We now look at our second antagonist of the IO franchise, Anxiety. Again, using the word villain is a stretch but she is an obstacle for our main characters to overcome and in a way, she needs to overcome herself.
The idea of Anxiety being the antagonist is an interesting choice as we as have a tendency to vilify anxiety and think up the worst things that could happen. This is something Anxiety herself explains that it is her job to prepare Riley for what could happen. The best way to think of this is Anxiety causes us to overthink things and that is what we see with Anxiety. When we think the worst of things, we might manifest the worst into happening. This isn’t to say Anxiety is a bad thing as it’s natural to be anxious about something we’ve never done before but the big message of the film is that we can’t let Anxiety control us as that could lead us down to reckless paths. This is something we will observe later on in this blog as the decisions that Anxiety makes have a much more direct impact on Riley and makes her act upon things she would normally never do otherwise.
Of course, this ties into something that has been controversial regarding this movie and Disney’s treatment of LGBTQ+ characters. In this sequel, Riley wants to impress an older girl named Val at hockey camp and the movie treats Val as just a cool girl but to so many viewers including myself the way Riley was acting came off as a crush.
Yes, her Mt. Crushmore was all boys but Riley may not know she likes girls yet. I didn’t know I was gender fluid until this year. And to further illustrate the point of this being a crush on Riley’s part, the staff working on this sequel confirmed they were told to downplay the gayness of Riley.
I am just so tired of Disney’s bullshit here, whether it be outright banning an episode of Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur about a trans athlete. Proudly proclaiming they have a gay character when it’s a blink and you’ll miss it. Hi live action LeFou.
And yes we are getting breadcrumbs like Seb and Carlos in he High School Musical tv show or Agatha and Rio from Agatha All Along but breadcrumbs aren’t enough. Yes, I understand that we shouldn’t look to giant companies to tell our stories. It’s a miracle that Lumity were able to get together. Having said that though, Disney is the biggest entertainment brand in the world and they can afford to do better instead of cow towing to right wing Karens. So many people in the LGBTQ+ community are also Disney fans (hi me). So seeing characters we love being mistreated by the suits and execs to stifle their vision is beyond frustrating and make no mistake, Riley is one of my favorite Pixar characters. The thing people misunderstand about Riley is they only view her as the setting for the movie. And that’s partially true, there are two settings. The inside of Riley’s mind for the emotions and in the sequel, hockey camp for Riley. Joy is the main character in the setting we mainly follow being Riley’s mind and Riley is the main character in the hockey camp setting. That’s the great thing about Riley, in lesser hands she would only be a setting for the characters we follow but that is not the case as she is also her own character.
With this rather long winded introduction out of the way let’s begin. Again, it’s best to remember that while this series is called Villains Profile, Anxiety is more an antagonist but I’m keeping the series name as is.
Voice Actor
Maya Hawke
Anxiety’s voice actor comes from a famous family as her parents are Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman. TBH, before that came out I had no idea that she was a quote unquote nepo baby. Hawke rose to prominence on Netflix’s Stranger Things as Robin in season three working at Scoops Ahoy. While Hawke has done much other film work, I am mostly familiar with her from Stranger Things and now Inside Out 2. Admittedly, this is a failing on my part. Save for the Fear Street trilogy which I forgot she was in but was only the opening kill a la Drew Barrymore in Scream.
Introduction
We get a feeling of Anxiety before we ever meet the character herself. This is when Riley is in her bed with her parents and we see her anxious about how she’ll preform at hockey camp.
This serves as a good foreshadowing for what is come when Anxiety shows up and eventually takes over. As a friend on another server explained the antagonists in this series truly don’t mean harm to Riley and believe they are doing the best they can. That is also true of Anxiety as she wants to help Riley but goes overboard.
We truly see Anxiety go overboard and maybe overstep her boundaries when she along with the other new emotions arrive in Headquarters and does too much. But again, this is how Anxiety works as we tend too much constantly risking our health because our anxiety convinces we aren’t enough. We see this at the end when Anxiety is surprised when Riley’s inner voice says she isn’t good enough and that she’s a bad person. Anxiety in her own warped way was trying to help Riley and this is seen all throughout the movie.
A perfect example of this is how Anxiety and the new emotions are arguing over what to do with Riley’s arms when she is walking with the new girls at night
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I know I’m kinda going beyond Anxiety’s introduction in the movie but there is a lot going on with Anxiety all throughout the movie.
Personality/Grand Desire
One of the best things about both Inside Out movies is the emotions have depth that go beyond their core emotion. Granted, we don’t see this too much with Anxiety but I chalk this up to her being a developing emotion. As Anxiety explains er job is to protect Riley from the things that she can’t see. This is why I’ve combined these two categories together as Anxiety is a controlling individual but again it makes sene an Anxiety does take control and makes us act out on our worst impulses.
We see this when Riley goes to read the coach’s journal to see if she made the team. Under normal circumstances, this is not something Riley would not do but when stressed and worried, we go against our moral code. And with Anxiety in the driver’s seat, Riley goes against things she knows to be right.
Perhaps the best example for Anxiety being controlling is seen during the Imagination Land sequence where in a scene that feels like a commentary on animation crunch when Anxiety has the workers come up with the worst ideas of what could happen. And this maybe the most upset we see her when Joy leads the workers in a revolt to come up with good ideas.
Most Evil Deed
This is hard to pin down and again, Anxiety believes she is helping Riley but just going about it in the wrong way. I kinda think it’s twofold and that makes sense as Anxiety likes doing things in plans. First removing Riley’s sense of self as that removes a big part of Riley’s identity and messes up with who she is. Secondly, later in the movie Anxiety replaces Riley’s sense of self with a twisted version that convinces Riley she isn’t good enough and ends up hurting Riley. Again, Anxiety believes she is helping Riley but it hurts her more than it helps.
How is Anxiety Stopped
At the end of the movie, we see Anxiety go too far and the other new emotions tell her she has gone too far. Anxiety is too far gone and can’t hear anyone. She is literally spiraling and this is a moment that hit super hard as I know what it feels like to spiral. Joy steps in as support entering the spiraling storm of Anxiety telling Anxiety that she doesn’t get to choose who Riley is.
This is a huge moment as Joy serves as the support that both Anxiety and more importantly Riley needs in this moment. Riley is lost her way thanks to what Anxiety has done. Joy knows that she needs to save her girl and this is how. Things go too far when Riley hurts Bree as that is something Riley would never do, she would never intentionally hurt one of her friends but Anxiety had her wearing blinders to everything and everyone else around her.
I’m not going to include my usual ending category because again Anxiety is more an antagonist than a villain (despite the title of the series). And yes we do vilify anxiety in us afraid it’ll bring out the worst in us and it can. But it can also be a motivator to do better. There just has to be a balance and we need to make sure that we don’t go overboard.
Inside Out is my favorite Pixar franchise and both movies came out at important times in my life. I attribute the first movie to saving my life and the second one was a nice reminder I get to decide who I want to be. Something one of my best friends who’s like my little sister reminded me when I had a Riley pfp on Twitter when the sequel came out.
I love this girl to pieces and her and so many others have helped me. And I’ll go as far to say they helped me to save my life and be the person I want to be.
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