‘Toy Story 5’ Deleted Scene Reveals Jessie’s Emotional Reunion With Older Emily, Here’s Why It Was Cut

A deleted scene from Toy Story 5 gives fans a look at a reunion that almost happened between Jessie and her former owner, Emily. The emotional moment was meant to help Jessie deal with a painful part of her past, but directors Andrew Stanton and Kenna Harris eventually decided that the story needed a different kind of ending.

Entertainment Weekly exclusively revealed the deleted scene, which was created as a storyboard animatic. In the scene, Jessie, Bullseye and the Buzz Lightyear army come across Emily years after she gave Jessie away. Emily is now an adult and a grandmother, and she is spending time with her baby grandchild in her backyard.

Jessie is nervous about seeing her old owner again and initially does not want to step forward. Bullseye, however, makes the decision for her by pulling Jessie’s drawstring and revealing her to Emily.

The reunion quickly becomes emotional. Emily recognizes Jessie and begins telling her grandchild about the toy she loved when she was younger. It would have given Jessie the chance to see that the person who once owned her had not simply forgotten about her.

According to Harris, the idea came from the filmmakers’ desire to give Jessie a proper emotional ending. “We love Jessie and from the beginning we always wanted to make sure she had a very satisfying catharsis at the end of this film,” Harris explained.

The directors wanted Jessie to deal with two important things. As they explained, “Jessie deserves closure on her past” and she also deserved “to love herself and not see herself as broken.”

However, the filmmakers eventually felt that bringing Emily back was not the best way to reach that emotional payoff. Harris still described the idea as “a great instinct,” but said the scene was “not quite the way to express that for the movie.”

Instead, Toy Story 5 found another way to give Jessie closure.

After Jessie separates from Bonnie, she and Bullseye eventually return to the house that once belonged to Emily. There, Jessie discovers several reminders of her past, including a message on a nearby tree and a lunchbox filled with old treasures.

Among those items is a birthday card from Emily to her daughter. The card includes the touching message, “You will always be my little cowgirl.”

For Jessie, the discovery carries a powerful meaning. She does not need to speak directly with Emily to understand that their time together mattered. Learning that Emily named her daughter after Jessie gives the cowgirl a different kind of closure.

Stanton agreed that the deleted reunion helped the filmmakers discover what Jessie needed, even though the actual scene did not make the final movie.

“It proved that what we were mining for was a worthy goal,” Stanton said. “We just had to find it another way.”

The deleted scene offers fans a glimpse at how much the filmmakers considered Jessie’s history while developing Toy Story 5. Rather than simply bringing Emily back for nostalgia, the team wanted to give Jessie a chance to move beyond the pain of being abandoned.

Toy Story 5 has become a major box-office success, earning about $1.1 billion worldwide and ranking as the second highest-grossing movie of 2026 so far. The film is also scheduled to arrive on digital platforms on August 18.

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