The Ending Of Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice 2, Explained

This article contains massive spoilers for “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.”

1988’s “Beetlejuice” is a singular work of cinema, a gonzo alt-comedy supernatural satire that takes a look at death, the afterlife, and the ghost movie in a way that’s completely unique unto itself. It’s one of those films that contains a ton of imagination and some unique world-building, so it’s no surprise that there’s been a desire to explore that world further during the 36 years since the movie’s release. Yet, despite a successful children’s animated series and a hit Broadway musical, “Beetlejuice” is not a franchise that’s been bled dry.

Thus, “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice,” the long-awaited follow-up from original director Tim Burton, is much more of a personal sequel as opposed to a franchise-building installment or even a too-reverential legacy sequel. This is not a film intended to reboot an IP so much as it’s an artist revisiting his old stomping grounds. Burton himself has said as much, for at a press event attended by /Film’s Jacob Hall, he was quoted as saying, “We just wanted to kind of not think about sequel or anything, just go and just make the movie.” This is an energy that Burton has brought to the world of franchises before. While the filmmaker has been involved with a few handfuls of remakes and reimaginings of established stories, his only direct sequel before this one was 1992’s “Batman Returns,” which took a similar tack of sailing its own course.

Despite “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” having its own distinct sense of humor and identity, it still carries forward one key aspect of the original film. It uses its story, characters, and wit to make social commentary, and the main theme of this sequel concerns exploitation: of people, of artists, of life … and, of course, of the afterlife.

After Lydia Deetz (Winona Ryder) was left to be raised by her stepmother, Delia (Catherine O’Hara), her father, Charles (Jeffrey Jones), and the picture-perfect ghost couple, Adam and Barbara Maitland (Adam Baldwin & Geena Davis), she has since grown up to become a psychic medium with a successful ghost hunting and paranormal investigation series entitled “Ghost House.” All is not perfectly well with Lydia, however: her supernatural ability seems to be more selective than voluntary, leading her to take medication to suppress her visions of wayward spirits when it gets too much for her, something her producer and boyfriend, Rory (Justin Theroux), isn’t so keen on, given that it’s bad for business. Lydia is called to New York City by Delia, who’s become a successful performance artist in the city. Delia has just received news about her husband Charles’ untimely demise; it seems the man was on a birdwatching trip when his plane crashed in the ocean, a disaster he survived until he was eaten by a shark.

Lydia, Delia, and Rory hatch a plan to bring Charles’ remains to Winter River, Connecticut, where the Deetz family home (formerly the Maitland home) resides. Along the way, they pick up Lydia’s daughter Astrid (Jenna Ortega) at her boarding school. Astrid is still miffed at her mother over a few things, chief among them the untimely demise of her father, Richard (Santiago Cabrera), an activist and horror movie fan who was lost during a trek through the Amazon. Lydia apparently cannot see Richard’s spirit, even though she makes a living off of seeing ghosts for profit. Astrid is also getting a free ride at her school thanks to her step-grandmother Delia donating money to its arts program (and securing the prominent display of Delia’s bizarre sculptures outside the school to boot). 

In response to her mother’s family’s long history of exploiting others for profit — let’s not forget Charles’ plan in the first film to buy the entire town of Winter River to develop a supernatural tourist attraction — Astrid has become an activist herself, joining groups that seek to stop climate change and so on. Unfortunately for her, Delia and Lydia inform Astrid that she has no choice but to go with them to her grandpa’s funeral. Just as she cannot escape this fate, Lydia is feeling the pressure of her own past literally haunting her, as she’s beginning to see frequent glimpses of the demon Beetlejuice (Michael Keaton) stalking her.

Meanwhile, in The Afterlife, Beetlejuice has taken it upon himself to open up a call center (filled with employees who’ve had their heads shrunken) dedicated to getting gigs for himself as a bio-exorcist (that is, a demon who dispels the living). His callers seem to be subverting or poaching legitimate issues the recently deceased have, meaning that ol’ Beetle Breakfast is still up to his opportunistic tricks. However, even as he deliberately haunts Lydia (whom he’s still convinced is the love of his life-cum-get out of the afterlife green card), he’s haunted by a specter from his own past: his ex-wife, Dolores (Monica Bellucci). 

Back when Beetlejuice was alive, he met the bewitching Dolores during the days of the Black Plague while robbing mass graves. The two quickly fell in love, married, and shared a passionate wedding night together until Beetlejuice found out too late that he’d been fatally poisoned by her as part of her belonging to a sacrificial death cult of soul-suckers. Just before the poison took hold, Beetlejuice hacked up Dolores with an axe, leading her to end up in The Afterlife in several pieces put into several boxes.

Thanks to a mishap involving a Janitor (Danny DeVito), Dolores is revived, literally pulling herself back together and back to her old soul-sucking ways. What’s more, she appears to be on the hunt for revenge against Beetlejuice, something that’s brought to the Ghost With the Most’s attention by a member of Afterlife law enforcement: Wolf Jackson (Willem Dafoe). Wolf, an ex-B-movie actor, may or may not be an actual public servant of The Afterlife; as established in the first “Beetlejuice,” those positions tend to be filled by people who’ve died by suicide, and it seems Wolf died by accident during a stunt sequence mishap with a live grenade. At least, he seems to be somewhat convinced that he’s an actual cop, warning Beetlejuice that Dolores is on the hunt as she begins leaving a trail of soul-sucked corpses behind her. Beetlejuice’s response is to dress up one of his employees, Bob (Nick Kellington), as a decoy of himself, focusing instead on how to get back to the real world.

Back in Winter River, no sooner is Charles laid to rest (with a gravestone in the shape of a shark’s fin, naturally) before Rory seizes his opportunity to tie the knot with Lydia, awkwardly proposing to her in the middle of the funeral in front of dozens of guests. Rory emotionally manipulates Lydia into tacitly agreeing to marry him, announcing immediately afterward that they’ll be married by the local pastor who performed the funeral services, Father Damien (Burn Gorman) on Halloween night … two days away.

Seeing Astrid become increasingly annoyed and distant, Lydia reaches out, attempting to reconnect with her daughter. She makes some headway when Astrid finds some of her father’s old stuff in a box in the attic, along with the Maitland’s old model of the entire town (and, just to tie a bow on their story, Lydia explains how the Maitland’s “found a loophole” in their sentence of remaining on Earth for 125 years and were able to move on). However, Lydia is disturbed to discover a flyer for Beetlejuice lying around, indicating that he’s still got power over the Maitland’s model town. While attempting to explain Beetlejuice to Astrid, the girl, who refuses to believe in the supernatural, runs away. Astrid soon finds herself literally crashing into the backyard of a boy named Jeremy (Arthur Conti), who, like Astrid, is a fan of vintage music and Dostoyevsky. The two make a plan to see each other before Lydia’s wedding on Halloween night.

Back at the Deetz home, Lydia finds herself unable to explain Beetlejuice to a disbelieving Rory, who unfortunately chants the demon’s name three times, sending them into the model and into Beetlejuice’s clutches. Beetlejuice plays the part of a couple’s counselor for the pair, scaring Rory speechless and beginning his pursuit of Lydia anew. His illusions include making Lydia spontaneously birth a little Baby Beetlejuice, and as the monstrous kid begins to gnaw on her leg, Lydia chants “Home! Home! Home!” and frees herself and Rory from the demon … for now.

The Deetz’s are not out of danger yet. Lydia drops Astrid off at her date with Jeremy before heading back to handle the matter of preparing to put the Maitland house back on the market with legacy real estate agent Jane Butterfield (Amy Nuttall). When Lydia mentions where she dropped off Astrid, Jane lets it slip that the house was once owned by a family who was murdered by their own son, Jeremy, before he was accidentally killed during his apprehension by the cops 23 years ago. Putting two and two together, Lydia races to warn her daughter, but it’s too late. Jeremy has already put the moves on Astrid, wooing her with his sensitive boy charm and explaining how she could chant a spell from the Handbook for the Recently Deceased in order to cross over to the Afterlife to see her father.

Astrid does so, but little does she realize that Jeremy is actually getting her to enact a transaction wherein she’ll willingly give up her mortal life to allow him to fully return to the real world. Discovering that this transaction requires a few bureaucratic steps to be complete, Lydia calls on Beetlejuice for help, and he agrees on one condition: that Lydia sign a contract (in blood, naturally) to marry him after he helps save Astrid. Lydia agrees, and she and Beetlejuice scour The Afterlife before Astrid can be put on the Soul Train to the Great Beyond.

Of course, all of these shenanigans mean that things are beginning to go off the rails in both Winter River and the Afterlife. The bomb that Beetlejuice draws to let him and Lydia in the back way to The Afterlife means that his staff of Shrinkers escape into the real world — except for Bob. While the other Shrinkers cause some mayhem in the small Connecticut town, poor Bob is picked up by Wolf and interrogated, only to be found by Dolores right after. Wolf dispatches some elite troops throughout The Afterlife after Beetlejuice and Lydia, who is deemed an illegal trespasser.

Fortunately, Lydia finds Astrid just as she’s about to be taken on the Soul Train. With Beetlejuice’s help, Jeremy is denied the transfer he was seeking and is sent into a very Hell-like dimension for his sins. Even more fortunately, Richard finds his wife and daughter, saving them from a misstep they take during their flight from Afterlife authorities onto the sandworm-infested Saturn realm. He explains to Lydia and Astrid that he was always watching over them in the real world ever since his fatal accident, but didn’t make himself visible to them so as not to upset them and let them move on.

As Richard helps Lydia and Astrid make their way back to Winter River, Delia films her own performative art piece of her “mourning” over Charles’ grave, which for some reason involves two poisonous snakes that she was assured had been defanged. Turns out she was ripped off, and after the snakes deliver their fatal bite, she finds herself in The Afterlife’s waiting room, annoyed at being made to wait. Insisting on being helped immediately, she calls Beetlejuice, who informs her that he’ll bring her back to the real world with him … and that he’s about to marry Lydia.

Lydia and Astrid emerge into the real world near the church where Rory, Father Damien, and an audience full of influencers that Rory invited are waiting for the wedding to commence. Before Lydia can go through with it, Beetlejuice appears, giving Rory a truth serum which makes him reveal that his entire relationship with Lydia was exploitative: he only wanted to use her and prey on her insecurities for his own fame and clout. After Lydia gives Rory a Beetlejuice-assisted punch, the demon then insists on collecting his debt from Lydia. Apparently, part of Beetlejuice’s deal involves getting all the influencers sucked into their own smartphones and then having himself and the Deetzs lip sync to Richard Harris’ version of “MacArthur Park.” During this performance, Wolf, his Afterlife troops, and Dolores show up, all of whom crash the wedding.

As Beetlejuice distracts Dolores by apologizing and positioning Rory as the true love of her life, Astrid uses the Handbook to figure out how to summon a sandworm, which attacks and swallows both Rory and Dolores. A gloating Beetlejuice prepares to marry Lydia when Astrid explains that she’s seen Beetlejuice’s contract has made a violation as per the Handbook, meaning that the contract has actually become null and void. The contract vanishes into flames, and Beetlejuice blows up and pops like a giant balloon as Lydia says his name three times, banishing him for good. Wolf explains that Delia, who is now dead, must come back with him, but she’s only happy to once she discovers the headless (but still active) corpse of her beloved Charles at the Soul Train.

With all the characters finally reconciling with each other and themselves (or, for those who have not learned the error of their exploitative ways, banished or defeated), the aftermath of “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” sees Lydia wind down her “Ghost House” program, bidding her audience farewell to spend more time with her daughter. As such, we see Lydia and Astrid venture off to Dracula’s castle in Romania, a trip that Richard and Astrid always wanted to take that mother and daughter are now embarking on. While there, Astrid catches the eye of another cute guy, Vlad (Filipe Cates), and in a time cut, we see Astrid and Vlad married as a proud Lydia looks on. A further time cut reveals Lydia beaming as Astrid is in a maternity ward, giving birth to a baby, and it seems that Lydia has made good on her promise to be so closely involved in her daughter’s life.

However, something is clearly amiss. This montage of years going by has been scored to Pino Donaggio’s theme from Brian De Palma’s “Carrie,” which famously concluded with a nightmarish dream sequence indicating that the mad, telekinetic Carrie White was not quite dead. Sure enough, the baby that Astrid gives birth to is a Baby Beetlejuice, who scampers over the room and ceiling. Just before he attacks, Lydia awakes from her nightmare with a fright … but Beetlejuice is in bed next to her. “I just had the weirdest dream,” he says nonchalantly. Lydia wakes up again, her nightmare within a nightmare seemingly over as she finds herself in bed alone.

This ending not only pays homage to “Carrie” and several other classic horror films but strongly hints that Beetlejuice is perhaps not as banished as Lydia and Astrid had hoped. One big, ominous hint is the film’s title itself, featuring two uses of the name “Beetlejuice.” Could a third instance of the name — i.e. a third film — be close behind? Is Burton promising or threatening a second sequel (or, in a cheeky, meta-satiric way, both)? Maybe the title is just hinting that Beetlejuice is always lurking out there, ready to pester the living. Whatever the case may be, it’s safe to say we haven’t seen the last of “Beetlejuice.”