#watching TWoO again it was really clear how the whole friend of dorothy thing happened

[billpottsismygf]

I don't think I've ever taken in before how much Wicked Act I (and thus Wicked Part I) takes its structure from The Wizard of Oz. It opens with No One Mourns the Wicked, which is an obvious response to Ding Dong the Witch is Dead* (the first song once Dorothy gets to Oz, and only the second overall), and ends with our heroes arriving in the Emerald City (Merry Old Land of Oz/One Short Day). Our hero is then asked to perform a task so that the wizard will grant her heart's desire. Having completed this task, she then discovers that he is a fraud and that he cannot do what he's promised (nor could he have done the task he set her), so she has to make use of the power that was inside her all along to get where she needs to go.

*Bonus connection between these two songs is the little musical motif ("ding dong the witch is") that the movie version of No One Mourns the Wicked uses in its newly triumphant orchestration at the start (roughly 1:01 and 1:19 in the official soundtrack).