“And what, you may ask, are the reasons why?” Ray Bradbury asked in his foreword for the Kansas Centennial edition of L. Frank Baum’s classic novel. “‘The Wizard of Oz’ will never die?”

More than 20 years after the musical “Wicked” became a Broadway megahit, the first part of a big-screen adaptation, starring Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande, will arrive this fall. The second film comes out next year. It might be time to pose a related question: Why won’t the Wicked Witch of the West ever die?

The character has grown in stature since she first appeared as the villain in just one chapter of Baum’s novel nearly 125 years ago. Every subsequent adaptation has made her more visible, more memorable and — in a twist — more heroic. Much like the Land of Oz’s symbolic meaning as a stand-in for the United States, her fate reflects our nation’s continuing debates about race, gender and who is and isn’t considered American.

Narratively, her evolution has been striking. Barely present in Baum’s book as an enemy of Dorothy, the young Kansan on a journey through Oz, the witch emerged as a formidable green-faced foe made famous by white actress Margaret Hamilton in MGM’s 1939 movie classic, “The Wizard of Oz.” In the 1970s, Mabel King played her as the cruel factory owner Evillene in the all-Black Broadway and movie versions of “The Wiz.” Her showstopping number, “No Bad News,” stole the spotlight from Dorothy and Glinda, the Good Witch. Two decades later, her transformation was complete when Gregory Maguire depicted her as the sympathetic, misunderstood, magically powerful, though still green-hued Elphaba in his 1995 novel “Wicked.” That’s the version in the Broadway musical and now the forthcoming two-part film.

Credited with writing the first great American fairy tale, Baum began Dorothy’s turn-of-the-century tour in the frontier state of Kansas. Though Baum was neither born nor lived there, his general interest in the region was reflected in his move from upstate New York to Aberdeen, a Dakota Territory town, in 1886. After opening a novelty store there, he started a newspaper, The Aberdeen Saturday Pioneer, in which he wrote editorials that ranged from advocating women’s suffrage to calling for the complete extermination of Indigenous communities.

His interest in women’s rights can be seen in Dorothy’s coming of age as an assertive, independent and morally confident girl who challenges the Wizard’s authority. However, Baum’s racism has led some readers to reconsider whether or not the Wicked Witch was a proxy for his views on Native Americans and reevaluate how they understand Dorothy’s killing of the Wicked Witch. “Both in performance and embodiment,” literary critic Alissa Burger wrote in “The Wizard of Oz as American Myth,” the Wicked Witch is constructed “as occupying a space of Otherness which excludes her from citizenship, echoing the concerns of American identity that preoccupied Baum in his editorials as well as in the discourse surrounding westward expansion and the myth of the frontier.”

In contrast to Dorothy, whom Baum characterized as a “loving little girl” with a “merry voice,” the Wicked Witch has only one eye that is “as powerful as a telescope.” Living on rough land, she is surrounded by wolves, wears a silver whistle around her neck and rules over Winkies, whom she refers to as slaves. She is not green-faced but does turn into a brown, shapeless mass when Dorothy kills her by throwing water at her. The Witch’s geographical isolation and physical abnormalities rendered her a permanent outcast in Baum’s sphere. “As a result of her Otherness,” Burger concludes. “the Wicked Witch can — and, in fact, must — be destroyed.”It was Maguire’s novel “Wicked,” a prequel to “The Wizard of Oz,” that most radically reinvented the Wicked Witch. She has a name, Elphaba, a complex backstory, a friendship with Glinda (later the Good Witch) that blurs the lines of good and evil, and is the true hero of Oz. As an inquisitive, compassionate, animal-loving college student who questions the teachings and authoritarianism of the Wizard, Elphaba is the champion of the underdog, and her hyper-green face becomes not an excuse for her expulsion, but rather proof of her empathy.

Now, Erivo, best known for her Tony-winning performance as Celie in the musical “The Color Purple” and her Oscar-nominated turn as Harriet Tubman in the 2019 biopic, will be Elphaba on the big screen. As a Black actress also in green face, Erivo is likely to draw attention to how Elphaba’s color makes her more vulnerable to being ostracized, stereotyped and oppressed by the Wizard. But, in our particular political moment, Erivo as Elphaba is not just doubly tragic but also tremendously heroic. By risking her life to protect the animals of Oz, rebel against the raging sorceress Madame Morrible and challenge the Wiz’s draconian suppression of speech, she tries to save her community from complete catastrophe.

A two-part feature film is fitting for a figure who defies expectation and categorization. Elphaba offers the most expansive vision of belonging of any character in Oz and, thus, our country.

I hope that witch lives forever.