Glinda & Nessa: Mirrors and Wickedness
And so that beautiful girl
Has a question that haunts her somehow
If she comes down from the sky
Gives the real world a try
Who in the world is she now?
With just the girl in the mirror
The Wicked Witch of the East
– The Wicked Witch of the East
These shots parallel Nessa and Glinda directly. They are shot from exactly the same angle to show them looking at themselves in the mirror. They are just two girls in the mirror left alone in the end – Nessa after Boq has become the Tin Man and Glinda after Elphaba has left Oz.
In TGITB Glinda asks who she will be once she comes down from the sky and pops that bubble of privilege. WWOTE posits one possible direction her life could go, namely to be left alone and loveless.
Her choice to try to be good and to work towards that every day is what could prevent her from becoming the Wicked Witch of the North.
However that doesn't mean she doesn't already see herself that way in the mirror, when everybody else still sees Glinda the Good Witch. After all one interpretation of No One Mourns The Wicked is that Glinda is singing about herself as the Wicked one:
And goodness knows the wicked's lives are lonely
Goodness knows the wicked die alone
It just shows when you're wicked, you're left only
We could argue this is Glinda seeing herself as the Wicked one who is left to die alone, because in her mind she is the only survivor from all of her friends. She might even have lingering guilt surrounding the death of at least Nessa, possibly Fiyero as well.
It is important to remember that while Nessa names herself the Wicked Witch of the East in the second movie, we never hear anybody else refer to her by that title. Nobody after all knew she cast that botched spell. Unlike in the books where she casts spells on the Munchkinlanders and is generally remembered by the WWOTE title, her Wicked Witch status in the movie is one of her own creation.
This connection between their own perception of themselves as contrasted against the way the rest of Oz views them is symbolized by the usage of mirrors. Prominent in the movie in both the scene for TGITB (not pictured above) and the one for WWOTE.
In this way both Glinda and Nessa perceive themselves to be the Wicked ones while Oz doesn't. This is in direct contrast to Elphaba who is perceived by the Ozians as the Wicked Witch of the West, a title which she only embraces after No Good Deed and only reluctantly after trying to do good and to be perceived as such. (She mentions in The Wizard and I and in Every Day More Wicked that she wants to be perceived as just and righteous by the people.)
It begs the questions of the audience: Who is truly wicked? Are our perceptions of ourselves flawed?
I hope all of that was coherent! These thoughts have been haunting me since people pointed out the girl in the mirror line relating to Glinda. This meta is pro all of the witches of Oz, I love complex female characters. You will be blocked for hating on any of them on my post<3
