Warning: SPOILERS lie ahead for Beetlejuice Beetlejuice!
Though his absence was expected, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice revealed Charles Deetz to have died between the first and second movies, and his death has a connection to Tim Burton’s real-life fears. Burton made it known prior to the sequel's release that Charles would be dead heading into its story, a choice already expected due to actor Jeffrey Jones' prior arrest and registration as a sex offender in 2002. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice's story reveals in a stop-motion sequence that Charles died when his plane crashed in the ocean and a shark bit him in half, with a stand-in playing his spirit in the Afterlife with an uncredited voice actor.
In honor of the sequel's long-awaited release, Entertainment Weekly interviewed Gough for a spoiler-filled Beetlejuice Beetlejuice interview. In looking at Charles' death, the co-writer revealed that it was directly inspired by one of Burton’s greatest fears of seemingly surviving a plane crash, only to be swallowed up by a shark, to which he and co-writer Miles Millar found the idea to be "genius". See Gough's explanation below:
The way Charles dies in that animated piece is Tim's nightmare of dying. He literally pitched that: "My nightmare is, I'm in a plane crash, I survive the plane crash, I almost drown, and then a shark eats me." We were like, "Well, that's genius. So that's going to be how he dies."
What The Inspiration For Charles’ Beetlejuice Beetlejuice Death Means
A Perfect Tim Burton Death
It's been known since the first trailer for Beetlejuice Beetlejuice came out that Charles would be dead in the sequel, but the scene is a reveal of fantastical proportions. Burton is the mind behind Sweeney Todd, Dark Shadows, Big Eyes, and Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children, and as such, the filmmaker’s nightmare death scenario is expectedly specific and gruesome. Beyond just pulling from his own fears, the various spirits seen in both movies and Burton's own past in stop-motion make Charles' death appropriately whimsical and in line with his sensibilities.
Our Take On The Inspiration For Charles’ Death in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice
Tim Burton's Pitch Takes The Cake
Gough’s quote about Burton’s pitch for Charles' death is a delightful peek behind the screenwriting curtain. We can picture Gough and his longtime writing partner Millar, with whom Burton previously teamed for Netflix's Wednesday, scratching their heads, trying to come up with the best way for Charles to die, when Burton comes in with his real-life worst nightmare. Surviving a plane crash only to get bitten in half by a shark seems like a fitting death for Charles in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.
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