Toy Story 5 Makes The Franchise's Toy Rules More Confusing Than Ever

Contains spoilers for "Toy Story 5"

Does a Roomba have a soul? Do action figures need to eat? These are the sorts of questions you start asking when you watch the "Toy Story" movies a little too closely. See, when you make one animated movie in 1995 about toys that come to life to make their kid's life as happy as possible, everything is just a fun idea. But by the time you hit five movies, you've created lore, whether intentionally or unintentionally. Referring to "Toy Story" as a fantasy franchise may sound both absurd and hilarious, but definitionally, that's what we're working with here.

"Toy Story 5" is a lot of fun, but it also brings the most confusing additions to the franchise's toy rules yet with its focus on electronic and battery-powered toys and devices. These aren't entirely new, to be fair: Even Buzz Lightyear himself is a battery-powered toy, with tons of light and sound effects. The earlier movies are full of references to batteries as well. But in "Toy Story 5," the level to which such a power supply is necessary for different toys becomes a lot more confusing.

Then there's the matter of what constitutes a toy in the first place. "Toy Story 4" is all about this idea, with Forky being completely inanimate matter until Bonnie sticks a couple of googly eyes on him and turns him into her new favorite toy. But does that rule apply for everything? Does the mere inclusion of an object in play imbue it with sentience? Does a Roomba, indeed, have a soul?

Here are a few things that are absolutely true about how toys work in "Toy Story 5." We know that a Toy awakens as a sentient being before they are paired with a child. This is shown with the high-tech Buzz Lightyear figures who wash up on an island at the beginning of the movie, and it's been shown to be true elsewhere in the franchise, like in the Al's Toy Barn scenes of "Toy Story 2." We also know that toys have a natural instinct to preserve the secret of their sentience. Before the Buzzes even understand that they are toys, they naturally fall into "toy mode" when a human comes near, reacting afterward as if it were entirely involuntary.

At the same time, we know that toys can supersede this instinct. In the very first movie, Woody speaks to Syd directly, driving him into a panic. Is this hard to do? Does it require some sort of strong resolve to overpower the "toy mode" instinct? Unclear.

Then there's the battery situation. "Toy Story" has long played with the premise of batteries as they pertain to a toy's well-being, but "Toy Story 5" focuses on that aspect in particular. We see that toys with low batteries almost seem drunk, but their batteries dying don't seem to do any permanent damage. But why do battery-powered toys need batteries to move around, yet regular toys don't? Woody isn't alive because he has some sort of electricity running through him. While it would make sense for Lilypad's screen to stop working if she has no charge, it feels odd that she can't move at all without power, while other toys with no batteries at all seemingly have endless energy.

Again, we ask: Does a Roomba have a soul? At the end of "Toy Story 5," Bonnie and Blaze have a playtime session that involves the household Roomba, and afterward, Lilypad implies to Jessie that she is romantically interested in the rotund vacuum robot. It's a joke, yes — but is the Roomba a toy? Children themselves aren't the progenitors of a toy's soul, as evidenced by their sentience pre-sale. Yet in Forky's case, the intention of a child was the source of life.

As Jaya Saxana wrote for GQ in 2018, tackling this same scholarly topic, "The consciousness of a toy is a tautology — toys are alive, and they are alive because that's what toys are." Peer review has found this statement to be true, while the Roomba question remains the subject of academic discourse.

At this point, "Toy Story" seems like it's intentionally winking at those of us too philosophically minded to ignore such quandaries. The films taunt us, flaunting contradictions even as they stir more debate about the truth of consciousness. Such is the nature of all true art, perhaps, batteries included or otherwise.