It's likely that the Wizard of Oz's Scarecrow would agree with Fiyero's musical soliloquy that, "Life's more painless for the brainless." Gregory Maguire's Wicked explores what the iconic characters Glinda the Good Witch and the Wicked Witch of the West were like long before they were first introduced in 1939's The Wizard of Oz. In the prequel, the classic Oz characters - Scarecrow, Tin Man and Cowardly Lion - are revealed to be members of Elphaba and Glinda's class from Shiz University.