphaba and Glinda are. 

If you left "Wicked: For Good" and thought, "I'm so happy that Elphaba ended up with her one true love, Fiyero," I need to ask you a question: did we watch the same freakin' movie?! From the beginning of this big screen journey — honestly, dating back to the Broadway show penned by Stephen Schwartz and Winnie Holzman, the former of whom wrote two new songs for "For Good" and the latter of whom worked on the script — it's been obvious to anybody with eyes that Elphaba and Glinda's relationship is the central one in the story.

I'm definitely not the only person who feels like both "Wicked" movies did lean into the sapphic vibes that have always existed between Glinda and Elphaba, but let's look at the pair's final moments together in "Wicked: For Good." After they sing the friendship ballad "For Good," Elphaba tells Glinda that she should announce the Wicked Witch of the West is dead and let everyone believe she was evil all along, noting that Oz needs to unite against a common enemy, and she's willing to take the fall. Devastated, the two exchange "I love yous" at which point Elphaba shoves Glinda into a closet. The women press their foreheads against either side of the door, sobbing, before Elphaba "dies," leaving her hat behind for Glinda to find. When we learn, in the film's very last frames, that Elphaba and Scarecrow Fiyero faked her death and ran away together, that union is still undercut by the fact that the movie chooses to end on a moment between Elphaba and Glinda. Fiyero's looks may inspire discussion, but at the end of the day, it's Elphaba and Glinda who matter most. 

"Wicked: For Good" is in theaters now.