Inside Out 2 Review: Pixar Finds Joy in Teenage Anxiety on Disney Plus

Pixar needed a win. After a string of theatrical disappointments and straight-to-streaming releases that dulled the studio’s once-untouchable reputation, Inside Out 2 arrived in June 2024 and promptly became the highest-grossing animated film of all time, earning over $1.6 billion worldwide. Now streaming on Disney Plus, the sequel to the 2015 original proves that Pixar still understands something fundamental about human emotion that no other animation studio can replicate.

How We Reviewed: This assessment reflects viewing all available episodes before publishing and noting how character development serves or undercuts theme. Ratings reflect full-season viewing, critical analysis, and production quality assessment. No manufacturer or developer paid for or influenced any recommendation.

The Premise: Riley Hits Puberty

The original Inside Out introduced us to the five emotions living inside 11-year-old Riley’s head: Joy (Amy Poehler), Sadness (Phyllis Smith), Anger (Lewis Black), Fear (Tony Hale), and Disgust (Liza Lapkus). The sequel picks up as Riley turns 13 and heads to hockey camp, hoping to impress the coaches and land a spot on the high school team. Her two best friends have just told her they are going to a different school next year, and the anxiety of facing high school alone is already building.

Everything changes when Headquarters undergoes a sudden demolition to make room for new emotions. Anxiety (Maya Hawke) shows up first, a jittery orange character with wide eyes and perpetual nervous energy. She is followed by Envy (Ayo Edebiri), Embarrassment (Paul Walter Hauser), and Ennui (Adele Exarchopoulos), who lounges on a couch scrolling through her phone. Anxiety quickly engineers a hostile takeover of Riley’s mind, banishing Joy, Sadness, Fear, Anger, and Disgust to the back of consciousness while she remodels Riley’s entire sense of self around worst-case scenarios.

What Works: Maya Hawke’s Anxiety Steals the Show

Maya Hawke delivers perhaps the trickiest voice performance in the entire film. Anxiety is not a villain in the traditional sense. She genuinely believes she is protecting Riley by anticipating every possible social disaster and micromanaging every interaction at hockey camp. The script makes us understand where Anxiety is coming from, even when her methods are destructive. There is a sequence where Anxiety constructs increasingly catastrophic future scenarios for Riley, each one spiraling further from reality, and the visual representation of that spiral is both hilarious and uncomfortably recognizable for anyone who has dealt with anxious thoughts.

Director Kelsey Mann, taking over from Pete Docter, handles the new emotional landscape with confidence. The animation team created distinct visual languages for each new emotion. Embarrassment is a hulking pink figure who literally tries to hide Riley from the world by pulling her hood over her head. Ennui barely lifts a finger, controlling the console with a remote from across the room. These are not just clever character designs; they are precise observations about how teenagers actually experience these feelings.

The Emotional Core: Identity Under Construction

Where the first film explored the necessity of sadness, Inside Out 2 tackles something equally profound: the formation of identity during adolescence. Riley’s Sense of Self is a glowing structure at the center of Headquarters, built from core memories and beliefs like “I am a good person” and “I am a good friend.” When Anxiety takes over, she dismantles those existing beliefs and replaces them with anxious projections: “I am not good enough,” “They do not really like me.”

This is where the film hits hardest. The climactic sequence, in which Riley experiences a full anxiety attack during her hockey tryout, is rendered with startling emotional accuracy. Her vision narrows, sounds become muffled, and the world feels like it is closing in. Pixar does not shy away from showing how overwhelming anxiety can feel when it takes the wheel. The resolution does not involve eliminating anxiety but learning to coexist with it. Joy’s realization that she cannot control every aspect of Riley’s emotional life mirrors the first film’s lesson about sadness, but it lands with new weight when applied to the messy, complicated terrain of the teenage mind.

How It Compares to the Original

Inside Out 2 is not quite as groundbreaking as its predecessor. The original was a genuinely novel concept, and the sequel is necessarily working within an established framework. Some reviewers noted that the pacing in the second act sags slightly as Joy and her banished companions navigate the outskirts of Riley’s mind, including trips through the vault of suppressed memories and the stream of consciousness. These sequences are visually inventive but do not carry the same sense of discovery as the first film’s exploration of Long Term Memory and Imagination Land.

That said, the sequel earns its 91% Rotten Tomatoes score by deepening the emotional vocabulary rather than simply repeating the formula. The new emotions are not retreads. They represent a genuinely more complex inner life, and the film trusts its audience, including its youngest viewers, to engage with that complexity.

Streaming Notes for Disney Plus

Inside Out 2 is available on Disney Plus with a standard subscription. The film runs 96 minutes, making it an easy single-sitting watch. Audio options include Dolby Atmos on supported devices. If you are watching with younger children, the anxiety attack sequence is intense but age-appropriate, and it could open up a valuable conversation about feelings they might be experiencing themselves.

The Verdict

Inside Out 2 is Pixar’s best film since Soul and a genuine return to form for a studio that seemed to be losing its way. It accomplishes something rare for a sequel: it justifies its own existence by saying something new. The portrayal of teenage anxiety is honest, specific, and ultimately hopeful without being dismissive. Whether you are a parent trying to understand what your teenager is going through or an adult who remembers the chaos of adolescence, this film speaks directly to you.

For more Pixar and animated film coverage, check out our guide to the best animated movies streaming in 2025. If you are looking for more Disney Plus content, our Marvel shows on Disney Plus guide covers every MCU series worth watching.