Beetlejuice Beetlejuice Will Make You Want To Call Your Mom

Spoilers ahead. For actress Jenna Ortega, stepping into the role of a sullen, misunderstood teen who doesn’t always see eye to eye with her mom in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, wasn’t too tough of an ask. Because, for the 21-year-old, it was pretty familiar territory. “I love my mom, I have the best mom ever, really; she's so hardworking and so loving and loyal,” Ortega tells Refinery29, “but we sound like sisters every time you get us together.” 

While it’s a dynamic Ortega may be more familiar with, the often inherent tension between mothers and daughters was one her co-star Winona Ryder found tough to master at first; “[Director] Tim [Burton] told her to go bigger [and] really get mad,” Ortega says. “And she was like: ‘Isn’t that mean?’ But no, that’s love, that’s what it is.” 

“And you’re safe to bicker,” co-star Catherine O’Hara adds, “because you know there’s love there.”

Mother-daughter relationships can be tough to navigate even at the best of times; being from two culturally and socially different generations can make it tough to understand where the other person is coming from. Now imagine your mom hosts a popular talk show based around her ability to literally see dead people, and you don’t believe ghosts are even a real thing. Let’s just say it takes the idea of not understanding each other to a whole new level.

This is the very specific predicament Astrid Deetz (played by Wednesday’s Ortega) finds herself in. In Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, the belated sequel to the hit 1988 movie, Astrid’s famous mom just so happens to be a grown-up Lydia Deetz (reprised by Ryder), who  — decades after the OG movie and her encounter with the over-confident, undead conman Beetlejuice (Michael Keaton) — taps into her powers to connect with the undead on her Oprah Winfrey-style nightly TV show. Astrid just doesn’t understand; in her own words, she doesn’t trust what she can’t see. 

In many ways, this sentiment describes the Deetz women’s personal relationships — and the love and connection Astrid doesn’t physically see from her mother. 

When we first meet the three generations of Deetz women, it’s not hard to guess why Ortega’s Astrid might feel less than loved by her mother. Fresh off the double whammy of her parents divorcing and then the death of her dad, the teen is sent off to an all-girls boarding school where she’s less than popular. For her part, Astrid’s mom Lydia has thrown herself into her work and a relationship with a boyfriend/TV producer she met in her grief group. 

The physical separation seems telling to Astrid, who deep down wants to feel seen and understood by her mom, a reality she’d never actually admit out loud; she is a teenager, after all. But that doesn’t mean that it makes her feelings any less hurt. “It felt like her mom was so caught up in her own life and her own situation… she felt like she just wasn’t putting the time and effort into the relationship," Ortega says. 

When Astrid and Lydia, along with Lydia’s step-mom Delia (played by a scene-stealing Catherine O’Hara who channels a more self-aware Moira Rose) are reunited after another death in the family brings them back to Winter River, Connecticut and the beloved ghost house, Astrid is initially less-than-pleased. The misunderstood goth-adjacent teen gives her mom a hard time and refuses to engage with her. “Astrid kind of felt like an inconvenience or not really appreciated and important,” Ortega adds, “which is kind of where that tension [between them] comes from.” 

But what Astrid doesn’t realize yet is a truth that both Ortega and O’Hara — who has two sons — can attest to: The fact that your relationship with your parents changes and evolves as you both get older, and hopefully for the better. “Your world centers around [your kids] when they’re babies [and] it’s so much work but lovely,” O’Hara says. “Later, you really miss that, because then you can’t get them to do anything you want them to do,  because they start developing their own minds, their own opinions.” And eventually, you end up in the place O’Hara, whose sons are in their 20s and 30s, finds herself now, able to learn from her kids. ”They're just such cool young guys,” she says. “I'm not their buddy, but I love having conversations with them and getting to know how they think about life.” 

For Ortega, aging and going through such a transformative period of her life over the past several years (you know, starring in hit TV shows like Netflix’s Wednesday, making a name for herself on the indie scene in heart wrenching films like The Fallout, and becoming an all-around superstar) has similarly been able to appreciate the way her relationship with her mom has evolved. “Everyone, I think, can relate to finally seeing their parents as people,” she says. “When you're younger, you idolize them and they could do nothing wrong, but I think there's comfort in knowing that everyone is just kind of flying by the seat of their pants. It's nice when these people that you placed on such a pedestal, have a bit more relatability.” 

Which is a realization Astrid ultimately comes to herself, if in the most unique of ways. Witnessing the lengths her mom will go for her in Beetlejuice's underworld, Astrid finally sees her mom for who she is: a real person who makes mistakes but loves her. And it’s this version of her mom — the flawed, human one — that Astrid embraces. 

And, as O’Hara’s own relationship with her sons would indicate, parents can learn from their kids too. This is something we see Lydia do when she takes to her TV show one last time to sign off to her ghosties (fans), telling them: “I’ve spent so much time talking to the dead, it’s time I start living. I want to make memories with the people I love, instead of being haunted by them later.”

Which sounds like great advice for moms and daughters everywhere, whether or not they’re dealing with the undead.