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Thirty-one years and four sequels since Buzz and Woody first slugged it out, the Toy Story series is feeling its age. If time worked in the Toy Story universe the way it works in the real world, 6-year-old Andy could have children of his own now, and might even be in the midst of the kind of existential crisis the movies have inspired, at least in adults, since the very beginning. Toy Story 5 is set only a handful of years after the previous installment; 8-year-old Bonnie, who inherited a college-bound Andy’s toys at the end of the third movie, is only a little way into grade school. But for the toys, it seems as if much more time has passed. The boundlessly energetic cowboy Woody (voiced, as always, by Tom Hanks) is getting a bald spot at the crown of his pre-molded head (although, as a fellow toy helpfully suggests, it’s nothing a quick stroke of a Sharpie can’t fix), and brawny Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen) is feeling the urge to settle down with spunky cowgirl Jessie (Joan Cusack). The toys have been threatened with aging out before—the first movie, in fact, hinges on Woody’s anxiety about being replaced by the newer, flashier Buzz—but in this newest movie, they just feel old.
They’re certainly old enough to be panicked by the invasion of what they derisively refer to as “tech,” namely the tablet, called a Lilypad (Greta Lee), that Bonnie’s parents give her in hopes it will help her connect with the other girls in her dance class. (They’re worried about screen time—one suspects they’ve read at least a little Jonathan Haidt—but more concerned that their downcast kiddo can’t seem to make any friends.) Notwithstanding their past brush with an incinerator, it’s the closest thing to an extinction-level event the toys have ever faced—not being swapped for a newer model or slowly outgrown, but rendered irrelevant practically overnight.
The possibility of being phased out with ruthless algorithmic efficiency hits all the toys hard, but none harder than Jessie, because she’s been through it before. When we first meet her, way back in Toy Story 2, she’s already been abandoned once, by her former kid, Emily, and facing that again is almost too much to bear. That’s not just true for Jessie, either. Watching Jessie get left behind the first time was one of most heartbreaking moments I’ve ever experienced in a movie theater. The mere thought of it happening again was devastating.
In Toy Story 2, Woody winds up in the hands of a vintage toy dealer (Wayne Knight) who is thrilled he can finally complete the set of dolls linked to a Howdy Doody–style TV show called Woody’s Roundup: Woody, Jessie, and the villainous (spoiler alert!) prospector Pete (Kelsey Grammer). Sitting on a shelf collecting dust is Woody’s worst nightmare, but for Jessie, it’s a chance to feel valued for the first time in years. Like Woody, Jessie once brought joy to a child’s life, fulfilling what the Toy Story movies repeatedly underline is a toy’s true purpose. But Emily, Jessie tells Buzz, set her aside a long time ago, and if an adult collector isn’t likely to use her for imaginative play, at least she’ll be on a shelf instead of inside a box.
Woody is still desperate to get back to Andy, who he assumes cherishes him too much to ever let him go, so Jessie levels with him: Abandoning toys is just what kids do. “Let me guess,” she says, “Andy’s a real special kid, and to him, you’re his buddy, his best friend. And when Andy plays with you, it’s like, even though you’re not moving, you feel like you’re alive, because that’s how he sees you.” Woody is taken aback at hearing another toy describe an experience he thought was unique to him. How could she possibly know? “Because Emily was just the same,” Jessie tells him. “She was my whole world.”
If you’ve seen Toy Story 2, you remember what comes next—and if you need to pause to grab a tissue, I understand. Jessie stares out the window of the collector’s apartment, and the movie slips into a hazy montage of Jessie and Emily’s glory days. A pair of hands grabs Emily off the bed in a sun-dappled room, and suddenly she’s flying, riding her horse through the air. We see the two of them riding together in the back seat of a car, the doll tucked inside the little girl’s seat belt, her tiny cowboy hat perched on her leg. Emily takes Jessie, flying still, to the tire that swings from a tree behind her house, and as she spins with arms outstretched, Jessie seems to float through the air, the world behind her reduced to an autumnal blur. In that moment, it’s just the two of them.
We know what’s coming next, and “When She Loved Me” won’t let us forget it. Like the Toy Story anthem “You’ve Got a Friend in Me,” the song that accompanies the Jessie montage was written by Randy Newman, but it’s sung by Sarah McLachlan, whose high, clear soprano is the polar opposite of Newman’s avuncular growl. McLachlan’s fragile voice is so inherently melancholy it’s spent years as the go-to soundtrack for ASPCA commercials and tearjerking TikToks (plug “Angel” into the app, and prepare to weep to a million videos of adorable rescue dogs), and it’s put to merciless use in Toy Story 2, as Emily’s love for Jessie slips into the past tense. One day, Jessie falls beneath the bed, and from her place among the dust bunnies, she can see Jessie painting her nails with a friend, a telltale sign that she’s leaving childish things behind. The stuffed horses disappear from her dresser, replaced by makeup and a pink telephone, posters of psychedelic rock bands cover the space formerly filled by images of Jessie, and Emily’s tomboyish outfits—modeled after Jessie’s frontier garb—are swapped for more conventionally feminine attire. Soon Jessie has company under the bed, surrounded by other discarded toys, and eventually she’s left by the side of the road, staring through a hole in a cardboard box as Emily and her family drive off for good.
It’s powerful stuff, evoking how much we may one day miss the childhoods we so eagerly moved beyond, and Toy Story 5 knows that no one who’s seen the sequence needs to hear more than a few notes of “When She Loved Me” to get in their feelings, which is why Newman works the song’s melody into the score for the new movie over and over again. This time, Jessie takes on the leading role, and the story returns her to the scene of the crime: the house where she was discarded all those years ago. Emily may be long gone, but her address is still written on the inside of Emily’s chaps, and when a well-meaning older couple finds Jessie by the side of the road, they assume that’s where she ought to be returned. Emily’s not there, of course, but the house is now home to another horse girl named Blaze (Mykal-Michelle Harris).
Through her, Jessie finds a new sense of purpose, a means of not just making her own child happy but helping her connect with other kids, in precisely the way the Lilypad couldn’t manage on its own. And she also finds a sign that, although Emily left Jessie, she never forgot her—a revelation that, with the help of a familiar tune, is likely to produce an even bigger flood of tears.
The toys in Toy Story are the embodiment of childhood wonder, but they’re also stand-ins for parents, whose job is to fill children with so much love and acceptance that one day they have the confidence to leave us behind. One of the new movie’s new characters is a discarded potty-training toy, voiced by Conan O’Brien, who is panicked to discover that Blaze can use the bathroom without his help. But of course, that was the point all along; he exists in order to be outgrown. One day, Bonnie will outgrow Jessie, just as she will outgrow her parents, and forge a life, and maybe even a family, of her own. But if that plucky little cowgirl has done it right, the things she helped Bonnie learn will always be with her, and the memories will always be close enough for the right thing—say an old, familiar song—to bring them rushing back.
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