Pixar’s debut film Toy Story debuted 26 years ago and introduced global audiences not only to the medium of CGI feature animation, but to some of the most beloved characters ever associated with the Disney name. Alongside Tom Hanks' Americana rag doll Sheriff Woody, easily the most popular and iconic toy to come out of Andy's room was the high-tech action figure, Buzz Lightyear, played by Tim Allen. In the 1995 original, Buzz was designed to be the most state-of-the-art, must-have coolest toy based on a popular superhero astronaut Andy enjoyed, contrasting with the hand-stitched antique western doll who saw Buzz’s presence as a threat to his “favorite toy” status. Fresh out of the box, Buzz doesn’t know he’s a toy and believes himself to be the genuine Space Ranger that he was modeled after, constantly trying to reach Star Command and navigating the world of Andy’s neighborhood as if it were an alien planet.

These delusions of grandeur worked in service to the story and served as the crux of Buzz’s character arc as they heightened the competitive conflict between him and Woody and later enabled him to have an identity crisis that led to him learning the true value of being a child's toy and being Woody’s friend. In the sequels that followed, however, Buzz's starry-eyed imagination was implemented again and again solely as a means to an end.

In Toy Story 2, which opens with a full Buzz Lightyear video game sequence, Buzz leads a daring rescue mission to save Woody after being stolen from the family’s yard sale. Almost immediately, he is ambushed and supplanted by a newer edition Buzz Lightyear toy that still believes himself a real Space Ranger. This new Buzz takes over the mission to find Woody with militaristic leadership under the impression he is a prisoner of the Evil Emperor Zurg. Toy Story 3 saw the original Buzz’s memories wiped back to their original factory setting, making him delusional once again and eventually translated to Spanish mode. While Toy Story 4 kept Buzz’s perceptions from going out of sorts, he now believes his voice box of Space Ranger catchphrases to be likened to a conscience or “inner voice”.

A still from Toy Story 3
Image via Disney

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The problem with Buzz in each successive Toy Story installment is also what has made him such a popular icon. Each of the Toy Story sequels brought Buzz back to his sci-fi roots in ways that, while still wildly entertaining, did nothing to serve the greater purpose of the story at hand or Buzz’s character other than being an arbitrary inconvenience or comedic flourish. Buzz’s Space Ranger persona went from being a point of contention and source of existential dread in the first movie to a source of generating jokes, pop culture sci-fi references and providing an occasional plot obstacle that the other characters had to work around or compensate for.

Each film incorporates Buzz either needing to be brought back to reality or snapped out of his delusions, leaving his true self absent from the story. By keeping Buzz anchored to his fantastical world of intergalactic sci-fi battles, it detracted from and even cheapened what he had learned in the first movie, resulting in the audience not spending as much time getting to know toy Buzz’s true nature or his sentiments of what being a toy means to him like Woody outside his astronaut gimmick.

If not a confused toy with an identity crisis, Toy Story sequels didn't know much else to do with Buzz other than being a confidant to Woody. Buzz was conceived to be the hero of his own story and an entire fictional world that was scarcely ever realized in the films, but has become his principal identity as veritably its own brand. The 2000 Disney animated series Buzz Lightyear of Star Command, Disneyland’s “Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters”, and Pixar’s upcoming film Lightyear manifest Buzz as the galactic hero of infinity and beyond he was teased to be in Toy Story. Buzz’s problem was not that he was repeatedly delusional in the sequels, but that the world built around him that fans and Pixar itself wanted to tell was too big for the stories of Toy Story to hold.