Winona Ryder’s Sad Beetlejuice 2 story has a gaping plot hole after the original ending

Warning! This article contains spoilers for Beetlejuice 2 (2024)!The primary conflict for Winona Ryder’s Lydia Deetz in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice Revolves around her strained relationship with her teenage daughter, Astrid, but one of their biggest points of contention could easily be resolved by Delia. Over 36 years after the original movie, Ryder, Catherine O’Hara and Michael Keaton return in Beetlejuice 2As the Deetz family returns to their haunted Winter River house for the funeral of Lydia’s father, Charles Deetz. When the movie begins, tensions are already high between the Debt family, with Lydia’s teenage daughter Astrid (Jenna Ortega) resents her and denies her ghost-seeing ability.

Although Lydia built a famous television career around her talent for communicating with ghosts, which originated with the deceased Maitlands in Winter River, Astrid never believed that ability was real until she met Jeremy’s ghost in Beetlejuice 2. Before developing the ability herself, Astrid denied that Barbara and Adam’s Beetlejuice Ghosts always exist. Lydia’s inability to see Astrid’s dead father, Richard, made her believe that her mother had always been lying, and Lydia could not convince Astrid otherwise. However, Astrid failing to believe Lydia about the Maitlands makes little sense, viz She wasn’t the only one to see ghosts. Beetlejuice.

Delia and Charles can easily have proved to Astrid that the ghosts of the Maitlands are real

Delia and Charles decide to live with the ghosts of the Maitlands at the end of Beetlejuice

While Lydia and Astrid’s problems are still rooted in the teen resenting her mother for her response to Richard’s death, sending her off to boarding school, and making choices for their family that Astrid doesn’t support (such as marrying Rory), The Deetz family members’ conflict over the truth of Lydia’s ghost-seeing ability could have been easily resolved years earlier Beetlejuice 2. Teenage Lydia may be able to see the Maitlands throughout the 1988 movie due to her acceptance of death and “the strange and unusual,” but BeetlejuiceThe original ending culminated in Delia and Charles finally seeing the ghosts as well.

Not only did Charles and Delia actually see and engage with Adam and Barbara’s ghosts at the end of BeetlejuiceBut Lydia’s father and stepmother also opted for peaceful cohabitation with the Maitlands after defeating Betelgeuse. A subtle background detail in Beetlejuices end reveals that Delia even made the front cover of Ann Art in America Magazine issue showcasing her sculptures and experiences with the afterlife. Not to mention, Delia and Charles’ colleagues, such as Otto and Maxie Dean, were all possessed by the Maitlands, saw their ghosts in the “séances,” and were terrorized by Betelgeuse in the 1988 film.

Astrid’s anger towards Lydia over Beetlejuice 2 is still valid, but the idea that she really didn’t believe that Lydia could see ghosts doesn’t track with the outcome of the original Tim Burton movie. The conflict could be put to rest by Delia and Charles sharing their own experiences and explains to Astrid that the ghosts are real. Astrid even notes after Charles’ death Beetlejuice 2 that he was the “Only semi-normal person“In the Deetz family, so she would have been more likely to believe his account of meeting Adam and Barbara Maitlands’ ghosts.

The absence of Adam and Barbara Maitlands’ ghosts in Beetlejuice 2 was a convenient way to avoid the issues with Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis’ real-life aging, as well as adding another reason for Astrid to deny Lydia’s ghost-seeing ability. Still, it can be fixed only by a few words from Delia before her own Beetlejuice 2 Dead, because she clearly hadn’t forgotten about Betelgeuse’s terror at the Winter River House when Lydia told her she had visions of him.

Why Delia never stepped in to correct Astrid in Beetlejuice 2

Delia could have told Astrid her experiences with the Maitlands

Delia understood that Astrid did not believe that Lydia could see ghosts, but she never lent her own personal experiences to support the truth of Lydia’s gift to her granddaughter. it It seems that Delia never stepped in because she didn’t feel it was her place to fix the teenage AstridAnd did not want to be involved in the conflict. Delia also humorously implies that Astrid rejecting Lydia is a form of payback for Lydia herself rejecting Delia as a teenager, so Catherine O’Hara’s character probably just opted to let the mother-daughter resolution for Lydia work itself out.

Moreover, Delia quickly accepted that ghosts are haunting their attic Beetlejuice. She might have thought that Astrid would eventually come around to accepting Lydia’s gifH and Delia’s own eccentric interests, but figured it would be better for that to happen naturally than for her to immediately try to convince Astrid of the truth. Delia and Lydia also eventually learned to get along and accept each other, so she could have believed that the same would happen to Lydia and Astrid. Had he not died in Beetlejuice 2Charles would have been the most likely character to help Lydia convince Astrid.

How Much of Lydia’s Ghost House Show Was Real in Beetlejuice 2?

Why didn’t Rory, her manager, believe in her abilities?

Astrid eventually proves that Lydia’s ability to see ghosts is real before Beetlejuice 2s ending, but there are still many other skeptics in the human world of the Tim Burton movie. for one, Justin Theroux’s Rory disclosed under Truth Serum that he always believed that Lydia’s ghost-seeing act was fake. Consider him your manager and help run you Ghost house show, it would seem that Rory’s first-hand experiences with Lydia meeting the ghosts would make him more likely to believe in her ability. Unless, of course, the Ghost house Collectively exaggerated elements of Lydia’s paranormal encounters.

Because Rory didn’t believe that the ghosts Lydia encountered on the show that he was directly involved in were real, this Implies that some of the footage from Ghost house is manipulated to make the paranormal entities scary. In the beginning of Beetlejuice 2Lydia shows a recording of herself meeting a ghost in a couple’s home, which includes cabinets opening and closing and a dog being put on top of a moving ceiling fan. Their viewers probably wouldn’t be interested in a benevolent ghost, so Lydia and her team could have exaggerated the noisy paranormal encounter to boost their ratings.

With Rory’s skepticism about Lydia’s talent, it seems that at least some of that is coming out on her Ghost house TV show is not real. But, that Doesn’t take away from the fact that Lydia can still see ghosts And, in some cases, may actually be able to document the cases for her show. Lydia’s potential exaggerations Ghost house Show could also be another significant reason why Astrid did not believe that her talent really existed. Still, even if Lydia occasionally flaunts her talent for television, Delia and Charles support her claims should have been enough to convince Astrid earlier. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.