Toy Story 5, which opened in theaters on June 19, 2026, more than 30 years after the first movie came out, asks a question that feels less like a Pixar premise and more like a parent's 2 a.m. anxiety spiral: what happens to a child's toys when the child would rather stare at a screen? The answer, delivered with the studio's signature blend of slapstick and existential dread, is that the machines have, in fact, come for the children — and Woody, Buzz, and Jessie are forced to fight for relevance against an enemy that doesn't throw punches so much as it simply, quietly, wins their kid's attention one notification at a time.
The Premise: Meet Lilypad, the Tablet That Threatens to End the Age of Toys
The premise of Toy Story 5 is that Bonnie Anderson gets a Lily Pad for school chat and online games. But the tablet decides that Bonnie's toys, including Woody, Buzz and Jessie, are holding her back. Lilypad is a rectangular green smart tablet with the design of a frog — voiced with unsettling, algorithmic calm by Greta Lee, who balances a playfully antagonistic tone with humour and heart in a performance that turns a children's tablet into one of Pixar's most quietly menacing villains.
The trailer made Lilypad's threat explicit. When Jessie confronts the tablet about Bonnie's well-being, Lily seems not to be paying attention — until she repeats Jessie's speech back in a computerized tone: "I'm always listening." Jessie tells Woody, "Tech's invaded our house. I'm losing Bonnie to this device." Woody replies, "Toys are for play, but tech is for everything."
For the original full review and continuing coverage of Toy Story 5's themes and critical reception, Empire's review offers an authoritative and thoughtful examination of the film's philosophical ambitions.
The Twist: The Tech Toys Aren't Actually the Villains
What separates Toy Story 5 from a simple "screens bad, toys good" morality tale is a genuinely smart third-act swerve. Though originally painted to be the villains, Lilypad and the other tech toys — a potty-training game named Smarty Pants (Conan O'Brien), a camera named Snappy (Shelby Rabara), and a map toy called Atlas (Craig Robinson) — quickly prove that they aren't altogether evil. They also want to help their kids in the ways they know how, and they, too, are at constant risk of being thrown in a drawer when a shiny new thing comes along.
This is the film's smartest move: rather than demonizing technology outright, Toy Story 5 smartly explores the complexities of this changing culture for parents and kids alike, weighing both the pitfalls and advantages of a world where the average age at which children are exposed to technology is going down, while average screentime is going up.
Returning Voices and a Few Notable Absences
The film brings back its beloved core ensemble: Tom Hanks, Tim Allen and Joan Cusack are all returning as Woody, Buzz, and Jessie, with Tony Hale's return as Forky providing reliable comic relief. Ernie Hudson steps in as Combat Carl, honoring the late Carl Weathers — a touching tribute woven into the franchise's ongoing legacy of handling cast transitions with care and respect.
One lingering mystery hangs over the film's setup: it's set a couple of years after the events of Toy Story 4, but there was no word ahead of release on how Woody, who departed with Bo Peep at the end of that movie, would return to Bonnie's house — or whether Bo Peep would appear in the fifth movie. The film actually opens with Buzz Lightyear action figures, stuck in toy mode, searching for Star Command — a characteristically Pixar bait-and-switch cold open before the real Bonnie-and-Lilypad plot kicks in.
The Verdict: A Welcome Return to Philosophical Form
Critics are largely in agreement that Toy Story 5 represents a meaningful course correction for the franchise. As Empire's review notes: "Pixar's Toy Story series has always been at home with wistfulness and melancholy, because the nature of toys means their time is fleeting and their worth ephemeral. If the cowboy doll is not displaced by a spaceman, he will still be rendered obsolete by adolescence and adulthood, however hard he tries to enchant and entertain. The first three films taught us that the work is still meaningful even if the love is finite, but the fourth struggled for a similarly powerful theme. This latest outing, however, is a welcome return to philosophical form as well as being funny, warm-hearted and largely — perhaps overly — optimistic."
Collider's review is even more enthusiastic, calling it "a hilarious, heartwarming film that more than justifies its existence" — high praise for a fifth installment in a franchise many assumed had already said its goodbyes with the fourth film's emotional send-off.
Why Lilypad Is One of Pixar's Smartest Villains
What makes Lilypad such an effective antagonist is precisely how unthreatening she appears on the surface. As one preview noted, "our new baddie doesn't look very scary," but the threat this time is a lot more existential than any previous Toy Story villain — worse, in the franchise's own internal ranking, than Sid, Stinky Pete, Emperor Zurg, or even Lotso.
That's because Lilypad doesn't need to scheme, trap, or destroy anyone. As director and writer Andrew Stanton frames it, the challenge the toys face now is fundamentally different from anything Woody and Buzz have encountered before — a rival that wins not through villainy, but through sheer, passive, irresistible engagement. Toy Story 5 Villain Lilypad Might Spell The End For Woody And Buzz: "When Tech Comes In, It Wins."
The Bigger Cultural Conversation Toy Story 5 Is Having
Pixar's chief creative officer Pete Docter framed the film's ambitions clearly when unveiling the project: Lily Pad is a "sneaky" and "prickly" tablet that convinces 8-year-old Bonnie Anderson that friends and games on a device beat dusty ol' toys in the closet. Directors Andrew Stanton and Kenna Harris described the process as "a hilarious and poignant journey exploring how our favourite team of legacy toys might respond to today's world of technology."
It's a premise that resonates because it's not speculative fiction — it's the lived reality of nearly every parent watching the film alongside their children, which is precisely why Toy Story 5 lands as more than nostalgia bait. It's Pixar holding up a mirror to a genuinely difficult modern parenting dilemma and, remarkably, finding both humor and grace in it.
The Bottom Line
Toy Story 5 takes one of family entertainment's most anxious cultural questions — what screens are doing to childhood — and turns it into the franchise's most thoughtful entry since the original trilogy concluded. By refusing to simply villainize Lilypad and instead revealing the tablet as another character desperately trying to matter to a child who will inevitably move on, Pixar finds genuine emotional depth in a premise that could have easily been a hollow morality lecture. The machines have indeed come for the children — but Toy Story 5 suggests that maybe, in the end, both the toys and the tablets are fighting the same losing battle against the one truly unstoppable force in any child's life: growing up.