“Our movie-going culture may not have needed another Toy Story film, but it could certainly use more films like Toy Story — and if we aren’t getting more films like Toy Story, even a recycled Toy Story film might be better than nothing.” This is what I had to say about Toy Story 4 at the beginning of a two-part essay on the series that I wrote in 2019. It works just as well, if not better, for summing up my take on Toy Story 5 in 2026. Toy Story 5 often feels recycled and redundant in ways that Toy Story 4 did not, but watching it also reassured me that Toy Story remains the best animated franchise out there. The film is well-made, funny, and thoughtful, and I was glad to see it expand the Toy Story universe and explore its key themes in fresh new ways.
Going into the film, I expected this expansion and exploration to move in two directions. The trailers for Toy Story 5 advertised it as a film about Sheriff Woody’s return and about the advent of digital tablets for kids, represented by a new character, Lilypad. As it turns out, these two subjects do not significantly intersect with each other and do not receive equal attention. Both, however, revisit the classic Toy Story question, “What are toys made for?”
A Toy’s Telos, Revisited
To recap, Toy Story 4 ended with Woody leaving. After convincing Forky to return to their shared owner, Bonnie, and uniting the lost toy Gabby-Gabby with a lost child, Woody decided to walk away from Bonnie and be an ownerless toy himself so he could be with his long-lost love, Bo Peep. One of the reasons I wrote the two-part essay was to explain why this decision was shockingly uncharacteristic of Woody and deeply contradictory of the moral vision of the Toy Story universe up until that point. If Woody’s story had ended there, it would have seemed that his previous owner, Andy, was wrong to tell Bonnie that “the thing that makes Woody special, is he’ll never give up on you, ever. He’ll be there for you, no matter what.” If the series had ended there, I would have said it ended with denying the very thesis that it became great by defending: that a toy’s innate telos — the purpose or end for which it was made — is “being there” for the child who owns it, and that this telos is worth fulfilling even if that child prefers to play with other toys (see: the first film), even if the toy should suffer wear and tear (see: the second film), and even though the child will one day grow up (see: the second and third films). Instead, the fourth film’s ending echoed the argument of the third film’s villain, Lotso: “We don’t need owners . . . we own ourselves. We’re masters of our own fate. We control our own destiny.” That is, a toy does not have an innate telos but can invent its own and change it at will. This concerns me as a Christian, not because Toy Story could otherwise function as a Christian allegory (it can’t), but because, like Woody, we were created for a purpose, and our freedom and joy can only be found in pursuing that purpose. These films have consistently reflected that reality, but with Toy Story 4 that reflection became muddied. So, when I learned that there would be a Toy Story 5 and saw in the trailer that it would include Woody returning to Bonnie’s room, I hoped the new film would somehow reaffirm that Lotso was wrong about toys and that Andy was right about Woody, at least by attempting a more coherent case for how Woody’s new self-understanding can be consistent with the old one.
If nothing else, Woody’s return reaffirms his care for Bonnie. He comes back because the new sheriff in the room, Jessie the Cowgirl, tells him that Bonnie and the toys are in trouble. Even from a distance, then, Woody could still be said to be a faithful friend to Bonnie, just as Andy promised he would be.
However, Toy Story 5 is not much concerned with Woody. Despite his persistent presence in the marketing, he is curiously inconsequential to the plot. Jessie does not ask him to come back, and he does not contribute meaningfully to resolving the film’s central conflicts. I can understand if the filmmakers were uninterested in exploring the thematic challenges created by Woody’s newfound autonomy; there are other worthwhile stories that can be told in this universe. But the way Woody is awkwardly shoehorned into this particular story suggests it would have been better off without him. I may not agree with what Toy Story 4 did with this character, but I appreciate that it gave him a respectful send-off. To enjoy what Toy Story 5 has to offer, we will have to look beyond Woody, letting him go as the filmmakers ought to have done.
Indeed, if we look beyond Woody, we will find that Toy Story 5 recapitulates and celebrates a toy’s telos, rather than minimizing or subverting it further. The subplot about the army of shipwrecked next-generation Buzz Lightyear toys is not only one of the film’s richest sources of comic relief; it is also an epic dramatization of Woody’s conviction that, deep down, toys know they have been made to serve a purpose and will be restless until they have found it. The lesson Jessie learns over the course of this film echoes what Woody realized in Toy Story 2: “I can’t stop Andy from growing up, but I wouldn’t miss it for the world.” That Jessie comes to this same conclusion about Bonnie is remarkable given she has experienced abandonment to a degree that Woody did not and still bears the emotional scars. Her choice to stay, despite how Bonnie neglects her and comes close to giving her away, shows that Toy Story 4’s deconstructive turn has not become a trend.
Moreover, Toy Story 5 presents an enriched understanding of what it means for a toy to be there for a child. In the previous films, being there for children consisted of engaging their creativity and comforting them. Here, it additionally involves helping them make friends with other children, both by orchestrating introductions and by assisting socialization through collaborative play. Ultimately, by helping Bonnie find a friend in Blaze, Jessie and the other toys are preparing her for the world outside the playroom and beyond their control. Like parents and teachers, toys equip children for lives without them. As Jessie discovers anew when she stumbles upon a photo of her first owner, Emily, it is a noble thing for her to play a part in a child’s story even if she can’t be there for the ending.
A Tech Toy’s Telos
Bonnie’s need for human friends is, in fact, the reason her parents buy her a Lilypad. The toys’ latest existential crisis stems not only from the fact that Lilypad’s games are addictive, but that she appears to be able to get Bonnie friends within seconds. Each Toy Story film has posed a challenge to the idea that a toy’s innate telos is to be there for a child. In this film, the challenge could be formulated as, What is the point of a toy’s telos if “tech” can serve the same purpose?
The primary way the film resolves this dilemma is by imbuing the tech devices with toy souls. Jessie finds out that Bonnie’s Lilypad and Blaze’s Smarty Pants, Snappy, and Atlas all have the same sense of purpose, the same longing to be there for a child, that she does. Instead of competing with one another, the traditional toys and the tech toys need to work together to help Bonnie and Blaze. In this regard, the film essentially copies the template of the original Toy Story. In both films, the cool new toy is confronted by the old-school sheriff on the kid’s bed, and the two remain at odds until the sheriff is stranded at another kid’s house and the new toy realizes it has misunderstood its purpose. The new toy feels shame and wants to throw itself away, but the sheriff — realizing their kid’s happiness is more important than how much any one toy gets played with — rescues the new toy and, after a high-speed vehicular chase, brings it home. The upshot is that Lilypad has to learn how to be a toy just as Buzz did, and that Jessie has to learn to trust Lilypad with Bonnie just as Woody learned to trust Buzz with Andy.
This conclusion works within the logic of the Toy Story universe, but it is not a helpful conclusion for parents and teachers in our own universe who are concerned about the effects that tech devices are having on the next generation. By anthropomorphizing the tech devices and classifying them as just another kind of toy, the filmmakers are able to avoid subjecting them and the corporations that make them to stricter scrutiny. Perhaps this was to be expected from Pixar, a computer-animation studio that was co-founded by Steve Jobs, the father of the iPhone and the iPad. But even Jobs wouldn’t let his own kids have iPads, and even by the film’s own evidence, it is never a good idea for kids to use tablets unattended and without restrictions. (It is baffling that Bonnie’s parents shielded her from tech for so long, only to be woefully unprepared to enforce ground rules for its use and protect her from its dangers.) To simply trust the tech and hope that the kids will be alright is not an option.
At the same time, the film does not treat the tech toys as fully interchangeable with the traditional toys. Jessie has to learn that these devices are fellow toys, not competitors, but in the final analysis these tech toys have much more to learn from Jessie. If toys are made for a child’s creativity, comfort, and socialization, then the tech toys are actually at a disadvantage. Jessie finds out that Smarty Pants, Snappy, and Atlas were each only played with by Blaze for a few months, whereas Jessie has enjoyed years each with Bonnie, Andy, and Emily. This is because the specific functions for which each of these tech toys was designed were of limited use to Blaze. But when Jessie helps Blaze rediscover her discarded tech toys, they in turn discover that participating in Blaze’s make-believe scenarios — in which she invents novel uses for each of them — is so much more satisfying than when she would only play their preprogrammed games. Jessie makes a crucial distinction between digital “games” and physical “play,” and we can deduce that the latter is superior because it exercises more of a child’s mind and body.
Likewise, Lilypad’s plan to help Bonnie make friends fails because her programming makes her myopically focused on the digital world at the expense of the physical one in which Bonnie lives. Lilypad doesn’t understand that Bonnie needs to interact with flesh-and-blood people, not their disembodied avatars, and that true friends are made through patient effort and discernment, not frictionless friend requests. Instead, she isolates Bonnie from other people by distracting her with games and exposing her to online bullying. In contrast, Blaze has a healthier relationship with tech, and this may be because the devices she played with when she was younger were each designed to help her navigate the material world. It is also significant that Blaze lives on a farm, where one of her responsibilities is caring for the animals. The virtual world does not have as strong a pull on her attention because the real one is so tangibly and insistently at-hand. Thus, when Blaze longs for a friend, it isn’t for someone she can text, but someone who will come over to her house.
Once Lilypad and the other tech toys realize that what Blaze and Bonnie need is not something they can offer in and of themselves, they are able to use their digital functions to bring them together. Thus, there is a second way that the film resolves the conflict between the tech toys and the traditional toys, one that accords with our own reality. Toy Story 5 supports the view that, because all tech is meant to serve humans, and humans are embodied and relational beings, then all tech must promote human embodiment and relationships, not work against them. For the film’s tech toys to live within their own telos, they must help Bonnie and Blaze live within theirs.
However faintly, the film sketches a picture of the “truly advanced technology” that Andy Crouch has envisioned in his recent book, The Life We’re Looking For: Reclaiming Relationship in a Technological World. Crouch writes that “a truly advanced technology should make us more fully persons, not less, the longer we use it. It should connect us ever more deeply to other people, to nature, and to God” (p. 69). He goes on to say that “A sufficiently advanced technology would break loose from the fantasy that we could escape our human condition and become like gods, escape our bodies and their limitations, escape the amazing creative powers of human beings animated by love and acquire superpowers instead. . . . Every time such technology was used, you would have a profound encounter with a person” (p. 79). The film shares Crouch’s emphasis on technology serving human loves, and I think this is a reason why it ends with Bonnie and Blaze play-acting a wedding between Jessie and Buzz. A wedding is a gathering of people in one place to bear witness to the union of two people in a relationship that is both spiritual and physical as well as complicated and inefficient — the polar opposite of a social media “friendship.” It is probably no coincidence that Toy Story 5 was co-directed by Andrew Stanton, who previously directed Wall-E, which is both Pixar’s best film about love and its best film about technology. According to both films, humanity must place technology in the service of love, instead of trying to use technology as a shortcut to love (or rather, its substitutes).
All of this sounds lovely, of course, but the depressing reality is that these principles will go unheeded by most viewers. When Jessie first discovers that the traditional toys in neighboring yards have been banished by tech toys and that their owners have become zombie-like in the sickly blue glow of their computer screens, I wondered if the film’s tech critique was going to be too obvious and ham-fisted. But then, I noticed what was happening with the family sitting next to me in the theater. The kids squirmed and bickered, only fitfully engaged by the film, and the parents occasionally pulled out their phones, either oblivious to the irony or unbothered by it. Almost immediately, my mind went to imagining how, in a few months, many other kids will be streaming this movie on iPads — some of them encased in Lilypad-themed covers — that will be bought by other parents who don’t see or care about the irony, either. Perhaps the film could have stood to be more apocalyptic and preachy, and perhaps it wouldn’t have mattered.
And perhaps that’s okay. Even if it is for no one else, Toy Story 5 is for the Bonnies and Blazes of the world, who still like to play with toys, even though the other kids laugh at them. It is a film for the parents who are very careful about their kids’ exposure to tech, and may need reminding they’re not crazy. And it is a film for those of us who still go to the movies, not to escape the heat or pacify the toddlers, but to see — together — the latest technologies get used by real people in the service of good stories, told with love and care and excellence. We may be a dwindling bunch, but as Woody once taught us, we can still have “fun while it lasts.”
I really appreciate this analysis, especially the exploration of what Jessie has learned. Thanks for this!