Who is that diva rat on the drums in the “Wicked” trailer?

Photo: Wicked Movie via YouTube

Warning: Spoilers ahead for Major Evil Plot points.

Today, Universal's marketing team bucked current trends and released a new product Evil Teaser trailer with real singing! This teaser gives fans of the Broadway musical and curious newcomers alike everything they've ever hoped for: Ariana Grande as Galinda in a comedic, clumsy choreo in “Popular”! A new Cynthia Erivo-as-Elphaba riff in “The Wizard and I”! Jonathan Bailey as Fiyero really puts the pedal to the metal in “Dancing Through Life”! A rat playing drums! Jeff Goldbl – heyyyyyyy, wait a minute. A rat playing drums?

Pause at the 11-second mark and you can see it loud and clear: a one-second insert of a bug-eyed rodent wearing a little multi-colored ascot and absolutely wailing on a tiny drum set. I use “rat” as a collective term, but it looks more like a sugar glider, the rat’s whimsical airborne marsupial sister. Later in the trailer, we see the rest of the band, made entirely of CGI animals, from a larger perspective: a bird of prey on a wind chime, a monkey on strings, a giraffe on a harmonica, and oh my god, Is the rodent drummer Ride the giraffe playing the harmonica?

If you zoom in closer, you can see that our little diva's drum kit says “Ozdust” – like in the Ozdust Ballroom, aka “the fanciest place in town,” aka the nightclub where Elphaba and Galinda and Fiyero and Boq and… Nessarose and presumably Bowen Yang's character “put down” their schoolwork and go dancing. If you don't know Evil, Or you know the cast recording but tend to skip track five for obvious reasons (that's bad), then you may not have the right context for this animal band. In Evil, The animals are sentient but persecuted citizens of Oz, and this plot unfolds Away more of the story than you probably remember. By that logic, and with a CGI animal band, the Ozdust Ballroom could be like that film's Kit Kat Club, meaning possible danger for this fabulous little creature. Expect this country bear jamboree to be replaced by an all-human group performing the Ozian version of “Tomorrow Belongs to Me” at the end of the film.

But today Drum Rat belongs. She has real star quality. We celebrate and elevate our little native marsupial to an Australian pop icon. Could an Ozdust Ballroom original credits song be Sugar Glider? EvilThe path to the Oscar? Everything is possible!