After watching a 50-second interview clip about Fiyero’s blue contact lenses, I think I accidentally figured out why Jonathan Bailey was cast in the role.
What surprised me wasn’t the contacts themselves.
The interviewer asked about the blue eyes, and I expected Jonathan to talk about appearance — how he looked, how different he felt, whether he liked the result.
Instead, he immediately started talking about vision.
He said the lenses restricted his sight. He compared it to looking at Jeff Goldblum through a greenhouse window.
In other words, he wasn’t talking about how he looked.
He was talking about how the world looked to him.
That immediately reminded me of a line from For Good:
“You’ve got me seeing through different eyes.”
At first I thought this was simply a clever reference to Fiyero’s blue eyes.
Because Fiyero’s story isn’t really about changing his appearance.
It’s about changing the way he sees the world.
At the beginning of the story, Fiyero chooses comfort, pleasure, and distraction. He dances through life. He avoids difficult questions.
And suddenly he starts noticing things he never paid attention to before: injustice, power, conformity, the cost of choosing a side.
His world becomes larger.
So I found myself thinking about an interesting contradiction.
Jonathan’s vision became more restricted while wearing the lenses.
Fiyero’s vision became broader because of Elphaba.
Physically, one sees less.
Emotionally and intellectually, the other sees more.
And then I thought about the ending.
When Fiyero becomes the Scarecrow, he loses almost everything.
The perspective he gained through Elphaba.
That’s why the blue eyes suddenly feel different to me.
They’re not just a visual design choice.
They’re a symbol of transformation.
And maybe that’s why Jonathan Bailey feels so perfect for the role.
In interviews, he often talks about perception, perspective, and meaning rather than appearance or results.
Even when asked about contact lenses, he somehow ends up talking about ways of seeing.
So I started this clip thinking about blue eyes.
I ended it thinking about perspective.
Which, honestly, feels very Wicked.
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