Gravity III...No Place Like Home
- jnwashington0905
- Nov 21, 2025
- 3 min read
Well, it is out Wicked: For Good, Part II of the Wicked film series and yes, I have seen it. In a theater filled almost entirely with Black women, there was literally one man present, seated with his wife in the last row. And on premiere night, another theater filled up as well. Black women showed up $17 million in sales on opening day and projections surpassing $85 million by weekend’s end.
If you follow my blog, you may remember my 2024 reflections, “Gravity I” and “Gravity II.” I encourage you to revisit them for context, because this film once again mirrors the lived experiences of Black women through a fictional narrative.
We enter the story with Elphaba championing the voiceless represented through the animal world and moving boldly against the forces of injustice. She remains rooted in her values even as she is demonized in the public imagination of Oz. The arc of Wicked: For Good continues to echo Motherist and Womanist themes, although filtered through Hollywood’s storytelling: one woman standing in defense of community, refusing to abandon those who have no voice. The struggle to be heard persists.
One of the central revelations of the film, especially for the Black women in the seats beside me, is the reminder of our healing power. Glinda proclaims, “I want to be magical,” but Black women are magic through the best and worst of circumstances. Our collective history affirms this magic:
· in our healing traditions,
· in our spirituality,
· in our relationship to the earth,
· in our care and nurture of humanity.
From a Motherist perspective, this is not accidental it is ancestral and cosmological. Motherism understands leadership not as domination or spotlight, but as a generative calling: the sacred responsibility to protect, nurture, and empower the community. Elphaba embodies this in the story: she answers the needs of the vulnerable, even when the world calls her “wicked.” Black women have lived that reality in real time.
Motherism also challenges the assumption that leadership must be singular. While Western narratives often glorify the lone hero, Motherist leadership is communal and earth connected a web of relationships in which healing, liberation, and survival are shared responsibilities. Wicked reminds us of the toll paid when one person is forced to carry what community should carry together.
Early in the film, Elphaba echoes that familiar line: “There’s no place like home,” even when home is a place where one feels unseen or unloved. Her home rests in the shadows of nature, surrounded by the beauty of Mother Earth, yet she must still navigate the violence of human judgment. Black women know this duality well what W.E.B. Du Bois called double consciousness living in two worlds that often stand in opposition.
From a Motherist lens, Elphaba returns repeatedly to the healing ground of the earth because Mother Earth, like the Cosmic Womb, restores identity and belonging. Nature does not require her to apologize for being powerful.
Wicked reminds us, as Elphaba says, that society “needs someone to be wicked so you can be good.” And far too often, Black women have been positioned in that role. Motherism refuses that logic. It declares that leadership grounded in ordering, reordering, rebuilding nature and nurture, and spiritual responsibility is not wicked it is necessary for the flourishing of the whole.
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