Let's make this simple: You want to know if there are any post- or mid-credits scenes in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. The answer is no. Tim Burton’s never really been a post-credits guy and that continues here.
Full spoilers for Beetlejuice Beetlejuice follow!
After decades of false starts and numerous different incarnations, the sequel to 1988’s Beetlejuice is finally here, reuniting director Tim Burton with Michael Keaton, Winona Ryder and Catherine O’Hara, alongside franchise newcomers like Jenna Ortega, Justin Theroux, Monica Bellucci and Willem Dafoe.
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice picks up with Lydia Deetz (Ryder) now hosting her own TV show in New York, utilizing her abilities to see and speak with the dead while also dating her rather cheesy manager/producer, Rory (Theroux). However, Lydia must return to her Connecticut home from the first film, alongside her stepmother, Delia (O’Hara), and teenage daughter, Astrid (Ortega), following the death of her father, Charles, who was killed by a shark. Soon enough, Astrid is wandering up to the attic, finding a familiar old model of the town and a flier for our favorite bio-exorcist, Beetlejuice. And it turns out, Beetlejuice is still very much hung up on Lydia, having recently caused her to see visions of him, and setting into motion a reunion she’s not looking forward to in the least.
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice Ending Explained
An odd aspect of Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is it has two completely separate antagonist storylines that never really intersect. First, we meet literal soul-sucker Delores (Bellucci), who was Beetlejuice’s wife when they were humans centuries before, before poisoning him to death – which led him, in turn, to kill her in his final moments among the living. Now she’s back and intent on once more being with him forever, whether he likes it or not. As she sucks the souls from any she encounters, leaving behind shriveled husks – including Danny DeVito’s afterlife janitor and poor, shrunken-headed Bob – she is tracked through the afterlife by Willem Dafoe’s Wolf Jackson, who’s become a ghost detective after a life spent as an actor playing a detective in a series of films.
Meanwhile, Astrid ends up meeting a local boy, Jeremy (Arthur Conti), and the two seem on the path to romance – before it’s revealed Jeremy is a ghost, meaning Astrid, who always thought her mom was making up her ghost stories, has inherited Lydia’s ability to see the dead. Jeremy claims he has a way to return to life with Astrid’s help, but it turns out he's actually an infamous local teen who murdered his parents 23 years ago, before dying in a fall when the police tried to take him in. Now he intends to offer Astrid up as a sacrifice in his place, so he can return to the living. He takes Astrid into the afterlife, with Lydia reluctantly turning to the one guy who could be of help in this situation, Beetlejuice. He agrees to help Lydia in exchange for getting the same thing he tried for in 1988 – Lydia’s hand in marriage, which would also allow him to leave the afterlife for good.
In the afterlife, Jeremy attempts to send Astrid away into the beyond on the “Soul Train” that transports the dead to their final destination. He goes to get the final stamp on his paperwork to allow him to return to life and complete the deal he tricked Astrid into, only to be surprised by Beetlejuice sitting behind the clerk’s window. The Ghost With the Most quickly dispatches Jeremy, opening the floor beneath him and sending him to hell. At the same time, Lydia and Astrid, attempting to keep Astrid off the Soul Train, go through a door and end up on one of Saturn’s moons, encountering a Sandworm intent on eating them. They are saved by the ghost of Astrid’s late father, Richard (Santiago Cabrera). Before helping them return home, he reveals he pops in to see them when he can – though why neither Lydia nor Astrid never saw him is unclear, given their shared abilities.
In the midst of all of this, Delia, performing a memorial ceremony for Charles, is bitten on the neck by two poisonous snakes she had been falsely told were defanged, and dies herself. She quickly finds herself fed up with the afterlife’s waiting room and, unable to find Charles to help her, ends up calling for Beetlejuice.
Move Over, ‘Day-O,’ It’s Time for ‘MacArthur Park’
With Jeremy dealt with, Beetlejuice intends for Lydia to make good on her side of the deal, bringing Delia back with him to the mortal world. And lucky for Beetlejuice, a wedding was already going to happen that night at the local church that he can push aside, as earlier in the film Rory had convinced a reluctant Lydia to marry him at midnight on Halloween.
At the church, Beetlejuice banishes the wedding guests – mostly influencers Rory had invited to garner publicity – sending them into the phones they are obsessed with. Then, using truth serum, he forces Rory to confess to Lydia that he was just using her to make himself money; he didn’t actually care about her or even believe she could see ghosts. A pissed-off Lydia uses a giant, inflated boxing glove Beetlejuice magically puts on her hand to punch Rory across the church. Wolf and his men show up, having been tracking the recent breaches between the real world and the afterlife, but Beetlejuice freezes them all in place.
And that’s when it’s time for… a musical number! Well, a Beetlejuice musical number that is, with the original film’s classic “Day-O” scene getting a follow-up as, once more, most of the main characters are possessed and forced to lip-sync and dance to a song. Except this time, it’s Beetlejuice pulling the strings, as he has Lydia, Delia, Astrid, Rory and Father Damien (Burn Goreman) join him in dancing to the 1968 version of “MacArthur Park,” sung by Richard Harris (that’s right, Dumbledore!).
After the song’s conclusion, the would-be wedding is interrupted by the arrival of Delores. But the day is saved by Astrid, who uses instructions in the Handbook of the Recently Deceased to open a door to the moons of Saturn to summon a sandworm, which smashes through the church and consumes both Delores and Rory. Beetlejuice’s hope to marry Lydia is then dashed as Astrid also learns, via the Handbook, that he’d broken the rules by bringing Lydia into the afterlife with him earlier, nullifying the deal they’d made. Lydia triumphantly says Beetlejuice’s name three times and Beetlejuice’s body blows up like a balloon before exploding.
Finding out from the now unfrozen Wolf that Delia can’t go home with them, Lydia and Astrid learn that Delia is dead and has to return to the afterlife, though Delia is cheered up when Astrid notes her death will make her art more valuable. Back in the afterlife, Delia gets ready to board the Soul Train to whatever is next, and at the train, she is reunited with her beloved Charles – albeit in his bloody, headless form, thanks to the shark that killed him.
In the aftermath, Lydia decides it’s time to end her TV show, noting she wants to finally be more focused on the living than the dead. Fulfilling a hope Astrid and her dad had before he died, Lydia and Astrid travel overseas together to see macabre landmarks, and that’s when things begin to get montage-y…
Does Beetlejuice Beetlejuice Set Up a Third Film?
It certainly feels like there is the possibility for more. The film’s final, mostly dialogue-free moments find Lydia and Astrid touring the real Dracula’s Castle in Romania. It’s there that Astrid and a young man working there, who’s dressed as Dracula, see each other and are instantly smitten. We then jump forward in time and see the two getting married, with Lydia cheering them on, before moving forward even further. Now Astrid is in labor in a hospital, with Lydia watching through a window into the birthing room. Except suddenly something goes very wrong and out of Astrid pops… a baby Beetlejuice! This little creature leaps up and bloodily kills the doctor and nurses in the room, before climbing up the walls and onto the ceiling, then dropping down onto Astrid’s chest, who gives her “baby” a creepy smile.
Which is when a horrified Lydia… wakes up in bed. It was just a nightmare. Except lying next to her is Beetlejuice himself, who tells her “I just had the weirdest dream.” And Lydia then wakes up again, except now she’s by herself in bed. It was the ol’ double nightmare scenario. However, what’s clear is that Lydia is still haunted by Beeltejuice, whether it’s caused by him directly or just in her own mind.
This final nightmare reveal does bring into question how much of that final montage happened at all. It seems like Lydia ending her show and going traveling with Astrid probably really did happen, but did Astrid actually meet that guy? Is she really married now? Does she have a kid or is she currently pregnant? For now, those specifics are unclear.
Mommy Not-So-Dearest?
One aspect that seems ripe to be explored in another sequel is an interesting little detail about Lydia revealed in a quick line of dialogue in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, which is that her mother is still alive. At one point, when Lydia laments to Delia the issues Astrid has with her and how she feels Astrid blames her for Richard’s death, Delia says, “You blamed me for your mother’s death,” and Lydia replies, in exasperation, that her mother is in fact alive.
In the first film, Lydia seemed to be living with her dad and stepmother full time, and it was easy to assume her mom had passed away. But now it turns out that’s not the case, begging the question why we’ve never seen her and what type of person she is.
IGN took part in a press Q&A with Tim Burton prior to the sequel’s release, and when he was asked about the possibility of a third film, he was non-committal. He joked that if they followed the 36-year break they had the first time, he’d be over 100 by the time they made a Beetlejuice 3, while allowing that perhaps something might spark his interest to return again a bit sooner this time.
When IGN directly asked Burton about Lydia’s mother and if they’d thought about who that character is, he simply smiled and said, “We’ll see!”
Catherine O’Hara, meanwhile, joked to IGN that Lydia’s mom, unlike Delia, “is no artist, I’ll tell you that!”
When O’Hara noted to Jenna Ortega that Lydia’s mom being alive meant she has a “real” grandmother still, Ortega stayed loyal to her onscreen step-grandmother, saying, “Yeah, but Delia is the real one.”
Does Beetlejuice Beetlejuice Have a Post-Credits Scene?
As noted, there are no post-credits or mid-credits scenes in the film. Tim Burton really doesn't do those, so this comes as no surprise here.
What did you think of Beetlejuice Beetlejuice? Let’s discuss in the comments!
Note: This story was originally published on Sept. 5, 2024. It was updated with full spoilers on Sept. 6.
Leave a Reply