Beetlejuice Beetlejuice: What Happened to the Maitlands?

Tim Burton’s 1988 movie Beetlejuice introduced audiences to a wide array of compelling characters, with a significant portion of the story centered around married couple Adam and Barbara Maitland. While Beetlejuice Beetlejuice brought back actors like Michael Keaton, Winona Ryder, and Catherine O’Hara to reprise their roles from the original film, fans have known from early on that neither Alec Baldwin nor Genna Davis returned for the sequel to play Adam and Barbara, respectively. Even though they might not appear on screen, their importance to the overall journey of the characters means this new sequel does address their whereabouts. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is in theaters now.

WARNING: Mild spoilers below for Beetlejuice Beetlejuice

In the original film, the Maitlands died in a car accident, bound to their home as the Deetz family moves in. The Maitlands unexpectedly conjure Beetlegeuse (Michael Keaton) to scare the Deetz family away, though Adam and Barbara end up developing a connection to the young Lydia (Ryder). The Maitlands and the Deetz family end up making peace with one another, driving away Beetlegeuse and his attempts to marry Lydia in unholy matrimony.

The sequel sees Lydia still having a connection to the afterlife, using her abilities to host a talk show about ghosts. When her father dies, she and her mother Delia (O’Hara) and her daughter Astrid (Jenna Ortega) return to their family home. While there, Lydia opens up to her daughter about her experiences in the home and her connection to the Maitlands, with Lydia confirming that they found a “loophole” that allowed the Maitlands to “cross over.” 

Adam’s model of their town plays an important part in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, as Lydia’s boyfriend Rory (Justin Theroux) conjures Beetlegeuse by saying his name three times, drawing himself and Lydia into the model. Even though the original movie implied there would be a longstanding connection between Lydia and the Maitlands, this one piece of dialogue and the inclusion of the model is the most insight into these characters that the sequel offers.

Filmmaker Burton previously confirmed why he opted not to include the Maitlands in a major way.

“I think the thing was for me I didn’t want to just tick any boxes. So even though they were such an amazing integral part of the first one, I was focusing on something else,” Burton explained to PEOPLE last month. “A sequel like this, it really had to do with the time … 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.”  

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is in theaters now.

Do you wish the Maitlands were in the sequel? Contact Patrick Cavanaugh directly on Twitter or on Instagram to talk all things Star Wars and horror!