Toy Story is one of those animated franchises that has stood the test of time. Across three decades, multiple shorts, made-for-television specials, and Disneyland attractions, the series has continued expanding, now reaching its fifth feature film. It would be easy to assume that the franchise has finally run its course, but Toy Story 5‘s Jessie-centric story proves that every time these characters appear ready to take their final bow, Pixar finds a new way to justify bringing them back.
Toy Story 5 centers on Jessie (Joan Cusack). As the new sheriff of Bonnie’s room, she makes it her mission to help Bonnie find a real friend. But with the other kids in her dance class more interested in their tablets, Bonnie struggles to connect with them. Believing that technology may help her fit in, her parents buy her Lilypad (Greta Lee), a cheerful smart device that quickly captures her attention. As Jessie tries to pull Bonnie away from the screen, the toys realize they may no longer be the most important things in her life.
Using a pair of walkie-talkies, Jessie turns to Woody (Tom Hanks) for advice on how to share playtime with Lilypad. He does not have all the answers, but their conversations encourage her to trust her own instincts. A burst of static makes Woody believe Jessie is in trouble, and he makes the quest to return to Bonnie’s home to help. Although he might not be in the best shape to do it, given his hair is balding and he appears to be letting himself go.
As the conflict with Lilypad escalates, a series of misfortunes brings Jessie and Bullseye to the house where Emily once lived. Returning to the home of her first child forces Jessie to confront the pain of being outgrown just as she begins to fear that Bonnie is choosing a device over her toys. There, they are discovered by Blaze, a girl now living in Emily’s old room, and meet Smarty Pants (Conan O’Brien), a potty-training toy desperately in need of new batteries; Atlas (Craig Robinson), a GPS-enabled toy shaped like a hippo’s head; and Snappy (Shelby Rabara). Because all three are connected devices, they can communicate with other tech toys.
Smarty Pants in particular threatens to steal the movie, wobbling through scenes like a low-battery drunk and delivering every line with the smug, know-it-all confidence of a toy who is a little too proud of his own name. Fully charged or not, his attempts to help usually come out as snippy corrections or another potty joke. He really does have a potty mouth, and O’Brien’s delivery makes the character obnoxious, funny, and strangely endearing at the same time.
So when a casual photo of the “antique” toys winds up in Lilypad’s group chat, Bonnie’s classmates gleefully mock her for still playing with dolls. Meanwhile, Lilypad continues to cause trouble for Woody and Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen) as she manipulates messages to convince Bonnie’s parents to pack the toys away in the garage. Jessie and Lilypad must eventually work together, showing that although technology can help Bonnie connect with others, it cannot replace friendship or the importance of imagination.
That conflict gives Toy Story 5 more emotional weight than a simple battle between toys and technology. Jessie’s struggle with Lilypad is rooted in something deeper than a fear of screens. Jessie already knows what it feels like to be loved by a child and eventually left behind, so watching Bonnie become increasingly attached to a screen brings those feelings back to the surface. Her determination to help Bonnie make a friend may come from a place of love, but it is also driven by her fear that she is about to be replaced again. By placing Jessie at the center of the story, the film gives a familiar Toy Story theme a more personal and emotionally complicated perspective.
Because Lilypad represents the possibility that Jessie and the rest of the toys could be replaced, she becomes an effective foil for both the character and the film’s larger themes. Although the marketing frames the story as toys versus technology and positions Lilypad as its villain, she is more complicated than that. Lilypad pivots from identifying a problem to presenting herself as the “solution,” always with a chipper, frictionless sales pitch about what her technology can provide that dolls and action figures cannot. She is relentlessly positive, slightly smug, and always certain that her metrics are right and that her actions are based entirely on an algorithmically skewed understanding of friendship. As such, the tablet ends up chasing what she considers “friendship outcomes” while leaving Bonnie increasingly disconnected from the world around her.
That distinction becomes clearer through Blaze, a tech-savvy girl who has learned that digital communication does not always lead to genuine connection. Yet she has not lost her imagination or enthusiasm for play. So the film reinforces that balance through its animation, shifting into more stylized imagery whenever Bonnie or Blaze becomes absorbed in a game. Whether Bonnie is staging a wedding between Forky (Tony Hale) and Karen Beverly (Melissa Villaseñor), with Jessie officiating, or Blaze is sending her toys on a spy mission, the film moves between the children playing in the real world and the elaborate adventures the toys experience through their imaginations. These sequences capture how a child’s simple game can become an entire world for the toys involved.
Watching Jessie’s return to her former home and being played with by Blaze serves as the catalyst for her emotional journey. The house no longer feels like the place she remembers, but traces of her life with Emily remain. So when Smarty Pants questions whether Jessie really lived there, she points to the knots in the ceiling, the crack in the window, and the tire swing where she and Emily used to play.
Because those memories still live in her, the house becomes both a trigger for the trauma of being left in a donation box and a reminder of the joy of playing with Emily. It’s a place that redefines what “chosen” means, much like the idea of a lost toy was redefined in Toy Story 4. As such, the film recognizes that Emily did love Jessie, but over time, as Emily got older, she outgrew her.
Returning to Emily’s house also forces Jessie to recognize the difference between caring for Bonnie and trying to keep her from changing. Her desire to pull Bonnie away from Lilypad comes from the belief that keeping Bonnie interested in toys will protect Jessie from being abandoned again. And a late reveal quietly confirms just how much Emily once cared for Jessie, extending that bond into the next generation without turning it into a big twist.
So Jessie realizes that the value of a toy isn’t so much in how much a child plays with it but in how it can be there for when that child needs it. That’s why, even after Bonnie leaves Jessie and Bullseye behind and later refuses to take them back, Jessie doesn’t treat it as proof that she no longer matters. Instead, she focuses on helping Bonnie and Blaze find each other, trusting that the right playmate at the right moment means more than constant attention.
The film is less successful when Jessie’s emotional journey gets lost among its competing subplots. One involves an entire shipment of new Buzz Lightyear toys as they attempt to reach Star Command, while Woody’s return creates a tug-of-war with Buzz over who should lead the group. A romantic storyline involving Buzz and Jessie adds another thread, as does the introduction of Blaze’s toys. These subplots provide opportunities for comedy and give the returning characters more to do, but their broader energy repeatedly pulls attention away from the more compelling conflict between Jessie and Lilypad.
By centering Jessie and Lilypad, Toy Story 5 offers a welcome change of pace and gives two female characters the opportunity to drive the franchise’s central conflict. Cusack once again proves why Jessie is one of Pixar’s richest creations. Her voice work leans into a slightly rougher, more brittle edge than before. The yodel is still there, along with Jessie’s tough-gal confidence as the sheriff of Bonnie’s room, but things change once Lilypad enters the picture. You can hear the crack in Jessie’s voice when she tries to convince herself that Bonnie will not abandon her the way Emily did. She reverts back to that frightened toy who still remembers the inside of a donation box, but the film gives her the room to discover what a toy means to a kid when she uncovers a message meant for her.
Lee has a different challenge as Lilypad, delivering every suggestion and status update with the relentlessly upbeat, lightly patronizing confidence of a device that never questions its own metrics. Lee keeps the character cheerful even when her well-intentioned solutions begin doing more harm than good, making Lilypad funny and slightly unsettling without turning her into a traditional villain. When that certainty finally begins to crack, Lee softens the performance without losing the artificial brightness that defines the character.
Of course, one can’t talk about Toy Story without mentioning Randy Newman’s sweeping music and Taylor Swift’s return to her country roots with “I Knew It, I Knew You.” While the score remains nostalgic, Swift’s end-credit song serves as a sweet, melancholic metaphor for Jessie’s story. “The free fall of being younger” and “life has ways of leaving those days behind” lyrics mirror her memories of Emily and her fear that Bonnie is aging out of toys in favor of Lilypad screens and group chats. When the chorus returns to “standing there in the light of the window wearing that same smile,” it echoes the film’s themes of that eve with all the tech that’s out there kids like Bonnie and Blaze still carry the same spark of imaginative play and proof that the “age of toys” isn’t over so much as it is buried under the performance of growing up.
Even with too many subplots competing for attention, Toy Story 5 gives Jessie a story worth returning for. Her fear of losing Bonnie brings back the pain of what happened with Emily, but the film does not simply repeat the same lesson about being outgrown. Sure, the film can be heavy-handed about technology, but it understands that screens are not the problem in themselves. What matters is whether they bring people together or keep them apart. Five films in, these toys still have something meaningful to say about growing up and knowing when to let go.
