The Wicked Years

The Wicked Years is a series of novels by Gregory Maguire that present a revisionist take on L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, its 1939 film adaptation, and related books.

Unlike the original novel series, the Wicked Years are targeted towards a mature audience and presented a very different and cynical version of Oz than its depictions by L. Frank Baum or previous adaptations. They explore many social problems including discrimination against sentient animals called Animals and racial tensions between various ethnic groups in Oz. Many of the protagonists in the Wizard of Oz are presented either as antagonists or neutral.

The first book in the series, Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, was loosely adapted into a musical simply titled Wicked. The musical was in turn adapted into a two-part film, a 2024 film of the same name and its upcoming sequel Wicked: For Good.