If you want to see the titular ghost Beetlejuice on screen more than fleetingly, watching the 1988 classic Beetlejuice or the new sequel, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice might not give you your fix. Infamously, Beetlejuice himself only has 17 total minutes of screen time in the original film, and star Michael Keaton wanted to make sure the same was true for the sequel. In essence, the key to making a Beetlejuice film, it seems, is not too much Beetlejuice.
However, an excess of Beetlejuice screentime is very much available, just not in the form of a live-action movie. Elusive for many years, the 1989-1991 animated series version of Beetlejuice has finally hit streaming. Now is the perfect time to visit this absolutely unhinged series, especially since the new film draws more inspiration from this show than you might think.
The other Beetlejuice
Just one year after the original film hit theaters in 1988, the animated kids show Beetlejuice debuted on both ABC and Fox, beginning on September 9. Because the show existed on two networks at the same time, kids of the late ‘80s and early ‘90s could not escape it. Take it from someone who was there: Even if you didn’t watch Beetlejuice, you watched Beetlejuice. Its ubiquity was only matched by its utter authenticity because although this was clearly a sell-out brand-building moment, the Beetlejuice cartoon wasn’t as toned-down as you might think.
Created by Tim Burton and with a score from Danny Elfman, the animated Beetlejuice stayed true to the goth weirdness of the movie, and only translated it for children by changing the “Afterlife” to “Neitherworld.” The cuteness of the sandworms was also cranked up, including a memorable Season 1 episode called “Worm Welcome” in which Lydia brings a baby sandworm from the Neitherworld to the real world.
Notably, neither Beetlejuice nor Lydia are played by their feature film counterparts, Michael Keaton and Winona Ryder. (Can you imagine the cost?) Like other ‘80s cult hits that were turned into cartoons (see: The Real Ghostbusters), the animated Beetlejuice favored close-enough voice actors Stephen Ouimette and Alyson Court. Perhaps unsurprisingly, both performers were also reoccurring voices on the ‘90s X-Men with Ouimette as Archangel and Court as Jubilee. In the recent hit series X-Men ‘97, Court played an older version of Jubilee in the episode “Motendo/Lifedeath – Part 1.” Court was also the voice of Claire Redfield in several Resident Evil games, making her basically royalty for ‘90s gamers, comic book and horror fans.
The legacy of the animated Beetlejuice
Although Beetlejuice and Lydia are technically best friends in the show, ‘90s kids all remember that they seemed very much coded as a couple throughout the run of the series. This, of course, is creepy because of the massive age gap and the fact that Beetlejuice is not alive. However, in the new film — which takes tons of visual inspiration from the show — Lydia (Winona Ryder) does agree to marry Beetlejuice.
In a recent interview with Josh Horowitz for his Happy Sad Confused podcast, Ryder admitted “I always wanted Lydia to end up with Beetlejuice. I know that sounds twisted.” And she also made it clear that this was the idea she suggested to Tim Burton, specifically, calling it “her big pitch.” While it would have been wildly inappropriate to have Lydia outright in a relationship with Beetlejuice in 1988, this concept makes perfect sense if you’ve watched any second of the TV series. If ‘90s kids had the term “shipping” back then, we would have said we were shipping Lydia/Beetlejuice. And now that twisted magic has come back to haunt us.
