After 36 years stuck in development, Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice Beetlejuice finally makes its way into cinemas this week. Early buzz on the sequel to the classic 1988 supernatural comedy appears promising with a healthy mix of nostalgia and evolution for its legacy characters.

Though Burton’s return to the director’s chair ensured Michael Keaton and Winona Ryder’s reprisals of their iconic roles, the original film’s protagonists the Maitlands were purposely left out of the new story. In an interview with People Magazine, Burton addressed the absence of Beetlejuice stars Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis:

“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.”

Both relatively unknown actors when Beetlejuice hit cinemas in 1988, Baldwin and Davis played Adam and Barbara Maitland. Their tragic demise resulted in their spirits trapped inside their home soon occupied by the Deetz family. The story around the Maitland couple’s attempts to spook the Deetz family out of their home was largely wrapped up at the end of Beetlejuce. Additionally, the advanced ages of the stars make it more difficult for them to return even in an unnecessary cameo.

With the Maitlands no longer in the picture thanks to a narrative loophole addressed in the sequel, Burton opted to switch gears with Beetlejuice Beetlejuice’s focus on a much older Lydia Deetz (Ryder) and her surviving family reuniting around another legacy character’s absence in Charles Deetz (Jeffrey Jones):

“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.”

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Though Keaton, Ryder, and Catherine O’Hara carry the legacy torch of the franchise in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, the true driver of the sequel is Astrid Deetz (Jenna Ortega). Unlike her goth-heavy mother, Astrid is the rebellious teen skeptic of Lydia’s encounters with the afterlife until she uncovers the Maitlands’ model town in the attic.

Are you excited for Beetlejuice Beetlejuice? Will you miss Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis in the sequel? Let us know in the comments.

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