Toy Story was released almost 19 years ago and yet for some reason, we just can't let it go. Blame its long-lasting appeal, equally excellent sequels or the crazy amount of detail that goes into all Pixar movies, but some fans can't stop analyzing the animated classic and thanks to their hard work, we now have another Toy Story theory. And it's one we can actually wrap our heads around.
Jon Negroni created a theory that lets Andy's mom be a little more important to the story, and adds a whole new emotional dimension to the already beautiful movies. According to Negroni, Andy's mom, Ms. Davis, is also Jessie's old owner, Emily, the girl seen in Toy Story 2 who got rid of Jessie when she outgrew toys and broke her cowgirl heart.
There is some very convincing evidence that makes this theory much easier to grasp than the complex "pixar theory" that ties all of the studio's films together in a kind of freaky alternate universe, and was also penned by Negroni. On a surprisingly populated scale of Toy Story theories, Ms.-Davis-is-Emily definitely falls closer to the Andy's-parents-are-getting-divorced side in terms of believability and simplicity than it does to that of the Pixar universe or The-Walking-Dead -is- Toy-Story.
If you can hold off googling all of those other theories for just a moment, there is plenty of movie support for Negroni's latest idea. The key piece of evidence is Andy's reddish brown cowboy hat, which has white lacing and doesn't match the plain, dark brown hat that Woody wears. It does, however, match not only Jessie's hat, but the one that Emily wears while playing with her. And when Emily throws Jessie away, the hat doesn't appear to be in the box, which is actually too small to even contain it. Negroni posits that Ms. Davis kept the hat after all those years and gave it to Andy when he started playing with a cowboy of his own.
The other major piece of evidence is the timeline of events. Negroni goes into further detail, but basically, we know Woody is an old collectible thanks to Toy Story 2, and when we see Emily's bedroom she's clearly in the 1970s. That matches with Ms. Davis's estimated age and lets the the whole thing be possible.
It's nice to think that this particular theory is true, and was meant to be a subtle part of the Toy Story saga. Not only does it lend Andy's mom some significance, besides buying him toys, but it means that even if neither of them realizes it, Jessie and Emily were reunited. Jessie's story is one of the most heartbreaking sequences in all of Toy Story (which is really saying something) and this theory lets her have a happier ending.
Toy Story 3 showed us how hard it can be for toys and their owners to say goodbye, but if we believe in this theory, then Jessie and Emily didn't really have to.
Image: Pixar
