Wait, Is Toy Story 4 Planning On KILLING OFF Woody?!

1. It Fits

Toy Story is all about death. It's about the death of childhood, the death of innocence, the death of love, the death of belonging. It's about all of those things because it's about their opposites: the power of imagination and play, love and community and the enduring value of living life without the fear of everything ending.

So far, the approach to dealing with death has been to package it as a fear about redundancy in the central toys. Initially, there was some exploration of actual death with Sid's torturous behaviour (but the reality is that that didn't kill the toys even when they were pretty badly destroyed, since they could be turned into mutants and live on), but then the focus shifted very markedly to being about being left behind.

Every dramatic moment in the first three moments focused on the idea that Andy would eventually grow out of the toys and they would stop being useful to him. That woud be their "death" just as surely as being melted in an incinerator would be. But the reluctance of Pixar to actually directly address the question of what happens when a toy dies while flirting with it so openly left a question hanging over the entire franchise. And sooner or later, that question has to be answered.

Having Woody die would be the bravest and most fitting thing Pixar could do with this franchise, even if they choose to make more Toy Story movies. It would advance all of the key ideas we've seen so far and it would give this film a reason for being: it's not enough to say that it exists because there's enough story potential there, because there's probably not without something this major happening.

So maybe start saying your goodbyes, partners.

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