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Unofficial, non-commercial fan “psuedo-treatment.” This is not affiliated with Disney, Pixar, or the owners of Toy Story.
🚨!WARNING: Spoilers for Toy Story 1 - 5 AHEAD! 🚨
The release of Toy Story 5 in June 2026 got me thinking about age. The topic of death wasn't far behind.
That's because this franchise has spent thirty years doing the one thing its own characters are terrified of: refusing to be put away. Every half-decade it dodges the donation bin again, finding a clever new reason to continue it's core story.
But should Toy Story be discarded like a teenager's childhood toy, once beloved and inseparable, from its owner?
Many believe so.
There’s a strange irony in the fact that Toy Story has become the toy that you keep tripping over on your way to the bathroom at 2AM. Kids love it, but adults keep wondering why it keeps showing up in awkward places on the floor. The franchise is that toy–- the one that evades being thrown away.
The original movie worked because it captured a simple and universal feeling: To a child's imagination, toys are more than plastic and cloth composites; they're adventurers and friends that are endowed with life via a spark of creative energy. Through their unwavering existence and play the secret emotional life of the child matures.
But children grow up. Resisting the change that comes with that inevitability, is the primary concern of all Toy Story films.
The movies always had semi-interesting villains. But the most prominent unnamed one is Time.
From the beginning, the toys lived with an expiration date. Andy and Bonnie wouldn't stay kids forever. So Woody and the others spend the majority of the films fighting impending obsolescence. A very human struggle, which is one reason the movies resonate so deeply.
Toy Story introduced Woody's fear of being replaced by Buzz. Toy Story 2 expanded that fear into the terror of being preserved instead of loved. Toy Story 3 gave the gang their closest brush to complete annihilation, then gave us definitive emotional closure and followed it up the toys’ perfect goodbye: Andy passing them on to Bonnie.
Then Toy Story 4 arrived to give Woody his own personal epilogue, while exploring what it means to be alive through Forky’s character. The theme of life, being antithetical to non-existence, was another bout in Toy Story’s eternal battle against erasure.
The problem with continuing Toy Story as a franchise is not that toys are no longer interesting. Toys are incredibly interesting. There are a million ways to remix the topic. But for the core cast— now thirty years on— watching them war against Time is getting old.
The films are obsessed with retelling the story of these toys over and over. It's become locked around one sacred set of characters: Woody, Buzz, Jessie, Rex, Hamm, and the rest. That set has remained emotionally fixed for three decades while the world around it has changed dramatically. Meanwhile the toys never age (except for Woody in the fifth movie). How many ways can you extend the timeline of their adventures?
That’s why when the marketing around Toy Story 5 focused around “toys versus technology”, I instantly knew where the movie was going. Time (the true enemy) has taken on a technological cowl. Reincarnated as Lilypad, the “not iPad” knock-off that threatens the relevance of the toys. A new form of the same antagonist.
I haven't seen the movie, but judging by the trailers we’re in for another polished, if not formulaic, entry into this movie series that is terrified of being forgotten more than the toys that it features.
Early reviews are positive. But for me, that's not the issue (the movie’s probably good).
I don't even care if the only reason the franchise keeps going is to make money. What's more important to me is that they stop avoiding the mega boss that has been hovering over the entire Toy Story universe.
If there's ever a Toy Story 6 (which there likely will be, gotta end the second trilogy) it should have Woody and company confront their chronophobia.
It should be about what happens when the toys finally have to admit that no one is coming to play with them or save them from that ruinous force that claims us all in the end.
That's why below, I present my pseudo-treatment of that potential final Toy Story film.
Toy Story 6: The Last Play
My version of Toy Story 6 is called “Toy Story 6: The Last Play.”
Every previous film resolved on a transition. The toys got passed down, moved on, or set free. That's the move a middle chapter makes to keep the door open for future films.
A final film must resolve on permanence.
Here's the simple premise.
Bonnie grew up, but she didn't throw the toys away. Nor did she donate or pass them along.
She did something much more common and cruel (from the perspective of the toys). She kept them, but left them in a forgotten closet in her house.
They're in several shoe boxes behind an old wedding dress, a boot box that was never opened, and a bunch of, now inappropriate, adult Halloween costumes.
Who occupies the house? In an odd twist of Hollywood coincidence, it's Andy's elderly parents. That's a perfect setup for how things will unfold later.
This is where the movie begins.
Life in the Closet
The toys have been in storage for years, doing what they've been doing for the entire filmology: trying to find a way to connect or reconnect with a new kid. While they wait, they tell stories of their past misadventures and occasionally go on scouting “missions” for signs of life in the house. On these perilous outings they routinely must thwart or evade the gadgets of futuristic elder care technology: Roombas, a humanoid robot named "Carebot", and the usual obstacles: humans (now Andy's elderly parents), a cat named “Scratches”, and toy-flesh eating termites. All of these will be a part of the set pieces in the script.
The toys maintain routines with their established roles. Buzz and Jessie (now married) work to keep morale high.
Rex worries. Hamm’s jokes are more bitter. Forky is the calmest group member, because he's already lived knowing that he's always been trash. LilyPad (now dated and un-updated) can barely hold a charge with her cracked screen, but still occasionally turns on as a reminder of the good old days.
Oh and Woody is back. Because it's Toy Story and he has to be in it even if he's not the important to the story. Toy Story 5 established this rule.
In the closet the toys are restlessly hopeful. At first, Woody, with the help of Buzz and Jessie attempt to raise everyone's spirit by turning the situation into an operation.
He figures there must be a way to get out, to find a new kid, to be loved and needed again, and in doing so, fulfill a toy’s highest purpose. The door is just another wall to overcome; they've faced higher ones in the past, he figures.
Woody's core belief is that toys are meant to be there for comfort or companionship. As instruments of imagination, they are most useful to the owners through play. Kids give toys life, life gives meaning to toys.
But what happens when there is no next kid?
The False Adventure
This is the centerpiece of the movie and it's where the series fatigue transforms into narrative fuel for this would-be series finale.
The central engine of the film is the toys’ final adventure.
At first, it plays like classic Toy Story. There's THE plan. They use an old map of the house to mark rendezvous points. Great caution is taken to account for the above-mentioned hazards they must avoid or neutralize.
The toys tell themselves they are searching for a way back into the world. This is a comforting stretch of imagination learned from previous owners.
Reality is they are unconsciously drilling for the day Bonnie or Andy return or when a new child arrives to restore their status as “true” toys.
The adventure begins as hope. When the execution day arrives all are hyped with anticipation.
But as the operation unfolds the audience realizes the uncomfortable truth.
The toys aren't being played with anymore. There's no child there to animate their purpose.
They are playing with themselves.
The old Toy Story adventures were driven by a child’s imagination: Andy made Woody brave, Buzz fly, and turned the bedroom into a frontier, space station, battlefield or any other place. A child is the center point of a toy’s universe— in constant creation and destruction.
However, now the child is absent and that universe has fallen to void.
So the toys generate the story themselves.
They create the mission because the cold space left by Andy and Bonnie has become unbearable. And so once again, the house becomes a backdrop for an epic action-figure-sized journey to give them something to cling to in the purgatory of the closet.
This is where the movie becomes about the loss we all face when crossing the threshold from kid to adult.
When you’re young everyone appears concerned about what you’ll do with your life. Parents, teachers, and other authorities treat your improbable dreams with tax -audit seriousness.
Things change when adulthood arrives like a glass of cold water to the face.
You say you want to be a novelist?
You say you want to build something? Ha! That's cute.
Suddenly no one believes you. The world becomes indifferently mean. Slowly, it sinks in: nobody is coming to preserve your adolescent ambition. Make-believe is over. Time to get a real job to join the suffering procession to irrelevance, and eventually death. There will be no great escape or Deus Ex Machina moment to spring you from the closet.
This is the true emotional premise of Toy Story 6.
The Midpoint: Andy’s Return
In the middle of the film, during the toys’ make-believe final mission, they hear an unfamiliar voice in the house.
At first, they freeze. Do their plastic ears confuse them? No, it's real. With an older, time-wrung tone, they recognize the voice of Andy.
They have no idea why he’s in the house, but it doesn’t matter. This is it! If they can get his attention, maybe he’ll remember; surely he’ll remember all the good times in the bedroom playing cowboys and space rangers, then the fun can return again.
Woody and the toys scramble to realign the ongoing mission to reach Andy before it’s too late. Dramatic desperation causes them to make mistakes. The execution is sloppy. If they can just get to him…
Andy asks his parents in between more serious matters of medication and grown-up life: “What did she ever do with those old toys?”
His dad replies, “Oh I don’t know, they’re probably somewhere around here. Lost things have a way of finding where they’re supposed to be.”
Andy pauses. A sad smile crosses his face as he looks upstairs. The camera pushes in on his middle-aged face, the thinning hairline, skin dragged down by the sleeplessness of modern anxiety.
The toys are rushing into position. Almost there. Andy takes a step toward the stairs. Then his phone rings. Next he’s talking to someone with exhaustion in his voice. It’s his wife asking if he remembered to run an errand for his kids. In under a minute, he hugs his dad goodbye and the standard quiet returns to the house as if he were never there.
The toys are devastated. They attempt to resume the mission as planned, but now it feels completely fake. As they return to the closet, the undeniable realness draws a blanket of silence over them.
Andy’s not coming back. Nor is Bonnie. No one is.
The Unopened Toy
One of the key new characters is an unopened toy.
In high school I bought an original Donatello action figure (from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) from a failing Kay Bee Toys bargain bin (3 for $10). This wasn’t a purchase for play; it was a collector’s decision. Donatello was valuable not as an instrument of imagination, but as an investment.
From a toy’s perspective, that’s a strange fate. Preservation isn't the same as being treasured.
Though this theme was explored somewhat in Toy Story 2, that was more about Woody's choice between the family he always knew (Andy's toys) and his “biological” kin (Prospector's collection set).
This unopened character complicates the easy lesson of Toy Story. While the others can say, “At least we were played with once.” He can't. He’s just a conversation piece with no child history to console him in the dusty dark of the closet.
What tragedy!
Donatello’s character arc isn't about being opened by a child. That’s too easy. The trajectory of his story is that the other toys play with him in the end. In the final stretch of the film, after the false hope of Andy’s visit, the gang finally brings him into the game.
"You... you opened me," he says with a tearful tone, "I'm... worthless."
Hamm replies, "Yeah yeah just like the rest of us. You'll fit right in."
For the first time in his existence, he’s not a collectible; he's a true toy.
It's not the purpose he imagined or wanted. But it's the one that he was given and therefore had to accept.
Different Fates
After the revelation that Andy's not coming back, the toys finally realize they can't run from fate anymore.
Time: that ancient nemesis they’ve avoided for the entire series corners them between a box of old shoes and a blade of light below the door.
Each toy must confront how they’ll spend eternity.
Jessie can’t bear her closet destiny. So she chooses risk. Better to take the chance of finding something new than waiting for emptiness to fill her, she reckons. Departure beats depression.
Buzz and Jessie have a disagreement over this, staying or going. True to his nature, Buzz believes in loyalty and order. Andy’s toys need them, he argues. Departure at a critical moment such as this is dereliction. Following an emotional argument, ultimately Jessie decides to let him go, just as she’s had to release so many before. They separate.
Order is the first order of business, after Jessie leaves.
(Play an obligatory sentimental Toy Story song during this montage)
Buzz uses his routine to mask his sadness at Jessie's absence— smoothing over time’s wrinkles.
He creates schedules, watch rotations, emergency plans to turn the closet into a contingency operations theater.
But over time, everyone acts with disinterest. The seizing truth sneaks into their plastic hearts: procedure can keep you busy, but it can't tell you why you're alive or if you should keep living the same way.
As for the other main toys: Rex discovers that play itself still matters. He’s scared, as always, but he enjoys any invented adventure. He considers his post-life play the ultimate proving ground of his imagination.
Hamm becomes more of the cynical realist he’s always been. “Nobody’s coming,” he says. Then with resignation he adds: “That doesn’t mean nothin’ mattered.”
Forky continues his role as the simplistic philosopher. As trash that became a toy, he knows everything is constructed: bodies, identities, and roles in the world. Why not the same for destiny?
Lilypad powers on one last time. Her final decision to deplete the remaining charge on her battery allows the crew to relive the tender memories with Bonnie before she grew up. That final night is a huge watch party, with the toys telling stories and re-enacting past play sessions until dawn. In the morning, Buzz checks on Lilypad, but the power button no longer works.
Buzz delivers a somber farewell. "She was a noble screen that shielded us all from sadness for a little while longer. May the pond in the clouds keep her backup in memory."
In the back of the ceremony, Donatello comes to terms with arriving too late for play time, but on time for eternity.
And Woody must face the most difficult truth. There is no final mission or new kid. Only Time, with unending infinity, is left to confront.
Woody’s Final Arc
Woody has always needed someone to need him. This is his virtue and vice.
In the first film, he needed to be Andy’s favorite. In the second, he chose between preservation and love, because love meant being needed at home with Andy instead in Japan on display. In the third, he let Andy go. In the fourth, he imagined, then lived, a life beyond belonging to one child. In the fifth, he embraced his role as a mentor figure to Jessie and savior of lost toys.
But without all the authority granted by that sheriff’s badge— much of it self-appointed— who is he? What lies behind the stuffing and stitching?
Here he’s forced to decide who he wants to be when no child, rescues, or adventures await to provide him with external purpose.
Woody spends most of the movie resisting the choice. He keeps creating plans to save the group, believing he can continue to be leader. But in the third act that melancholy sunset of life beams on the horizon.
This leads to the true ending. Buzz convinces him in a poignant scene that he did enough.
He gave joy to Andy and Bonnie, delivered other toys to safety, held the group together in hard times, in addition to surviving replacement, abandonment, donation, daycare, near-incineration, separation, and freedom.
“That’s more than enough of a life for any cowboy,” Buzz says.
The Ending
The toys' decisions for how to spend forever are as diverse as their appearances.
Some decide to leave, others donate themselves, or set up in a permanent position of display around the house, others stay in the shoebox.
After everyone decides their fate, the question falls on Woody and Buzz.
At the end of a life of adventure, Woody takes off his hat, stares at it for a while, then sets it down. Next goes the sheriff star. Past authority means nothing in eternity.
Funeral silence halts the surroundings.
Buzz watches him. He starts to say something, but then the moment hangs. He realizes the time for talk and action is done.
He just extends his hand for a handshake.
“Thanks for the journey partner.”
Woody clasps it and shakes.
“Thanks for being a friend.”
They say together, “To infinity and beyond.”
Cut to black.
Why This Should Be the Final Toy Story
This is the only Toy Story 6 I want to see.
The central questions of the movie franchise are: “From the perspective of their toys, what happens when kids grow up?”
And "How does the relationship between a child and their toys evolve the lives and personalities of both parties?"
Ironically, the series is strongest and most emotional when it focuses on those timeless questions, not on the toys themselves.
And in that way, this version of Toy Story 6 acknowledges that truth. That this story called Toy Story really was never about the toys. The point was to remind adults and children of the power of imagination and play. By turning tough situations into adventures it reminds us that all problems can be solved with enough creativity; that at any time you like and in any way you choose you, (yes, even you!) can go to infinity and beyond, even if only in your mind.
But you have to decide. No other person, toy, or external event can make the choice for you.
The finale of Toy Story 6 makes that clear for the audience and the toys themselves.
At some point, you have to play make-believe, not for entertainment, but for yourself, even when the world tells you to stop and grow up.
In the twilight of existence, when the expediency of the present has faded, you have to choose how to spend your remaining days. And if it feels right to you, and doesn't harm others negatively, then it's right.
Toys and people, people and toys, neither get cinema-worthy ends in the eyes of the world. The memory of them gets placed in a box by a public who cares enough to bury them, but doesn't care enough to return.
That's why the most emotional ending for the Toy Story movies would not be proving that Woody and Buzz are still relevant and needed forever. It's letting what they achieved through the films be enough and allowing the audience to determine their legacy.
This is the fate of toys and humans. One I’d happily pay $20 to see in the theater.
Enjoy this?
Read/Listen to my original version of it, called "Outcast Toys" here.
