Wicked is a prequel to the hugely popular Wizard of Oz story, and as such, many of the characters that appear in the stage production will be familiar to audiences from the first film. However, many of Wicked’s main characters aren’t exactly who they seem to be at first, as their names and appearances change between the two stories. The prequel does a great job of keeping the audience guessing from start to finish, with many of the story’s biggest reveals helping to bridge the gap between Wicked and The Wizard of Oz.

Alongside these surprising twists, Wicked also has several new characters who don’t appear in the original story at all. This helps mask the twist reveals, keeping them limited to a select few individuals. Not every Wicked character appears in The Wizard of Oz, but the audience isn’t truly sure which is which until the last moment. This gives Wicked’s characters an air of mystery and intrigue that’s not always present in prequels, avoiding the common problem of existing character’s fates being known from the outset. One of these characters is Boq, who has one of the most fascinating journeys.

Elphaba Creates The Tin Man In Wicked

Boq Becomes The Tin Man At The End Of Wicked

One of the major plot points in the second half of Wicked is Elphaba’s creation of the Tin Man, who will later help Dorothy bring down the witch in The Wizard of Oz. However, the figure who becomes the Tin Man is present from the very beginning of the story – his name is Boq, a nervous Munchkin who attends Shiz University with Elphaba and Glinda. Boq stumbles into an unrequited love triangle with Glinda and Elphaba’s sister Nessarose, which causes tension between the friends.

When Nessarose discovers that Boq only showed interest in her in order to get closer to Glinda, she lashes out and casts a spell from Elphaba’s spell book that causes his heart to shrink and disappear. Elphaba manages to save Boq’s life, but it turns him into the Tin Man in the process. It’s expected that the Wicked movies will split the Broadway story around the point of the intermission, which comes long before Boq’s transformation – so it could be a while before this occurs on-screen.

Who Is Boq? Wicked’s Character Who Becomes The Tin Man

Before He’s The Tin Man, Boq Is A Friend Of Elphaba’s

Before he becomes the Tin Man, Boq is easily one of Wicked’s most likable and charming characters. His unrequited love for Glinda helps create sympathy for him from the beginning, and the way he’s treated by the other characters in Shiz University immediately sets him up as somebody to feel sorry for. However, Wicked does a great job of subverting these expectations later, displaying how Boq can use his low social status to his own benefit and bring certain others down with him.

Boq has some of Wicked’s most iconic quotes and features in many of the play’s most memorable moments, in addition to boasting a transformative – yet polarizing – journey. The Munchkin who’s first introduced at Shiz University is very different from the Tin Man who’s present at the end of the story, and his development offers some fascinating insight into the story’s main themes and messages.

He’s empathetic, good-natured, and welcoming when he needs to be, but his story quickly takes a more complex turn that helps keep
Wicked
’s narrative multi-faceted and engaging.

Boq’s relationships with the other characters, particularly Glinda and Nessarose, help give Wicked an extra dimension of drama beyond Elphaba’s conflict with the wizard. It’s easy to think of him as a side character, but without him, Wicked would be a completely different adventure altogether. He’s empathetic, good-natured, and welcoming when he needs to be, but his story quickly takes a more complex turn that helps keep Wicked’s narrative multi-faceted and engaging.

What Happens To Boq After Becoming The Tin Man

The Character Has A Fairly Tragic Fate

Boq’s journey throughout Wicked’s second act is a tragic one; when he wakes up as the Tin Man, he immediately blames Elphaba for his condition and joins the hunt against the Wicked Witch of the West. Nessarose fans this flame, blaming her own sister for the curse that she personally inflicted upon Boq. He unknowingly turns against the woman who saved his life, all because of his own blind admiration for Glinda and Nessarose. As Wicked’s timeline gets closer to The Wizard of Oz, Boq becomes more disillusioned with Elphaba and blames her entirely for his condition.

This disillusionment leads perfectly into the Wizard of Oz, where audiences already know the Tin Man as one of the key figures in Dorothy’s quest against the Wicked Witch. The play does this with several characters, setting them up as new figures and then revealing their “new” identities in the final act in order to lead neatly into the Wizard of Oz – but Boq is perhaps the strongest example of this. His arc is an unfortunate but powerful one, touching on the story’s key themes of revenge, prejudice, and social exclusion.

How Wicked’s Tin Man Origin Changes Wizard Of Oz

Wicked Changes The Audience’s Perception Of The Tin Man

With prequels, there’s always the danger that whatever new story is told could somehow negatively impact the original text. This is something that writer Gregory Maguire was surely aware of when penning his story, and something that Winnie Holzman took into account when adapting it for the stage. However, both writers do an excellent job of ensuring that Wicked enhances The Wizard of Oz rather than damages it – the story has such a clear purpose with every single character, taking them on a journey that allows the audience to then view The Wizard of Oz through a new lens.

Boq is the perfect example of this: by following his unrequited love for Glinda, and allowing that to explain why he was so quick to turn against Elphaba, the audience gains a new understanding of the Tin Man. He’s a character who’s been tricked into hating the one person who saved his life, which makes his story even more tragic and unfortunate than it was at first. Neither Maguire nor Holzman actually changed anything about the Tin Man, but through their exploration of Boq’s earlier years in Wicked, they made his actions in The Wizard of Oz make more sense.