The Beetlejuice Cast: Where Are They Now in 2026?
It’s showtime. Thirty-six years after Tim Burton unleashed the ghost with the most, the 2024 sequel put three of the original leads back on screen together. But the sequel is only part of the story. What happened to the full cast of that 1988 original is stranger, sadder, and more surprising than anything the Netherworld ever cooked up.
As of August 2026: Keaton returned as both Batman and Beetlejuice before landing a Netflix thriller alongside Robert De Niro. Ryder carried Stranger Things to its final season. Davis’s institute won a Governors Award and she starred in a Duffer Brothers series. Baldwin’s involuntary manslaughter case was thrown out with prejudice after prosecutors withheld evidence from the defense. And Catherine O’Hara, who reprised Delia one last time in the sequel, died in January 2026 at 71. Here is where all of them ended up.
Michael Keaton (Betelgeuse)
The ghost with the most became the actor who never stopped. After Beetlejuice, Keaton took the role that defined his next decade: Bruce Wayne in Tim Burton’s Batman. He built one of the most varied filmographies of his generation, from the Oscar-nominated Birdman to the Vulture in Spider-Man: Homecoming. The recent run has been relentless: he reprised Batman in The Flash (2023), directed himself in the crime drama Knox Goes Away the same year, then stepped back into the Betelgeuse suit for Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (2024), the sequel that grossed $452 million worldwide. In February 2026, Harvard named him its Hasty Pudding Man of the Year. As of August 2026, he has joined Robert De Niro in the upcoming Netflix crime thriller The Whisper Man.
Winona Ryder (Lydia Deetz)
The teenager who could see dead people grew up to become one of the defining screen presences of the 90s. After Beetlejuice, Ryder headlined Heathers and Edward Scissorhands, then moved into celebrated dramas before stepping out of the spotlight for much of the 2000s. Netflix brought her back in 2016 as Joyce Byers in Stranger Things, and the second act proved just as strong. Ryder played Joyce across all five seasons, with the final episodes airing between November and December 2025. As of August 2026, that farewell is complete. She also returned as Lydia for Beetlejuice Beetlejuice in 2024, one of three original leads to reprise their roles. The goth kid who quoted the Handbook for the Recently Deceased grew up, disappeared, and came back twice.
Alec Baldwin (Adam Maitland)
Baldwin did not return for the sequel, and the years since the original have pulled him in directions nobody predicted. After Beetlejuice, he became a leading man in The Hunt for Red October and Glengarry Glen Ross, then built a sustained second career on 30 Rock and as a recurring Saturday Night Live fixture. In October 2021, cinematographer Halyna Hutchins was killed on the set of his film Rust when a prop gun discharged. Baldwin was charged with involuntary manslaughter. In July 2024, the judge threw out the case with prejudice, finding that prosecutors had withheld evidence from the defense. His family’s TLC reality show, The Baldwins, premiered in February 2025. He has hosted SNL a record 17 times. As of August 2026, the dismissal with prejudice means he faces no criminal charges in connection with the Rust case.
Geena Davis (Barbara Maitland)
Beetlejuice brought Davis to prominence, and within a year she was an Oscar winner: Best Supporting Actress for The Accidental Tourist, released the same year. She followed it with Thelma and Louise and A League of Their Own. Then she pivoted. She founded the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, studying how women and girls are represented on screen, and in 2022 the Television Academy honored the Institute with a Governors Award at the Primetime Emmys. She published a memoir, Dying of Politeness, in 2022 and a children’s picture book, The Girl Who Was Too Big for the Page, in 2025. As of August 2026, she starred in the Duffer Brothers’ Netflix series The Boroughs, which premiered in May 2026 and was canceled a month later over its production costs. She did not return for Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, but Barbara Maitland’s real life turned out just fine.
Catherine O’Hara (Delia Deetz)
O’Hara came out of Second City and SCTV, and the comic instinct she brought to Delia never left. After Beetlejuice, she became the flustered mother in Home Alone, the voice of Sally in The Nightmare Before Christmas, and the sharpest instrument in Christopher Guest’s mockumentaries, from Best in Show to A Mighty Wind. Then came Moira Rose on Schitt’s Creek, the role that earned her an Emmy in 2020 and made her a cultural fixture all over again. She reprised Delia for Beetlejuice Beetlejuice in September 2024, then moved into prestige television: a main role on The Studio for Apple TV+ and a guest turn on The Last of Us Season 2 for HBO, both in 2025. On January 30, 2026, she died at 71 from a pulmonary embolism. In March 2026, the Actor Awards, previously known as the SAG Awards, honored her posthumously for The Studio. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, 36 years after the original, was among her final screen performances.
Jeffrey Jones (Charles Deetz)
In 2003, Jones pleaded no contest to charges of soliciting a minor to produce explicit images. He received five years of probation and lifetime sex offender registration. Aside from playing newspaperman A.W. Merrick on Deadwood and its 2019 film follow-up, his screen work since has been sparse. He was not part of the 2024 sequel; the film addresses his character’s absence through a stop-motion animated sequence.
The Beetlejuice cast we lost
Sylvia Sidney, who played the afterlife caseworker Juno with bone-dry authority and won a Saturn Award for it, died in 1999 at 88. Glenn Shadix, whose Otho combined vanity and menace in a way nobody else could have played, and who went on to voice the Mayor in The Nightmare Before Christmas, died in 2010 at 58. Robert Goulet, the Broadway baritone who brought old-school gravity to Charles’s business partner Maxie Dean, died in 2007 at 73.
Remember when Barbara Maitland pulled her own face apart in the living room, stretched it into something out of a fever dream, and the Deetzes barely flinched? A cast that can sell the impossible and make it look thankless was always going to land on its feet.
The honest bottom line
This is not the tidiest where-are-they-now story. An Oscar. A Governors Award for an institute that changed Hollywood’s self-image. A manslaughter case tossed by a judge. A conviction that ended a career. A comeback that carried a Netflix series for five seasons. And a death that arrived about a year and a half after the curtain call. Beetlejuice was built on the idea that the afterlife is just bureaucracy with worse lighting, and the real trajectories of its cast have been at least as unpredictable. The Deetz house is emptier now. The movie is bigger than ever. A cast this scattered takes real homework to track, and this is how we do ours.
FAQ
Who returned for Beetlejuice Beetlejuice in 2024?
Michael Keaton, Winona Ryder, and Catherine O’Hara reprised their original roles. Geena Davis and Alec Baldwin did not return. Jenna Ortega, Willem Dafoe, and Monica Bellucci joined the new cast.
Did Catherine O’Hara die?
Yes. Catherine O’Hara died on January 30, 2026, at age 71. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, released in September 2024, was among her final screen performances.
What happened to Jeffrey Jones from Beetlejuice?
Jones pleaded no contest in 2003 to charges involving a minor and received lifetime sex offender registration. He did not appear in the 2024 sequel.
What is Winona Ryder doing now?
As of 2026, Ryder wrapped the fifth and final season of Stranger Things on Netflix, which aired from November to December 2025. She reprised Lydia Deetz in the 2024 sequel.
What is Michael Keaton doing now?
As of August 2026, Keaton has joined Robert De Niro in the upcoming Netflix crime thriller The Whisper Man. He was honored as Harvard’s Hasty Pudding Man of the Year in February 2026.
For the full breakdown of the characters in the original, start with our Beetlejuice characters guide or dive deeper into the ghost with the most himself. And if Beetlejuice is your favorite 80s comedy, see where it ranks in our best 80s comedies list, then check which characters from the era made our most iconic 80s movie characters countdown.