Why Jeffrey Jones won’t return as Charles Deetz in “Beetlejuice 2”

The new sequel to the comedy horror classic Beetlejuice features many familiar faces. Michael Keaton returns as the demonic title character, while Winona Ryder reprises lead roles as ghost empath Lydia Deetz and Catherine O’Hara as her artistic stepmother Delia.

But Jeffrey Jones, who played Deetz patriarch Charles in director Tim Burton’s 1988 cult hit, is conspicuously missing from Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (in theaters now). The film cleverly manages to make the character of Charles central to the story while avoiding the actor who originally played him – presumably due to Jones’ legal troubles.

Jones, now 77, pleaded no contest in 2003 to charges of possession of child pornography for allegedly hiring a 14-year-old boy to pose for explicit photographs. Weekly entertainment reported at the time that Ferris Bueller’s Day Off And Amadeus The star was sentenced to five years probation, psychological counseling and lifetime registration as a sex offender.

In 2004, Jones was arrested in Florida and in 2010 in California for failing to update his sex offender status. After pleading guilty to the latter charge, his sentence included hours of community service and additional years of probation, BBC News reported.

Burton and the stars of Beetlejuice have not commented on Jones or his absence in the new film. However, the way Charles’ fate is handled in the long-awaited sequel speaks for itself. (Spoilers for Beetlejuice Beetlejuice Plot details to follow!)

Charles’ wife Delia tells Lydia that he has died at the beginning of the new film. During her narration, Burton uses stop-motion animation to explain the character’s fate: On a trip abroad for a bird-watching adventure, Charles’ plane crash-lands and ends up in the ocean. A shark bites off his head and shoulders, killing him. The Deetz family mourns their patriarch at his funeral.

But because the world of Beetlejuice includes a cheesy depiction of the bureaucratic afterlife, but Charles has not disappeared from the story. Down in the underworld, a body with its head and shoulders bitten off stumbles around, spurting blood and gurgling something incomprehensible. An actor who is not Jones voices what is ultimately one of Burton and his team’s many innovative designs for the recently deceased, all of whom bear the marks of their death.

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Other stars who Beetlejuice Fans want to see Glenn Shadix as amateur paranormal expert Otho Fenlock and Sylvia Sidney as deceased social worker Juno in the long-awaited sequel. Sadly, they are among the actors who have passed away off-screen; Shadix died in 2010 at the age of 58, while Sidney died in 1999 at the age of 88.

Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis do not return as Adam and Barbara Maitland – the sweet, Harry Belafonte-loving couple whose deaths in the original film ushered in our introduction to Burton’s underworld – because, as Lydia in Beetlejuice Beetlejuicethey found a gap that allowed the two to continue permanently.

Plus, as Davis, 68, told PEOPLE in 2022, it would have been particularly difficult to include her and Baldwin’s deceased characters in the sequel. “I feel like ghosts don’t age,” she stressed. “How would they explain being older?”

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice introduces new stars Jenna Ortega, Justin Theroux, Monica Bellucci, Danny DeVito and Willem Dafoe to the franchise. The film is in theaters now.