‘Beetlejuice Beetlejuice’ left fans wondering why some of the original leads, like Geena Davis, weren’t in the sequel

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice saw the return of Michael Keaton as the title character over three decades later, but not all of the original cast made a return.

The sequel to 1988’s Beetlejuice premiered in theaters on Sept. 6, 2024, earning over $110 million in its opening weekend. The movie revisits the Deetz family — including Winona Ryder’s ghost-seeing Lydia Deetz and Catherine O’Hara’s eccentric Delia Deetz — after the family patriarch, Charles Deetz, has died. The family returns to the house once haunted by Barbara (Geena Davis) and Adam Maitland (Alec Baldwin) in the original movie, but this time, more nefarious plots are afoot.

Trouble starts when Lydia begins seeing Beetlejuice, the nefarious demon, again, while her daughter, Astrid (Jenna Ortega), gets into her own share of drama. Though the movie features some familiar faces like Ryder and O’Hara, others are noticeably missing, including Davis, Baldwin and Jeffrey Jones, who played Charles.

So why didn’t original cast members like Baldwin return to Beetlejuice Beetlejuice? Here’s everything to know about how the movie addressed their absence and why they chose to sit the sequel out.

Which members of the original Beetlejuice cast didn’t return for the sequel?

Alec Baldwin attends The Roundabout Gala 2023 at The Ziegfeld Ballroom on March 06, 2023 in New York City. ; Geena Davis at Amazon MGM Studios Premiere of “Blink Twice” on August 08, 2024 in Los Angeles, California.John Lamparski/Getty ; Eric Charbonneau/Getty

While Keaton, O’Hara and Ryder returned for Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, main cast members Baldwin, Davis and Jones did not. Glenn Shadix, who played Delia’s equally as eccentric interior designer friend, also did not return to the sequel after his death in 2010 at 58 years old.

Jones has mainly stayed out of the spotlight since his legal troubles in the years since Beetlejuice. In 2003, the actor pleaded no contest to charges of possession of child pornography after his alleged hiring of a 14-year-old boy to pose for lewd photos. He was eventually sentenced to five years probation, counseling and registration as a sex offender for the rest of his life, per Entertainment Weekly.

However, the following year, Jones was arrested in Florida for failing to update his sex offender status. He was arrested once again in California in 2010 and pled guilty, leading to a sentence of hours of community service and additional years of probation, as BBC News reported.

Though some of the original cast didn’t return, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice added a whole slate of actors, including Willem Dafoe, Monica Bellucci, Justin Theroux and Ortega. Bellucci plays Beetlejuice’s soul-sucking (literally) ex-wife, while Dafoe stars as an actor who became a cop in the afterlife and attempts to hunt her down. Theroux is Lydia’s partner and soon-to-be Astrid’s stepfather, much to her chagrin.

What have Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis said about not returning?

Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis in ‘Beetlejuice’.United Archives GmbH / Alamy

Though Baldwin has not spoken on his absence from the sequel, Davis did make comments leading up to the movie’s release. She confirmed she wouldn’t be returning in April 2024 while speaking to Entertainment Tonight.

“No, I’m not. I’m not in the remake,” she said. “Oh, you were expecting that I would be? Yeah, no, you know what? Because my theory is that ghosts don’t age… Not that I have.”

She added that she speculated she wasn’t returning because it had been 30 years since she was last in the movie — but her character was supposed to look exactly the same.

“Our characters were stuck the way they looked when they died forever, so it’s been a while, it’s been a minute,” Davis continued.

Though she admitted her inclusion would be inconsistent with the story, Davis did tell PEOPLE in 2022 that she “would of course like to revisit” her character again.

What did Tim Burton say about some cast members not returning?

Director Tim Burton explained to PEOPLE in August 2024 that he felt like the new story he wanted to tell didn’t include the Maitlands and was more focused on the relationship between grandmother, mother and daughter.

“I think the thing was for me I didn’t want to just tick any boxes,” he said. “So even though they were such an amazing integral part of the first one, I was focusing on something else.”

He added that the key to the latest installation was time and the importance of establishing this story many years later.

“A sequel like this, it really had to do with the time,” Burton said. “That was my hook into it, the three generations of mother, daughter, granddaughter. And that [would] be the nucleus of it. I couldn’t have made this personally back in 1989 or whatever.”

How did the movie explain what happened to those characters?

Catherine O’Hara as Delia Deetz, Jenna Ortega as Astrid Deetz, Winona Ryder as Lydia Deetz, and Justin Theroux as Rory in ‘Beetlejuice Beetlejuice’.Parisa Taghizadeh/Warner Bros. Pictures

The absence of the Maitlands is briefly addressed in the movie when Lydia shares that the ghosts that formerly haunted their home were able to find a “loophole” that allowed their souls to move on from the house, though in the original movie it was stated that wasn’t an option.

As for Jones’ Charles, the Beetlejuice sequel began with his death, which is explained in stop-motion animation as him getting into a plane crash while bird-watching and getting his head bit off by a shark. However, Charles is still in the movie, with peeks of him wandering the afterlife, not realizing he is dead and still looking for Delia.

Burton came up with Charles’ death, screenwriter Alfred Gough told Entertainment Weekly, as the director was describing his own worst nightmare, inspiring Gough to use it for Charles’ death.

“The way Charles dies in that animated piece is Tim’s nightmare of dying,” Gough said. “He literally pitched that: ‘My nightmare is, I’m in a plane crash, I survive the plane crash, I almost drown, and then a shark eats me.’ We were like, ‘Well, that’s genius. So that’s going to be how he dies.’ “

Who plays Charles Deetz in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice?

Jeffrey Jones and Catherine O’Hara in ‘Beetlejuice’.Album / Alamy

Though Jones did not return for Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, his character was still featured in the movie. However, the film cleverly avoids showing Charles’ face as his head is bitten off by a shark, leaving only his bloodied corpse walking around the underworld headless.

Though Charles does have a few lines in the movie, the voice actor and stand-in is uncredited, so it is not clear who plays the character in the new film.