The Tim Burton horror comedy Beetlejuice finally continues its story with a 2024 sequel, so there’s no better time to look back on the movie’s ending and see how the original plot wrapped up. Beetlejuice was a sleeper hit upon release in 1988. Tim Burton’s direction of the campy horror comedy and Michal Keaton’s memorably manic performance as the title character led Warner Bros to trust the pair with a big-budget Batman movie only a year later. Meanwhile, Beetlejuice made a superstar of its young heroine Winona Ryder, who would later team up with Burton again for Edward Scissorhands.
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Keaton, Ryder, and Catherine O’Hara reunite on Tim Burton’s 2024 sequel, Beetlejuice 2. In addition to a few returning cast members, Beetlejuice 2′s cast adds franchise newcomer Jenna Ortega among others into the mix, continuing the Deetz family’s story as they return to Winter River and encounter Beetlejuice another time. Meanwhile, the original Beetlejuice is a manic, macabre farce that sees the recently deceased couple Adam and Barbara attempt to scare the Deetz family out of their home by hiring the eponymous “bio-exorcist.” However, things soon go awry as Beetlejuice proves unpredictable, resulting in the movie’s anarchic ending.

What Happens To Beetlejuice In The Movie’s Ending

Beetlejuice Returns To The Afterlife Realm After Being Swallowed By The Sandworm

After Charles Deetz, his wife Delia, and his daughter Lydia moved into Adam and Barbara’s home, the ghostly couple hired Michael Keaton’s Beetlejuice to scare them off. This alerted the Deetz family members to the presence of Adam and Barbara, with their friend Otho accidentally conducting an exorcism on them instead of a seance. The exorcism nearly destroyed Adam and Barbara’s spirits, so Lydia promised the unhinged Beetlejuice that she would marry him if he saved her undead friends.

Beetlejuice is given ticket number 9,998,383,750,000 in the waiting room, with the latest number called being only 3.

However, Lydia narrowly escapes this fate when Adam and Barbara obstruct the wedding. Beetlejuice’s plan is thwarted when he’s eaten by a giant sandworm, ridden by Barbara, that sends him back to the Neitherworld waiting room. Michael Keaton’s character is last seen sitting between a deceased witch doctor and the head-shrunken Harry the Hunter, with Beetlejuice earning his own shrunken head after trying to swap ticket numbers with the witch doctor.

Why The Deetz Family Stays In Winter River

The Deetz Family Makes Peace & Harmoniously Cohabitates With The Maitlands

The Deetz family ultimately decides to stay in Adam and Barbara’s house after Beetlejuice’s ending. After all, Lydia noted to the Maitlands earlier in the film that Charles Deetz “never walks away from an investment.” While the Deetzes don’t turn the Winter River house into an amusement park-style paranormal attraction that they briefly pitched to Maxie Dean and company, Charles, Delia, and Lydia stay in the house and turn it into the peaceful home they initially imagined.

Since Lydia’s family now coexist peacefully with Adam and Barbara’s ghosts in the ending, they are no longer perturbed by the presence of supernatural beings in their home. However, it’s clear that the Deetzes made some compromise with the Maitlands when deciding to all remain in Winter River. In Beetlejuice‘s ending, the house is partially reverted to the way it looked when Adam and Barbara were still alive, so it is clear that Delia’s wild remodeling work was undone to some extent.

Known as the “Ghost House” around town, the remaining Deetz family members finally return to living in the Winter River house after the tragic death of Charles Deetz.

That said, Beetlejuice’s original sequel idea had the Deetz family moving to Hawaii, which might imply that they were never planning on staying for the long term. Ultimately, Beetlejuice 2‘s story reveals that the Deetzes do leave Winter River for some time after the original movie, but still keep their ownership of the house on the hill. Known as the “Ghost House” around town, the remaining Deetz family members finally return to living in the Winter River house after the tragic death of Charles Deetz. However, this event also open themselves up to the threat of Beetlejuice’s presence and harassment.

What Happens To Adam & Barbara After Lydia Saves Them

The Maitlands Are Still Dead As They Learn To Coexist In Their Winter River Home

Adam and Barbara were almost exorcised in Beetlejuice’s ending, which would have destroyed their ghosts and prematurely ended their afterlife. However, Lydia saved them after befriending the couple earlier in the movie. As such, Adam and Barbara can still live in their house for the remainder of the 125 years that they are obligated to stay as ghosts on the property. However, Beetlejuice 2 reveals that Adam and Barbara eventually find a loophole out of their 125-year stay, leaving the attic space vacant.

Initially, the Maitlands can’t immediately leave unless they want to face the sandworms that roam around limbo, as seen when Adam tries to leave the house early in Beetlejuice’s story. However, since a nice happy home was all that Adam and Barbara wanted before they died, this is a somewhat fitting fate for the couple. Although Adam and Barbara can’t leave their home, they are now at peace with this and are friends with at least one of the house’s new occupants, serving as surrogate parents to teenage Lydia.

While Adam and Barbara can’t have children now that they are dead, their dream of domestic bliss isn’t necessarily destroyed. They clearly took a shine to Winona Ryder’s Beetlejuice heroine Lydia and, since Lydia’s father and stepmother are ambivalent towards her, Adam and Barbara could act as her guardians going forward. Like many of Burton’s movies, Beetlejuice ends with the triumph of an unlikely, but sweet found family as Lydia, Adam, and Barbara successfully stand up against the ghoulish title character.

What Were The Sandworms In Beetlejuice’s Ending?

The Sandworms Have An Important Purpose In The Afterlife

The sandworm that eats Beetlejuice in Beetlejuice’s ending is one of the gigantic monsters seen on Saturn, the Limbo area of the afterlife, earlier in the movie. Although unexplained in Beetlejuice, these monsters seemingly exist to ensure that ghosts don’t wander around limbo eternally, as evidenced when Adam encounters them. Their design has a trademark Burton-esque quality, but were seemingly inspired by the sandworms from Frank Herbert’s Dune novels.

The sandworms seem to operate like Stephen King’s forgotten Langoliers, consuming everything that appears in front of them to ensure that the natural order isn’t disrupted. However, when one eats Beetlejuice, he is transported back to the afterlife waiting room. As such, it seems that the worms don’t kill their victims but instead lead them back to the bureaucratic heart of the afterlife.

How Beetlejuice’s Ending Sets Up Michael Keaton’s Return In Beetlejuice 2

Beetlejuice Is Put Back Into The Afterlife’s Bureaucratic Cycle In The Movie’s Final Moments

While Beetlejuice’s original ending was darker, Beetlejuice’s return to the Neitherworld waiting room meant that there would always be a chance for someone else to summon him in the future. This waiting room where Adam and Barbara Maitland ended up after they died is where the undead are informed of their fate and given guidance for their next steps in the afterlife. Since Beetlejuice looked frustrated upon being sent to the location in Beetlejuice’s ending, this implied that he had been deposited in this waiting room before and would be again.

The fact that Adam and Barbara’s caseworker, Juno, was familiar with Beetlejuice’s recent shenanigans suggested that he would be likely to return to his old tricks again soon. The afterlife bureaucracy moves slowly but doesn’t seem to limit Beetlejuice’s actions. Once free from the waiting room, Beetlejuice could return for revenge or to fulfill his plans to marry Lydia. While he still remains in the afterlife bureaucracy in a new position during the sequel, Beetlejuice is officially summoned again in Beetlejuice 2, requiring only the utterance of his name three times to come back.

Additionally, Beetlejuice has been around for well over 600 years by the 1988 movie’s timeline. Therefore, getting swallowed by a sandworm and put back into the bureaucracy of the afterlife won’t be enough to get rid of him for good. His mischief is also well-renowned in the afterlife, so it’s likely that he’s already done even worse to others than he did to the Deetzes and Maitlands. The janitor in Beetlejuice‘s Neitherworld reveals to Barbara and Adam that exorcisms are “death for the dead,” which may be the only way to ensure that Beetlejuice never returns in the future.

What Beetlejuice’s Ending Really Means

Beetlejuice Preaches The Importance Of Family, Acceptance & Community

Beetlejuice’s ending is really about the value of family in all of its strange and unexpected incarnations. Despite all the trials and tribulations that she is put through, Lydia ends up with a family who pays attention to and cares about her in the form of the deceased Adam and Barbara. Similarly, the Maitlands have gotten the idyllic suburban existence that they always wanted by helping to raise Lydia and keeping their home. None of these characters get a conventionally happy conclusion, but the point of Beetlejuice’s ending is that Lydia, Adam, and Barbara all learn they don’t need one.

In Beetlejuice ’s ending, the bio-exorcist inadvertently teaches Adam and Barbara that what they really wanted was not a house of their own, but rather a home.

Adam and Barbara originally hired Beetlejuice because they couldn’t stand the thought of sharing their home with another family. This led the Deetzes to mistakenly almost exorcise them, which, in turn, almost killed Adam and Barbara. By Beetlejuice’s ending, Adam and Barbara have learned the importance of community and fight Beetlejuice to ensure Lydia’s safety. Instead of shutting newcomers out of their home, Adam and Barbara embrace Lydia with open arms. Thus, in Beetlejuice’s ending, the bio-exorcist inadvertently teaches Adam and Barbara that what they really wanted was not a house of their own, but rather a home.