“It's Showtime.”
―Beetlejuice Betelgeuse (aka Beetlejuice) is the titular main antagonist of the 1988 comedy-horror film Beetlejuice and the titular deuteragonist of the 2024 sequel Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. He is an eccentric ghost who works as a bio-exorcist.
He is played by Michael Keaton.
Background[]
Personality[]
Betelgeuse is a charismatic, cynical and womanizing ghost. He also gets a little crazy at times due to his dramatic antics.
He likes to use unpopular words. Not only that, but he also seems to love to scare people and pull pranks on people, causing many to think of him as a malicious demon.
Despite his neutral nature, Beetlejuice is usually a benefactor. He mostly acts as a force of good, as his chaos is directed only at particularly despicable people. He is always upfront about himself and his intents and loathes people who lie about themselves to benefit themselves.
He shows a romantic interest in Lydia; in the first film, he sees her as a means to end in ridding himself of the Netherworld and becoming alive again. However, in the second film, after watching her for 36 years, he developed an attachment to her and fell in love with her. Due to his love for her, he stopped flirting with and/or sexually harassing other women, and admits he wants a real marriage with her.
Ironically and somewhat uniquely for a demonic dealmaker, Beetlejuice is surprisingly principled when it comes to honoring his deals with clients. He never lies, cheats, goes back on his word, or tries to screw anyone over. Instead, literally doing what people ask him to do or agreed to do. He offers to get the Deetz's to leave and when he tries to the Maitlands get upset at his malicious acts towards the family. When Lydia asked him to save the Maitlands from getting exorcised in exchange for her marrying him, he agrees to the deal, rescues the Maitlands and fully expects Lydia to uphold her end of their bargain.
Physical Appearance[]
He has green hair, white skin covered in patches of mold and black circled green eyes. He wears a black and white striped suit.
Appearances[]
Beetlejuice[]
Betelgeuse first appears in the movie not long after the Maitlands die. He is reading the newspaper "The Afterlife", and he spots them in the obituaries, and states that they look like "a cute couple. Nice and Stupid."
He sends flyers and commercials to the Maitlands, offering to help chase the Deetz family out of their house if they summon him.
The Maitlands are then told by Juno that they must avoid Betelgeuse because he used to be her assistant but he was troublemaker and was exiled from the Netherworld for going out on his own as a ‘freelance bio-exorcist’ and has been sleazing around in their model cemetery. He is then seen seducing, capturing and devouring a housefly.
He then is properly introduced when he is called on by the Maitlands to get the Deetzes out of their house. Betelgeuse immediately makes a bad impression by sexually harassing Barbara and showing how malicious he can be in offering to kill or possess the family. They decide to cease working with him but he lated manifests into a giant rattle-snake and terrorizes the family before being sent back to the model. He scolds the Maitlands for interfering but goes to a brothel to cool off.
Betelgeuse then meets Lydia Deetz and takes an interest in her, as she can see ghosts. While he sympathizes with her thoughts of suicide, he plots to get her to free him. Once the Maitlands become exorcised, Lydia does plead for his help to save them and he agrees if she will marry him; as a deceased person can return to the living world via marriage to a living person. She agrees and summons him. After pranking the family, he saves the Maitlands, dresses himself and Lydia in wedding attire to officialize the marriage until the Maitlands stop and Barbara summons a sandworm, which swallows Betelgeuse whole.
He is last seen in the Afterlife waiting room, last in a long line to be seen by a case worker. He swaps a witch doctor’s number, who then shrinks his head, however Betelgeuse remains upbeat and says "this could be a good look for me."
Beetlejuice (TV series)[]
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice[]
Over the next 36 years, Betelgeuse was allowed to return to the Netherworld and became the manager of the Afterlife Call Center, which he used to expand his bio exorcist business, with many Shriners working for him. Via their psychic connection, he spied on Lydia, watching her grow up and overtime genuinely fell in love with her.
Lydia starts seeing him, dismissing it as hallucinations due to her past trauma but he has actually appearing to her. Betelgeuse learns from Detective Wolf Jackson his ex wife Delores has escaped from captivity and is going on a killing spree to force him to remarry her so she can suck out his soul. The two had met in Italy during the black plague in the 14th century, got married but she poisoned him on their wedding night and he killed her in retaliation before his death.
Betegeuse appears to Lydia and her fiancé Rory who summons him to dismiss Lydia’s fears. He pulls pranks on them and admits his love for Lydia, who is confused. Lydia reluctantly summons him when her daughter Astrid is tricked into the Netherworld by her love interest Jeremy. He agrees to help if she will marry him and has her sign a marriage contract before they break into the Netherworld to find Astrid. He keeps his end of the bargain and saves Astrid by sending Jeremy to Hell before crashing Lydia’s pending wedding to Rory, whom he puts as a gold digger who is using Lydia.
He dones himself and Lydia in wedding attire and starts the wedding ceremony with a giant wedding cake, singing and levitating with her before Wolf and Delores arrive. Due to him illegally bringing Lydia into the afterlife, the contract is deemed invalid and Lydia sends him back to the afterlife. However he continues to haunt her dreams.
Gallery[]
Trivia[]
- Betelgeuse claims to have seen The Exorcist 167 times and it is his favorite comedy.
- As a corpse, he eats insects, primarily flies and beetles.
- As a 600 year old ghost, he is a multilingual, as can speak fluent English, Spanish and his native tongue Italian. Despite being the ghost of a deceased human, Lydia refers to Betelguese as a "trickster demon", possibly referring to his various supernatural powers, or otherwise emphasising his troublesome nature.
- However, in the musical, he is considered to be a demon.[1]
