Jon M. Chu’s hit movie version of the Broadway musical Wicked (or more accurately, Wicked: Part I) has prompted a new wave of enthusiastically shipping frenemy protagonists Elphaba and Galinda/Glinda under the ship name “Gelphie.” That fandom has been present in Broadway circles since the stage show’s 2003 debut, and no wonder — Wicked’s enemies-to-friends-to-enemies(ish) arc and its themes of unrequited longing are tailor-made for fanfiction treatments. (Popular fanfiction site A03 has Gelphie-tagged Wicked fics going back as far as 2004.)
But the passion Cynthia Erivo (as Elphaba) and Ariana Grande (as Glinda) put into the characters on screen whenever they look at or touch each other has inspired a new generation to post Gelphie memes, fanfic, fan art, and video edits all over social media. And getting enthusiastic buy-in both from the movie’s stars and from original Wicked author Gregory Maguire certainly hasn’t hurt.
In a recent interview with Them, Maguire says he didn’t want to outright state in his book that Elphaba and Glinda were lovers, but that he wanted “sexual orientation and sexual diversity” to be a significant part of the book, because it’s an important part of making a fantasy setting real. In his original novel, the two women kiss — and as fans on TikTok note, that kind of lightly romantic contact has appeared in some versions of the stage play.
But Maguire says he also wanted to leave open the possibility of an unrequited love between the two of them: “[Their relationship] was modest and restrained and refined in such a way that one could imagine that one of those two young women had felt more than the other and had not wanted to say it. Or perhaps because a novelist can’t write every scene, perhaps when the lights were out and the novelist was out having a smoke in the back alley, the girls had sex in the bed on the way to the Emerald City. I wanted to propose this possibility.”
But no, Maguire hasn’t seen the Gelphie fan art or memes in the wake of the movie: “I don’t even know where one would look for an internet meme. I’m not even sure what it is.”
Meanwhile, Erivo and Grande have been open throughout their press tour about feeling that Wicked is “beautifully queer,” that Glinda is “a little in the closet,” and that their connection is built around “true love.” Even original stage show Glinda Kristin Chenoweth weighed in with a comment on an Instagram post about Glinda being queer: “I thought so too way back when…” Gelphie fans have pointed to those interview snippets as proof that the actors have their own queer headcanon for the two characters.
A lot of the fan memes have revolved around the opening lines of the song “What Is This Feeling,” where Glinda and Elphaba sing about their mutual loathing in comedically ambiguous terms that sound like they have a mutual crush: “What is this feeling, so sudden and new? / I felt the moment I laid eyes on you / My pulse is rushing / My head is reeling / My face is flushing / What is this feeling? / Fervid as a flame / Does it have a name?”
And inevitably, fans who know how the whole musical plays out have been imagining a better future for Glinda and Elphaba, as happy lovers who grow old together. Like so many fancanons built around fraught, complicated relationships, the Gelphie fandom lends itself to both big, dramatic conflict and happily-ever-after hopes. It’s a wholesome, playful fandom to dig into on your social media outlet of choice. But it’s also a rare case where the creative team and the fandom seem to be both aligned on the fanfic possibilities and actively enthused about sharing them.
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