Inside Out 2 picks up shortly after Riley Andersen's 13th birthday. The emotions running her mind have settled into a comfortable routine: Joy at the console, a tidy Sense of Self built from good memories, and a belief that Riley is a good person. Then a demolition crew arrives in the middle of the night. A red "Puberty" alarm goes off, the console is rebuilt, and four new emotions move in.
The film, directed by Kelsey Mann, came out in June 2024, nine years after Pete Docter's Inside Out. It follows a weekend hockey camp where Riley is trying to impress the high school team while learning that her two best friends will be going to a different school. That small story drives a big one inside her head, as Anxiety takes control and pushes the original five emotions out. This page covers every emotion from both films, the humans in Riley's life and the stranger residents of her mind.
- Studio
- Pixar Animation Studios
- Director
- Kelsey Mann
- Released
- June 2024
- Previous film
- Inside Out (2015, dir. Pete Docter)
- Spin-off
- Dream Productions (Disney+ series)
The original five emotions
The first film introduced the five core emotions that have run Riley's Headquarters since she was a baby. Each has a colour, a personality and a job. In the sequel they're a well-drilled team, which makes it all the more jarring when they find out they aren't enough for a teenager.
Joy
Leader of Headquarters · Yellow
Joy is the glowing, endlessly upbeat emotion who has always run the console. In the first film she learns that she can't keep Riley happy all the time, and that Sadness has a purpose. In the sequel she has a new blind spot: she's been quietly sending bad memories to the back of Riley's mind so that only good ones shape Riley's sense of self. Her arc is about accepting that a person is made of all their experiences, including the painful ones, and her speech about how hard it is to be a person is the emotional peak of the film.
- Voice
- Amy Poehler
Sadness
Original emotion · Blue
Sadness is round, bespectacled and soft-spoken, and in the first film she turns Riley's memories blue just by touching them. That film's big turn is Joy realising that Sadness is what lets Riley ask for help and be comforted. In the sequel she's steadier and more sure of herself, though she still apologises too much.
- Voice
- Phyllis Smith
Anger
Original emotion · Red
Anger is a short, square, red emotion in a shirt and tie whose head bursts into flames when he loses his temper. He's obsessed with fairness and reads the newspaper headlines of Riley's day like a disgruntled commuter. He's mostly played for laughs, but he's also the one who refuses to let anyone push Riley around.
- Voice
- Lewis Black
Fear
Original emotion · Purple
Fear is a tall, thin, purple worrier in a bow tie who keeps lists of every hazard Riley might face. His job is physical safety: falling, choking, electrical cords. Anxiety's arrival is pointed in his case, because her worries are about the future and about other people, things Fear never thought to cover. He's voiced by a new actor in the sequel.
- Voice
- Tony Hale (Bill Hader in Inside Out)
Disgust
Original emotion · Green
Disgust is a stylish, eye-rolling green emotion who protects Riley from being poisoned, physically or socially. She keeps Riley away from broccoli and from embarrassing outfits, and her sharp judgment of what's cool makes her the original emotion most attuned to teenage life. In the sequel she's the one who notices first how much the rules of fitting in have changed. She's also recast for the second film.
- Voice
- Liza Lapira (Mindy Kaling in Inside Out)
The new emotions in Inside Out 2
The new arrivals are the reason most people come to this film. They aren't villains; each of them is something a 13-year-old genuinely needs. The trouble is that they show up all at once, they're very good at their jobs, and one of them decides the old team is in the way.
Anxiety
New emotion · Orange · Main antagonist
Anxiety is a wiry orange bundle of energy with frazzled hair and a wide, strained smile. She arrives with suitcases full of plans, takes over the console, and bottles up the original emotions so she can prepare Riley for every bad thing that might happen at hockey camp. Her intentions are protective: she wants Riley to make the team and keep her friends. But she drives Riley to lie, to snoop and to ditch her best friends, and she rebuilds Riley's sense of self around the belief "I'm not good enough." The climax, in which Anxiety is spinning so fast she can't stop, is one of the clearest depictions of a panic attack in a family film.
- Voice
- Maya Hawke
Envy
New emotion · Teal
Envy is the smallest emotion, a tiny teal figure with huge, shining eyes who gazes at everything Riley doesn't have yet: the older girls' confidence, their skills, their gear. She's Anxiety's most devoted sidekick and mostly plays as comedy, but she also points at something real about being 13, which is the constant measuring of yourself against the people just ahead of you.
- Voice
- Ayo Edebiri
Ennui
New emotion · Indigo
Ennui is a long, droopy, indigo emotion with a French accent who spends most of the film lying on the couch. She controls the console from her phone without bothering to get up. She's responsible for Riley's eye-rolls and her carefully bored expressions, which are a kind of armour. She barely moves, but she gets some of the film's best laughs and has one important moment when it counts.
- Voice
- Adèle Exarchopoulos
Embarrassment
New emotion · Pink
Embarrassment is a huge, gentle, pink emotion who blushes deeper with every awkward moment and hides inside his hoodie, pulling the drawstrings tight. He hardly speaks for most of the film. He's also the new emotion who shows the most kindness to the original team, and his quiet decency makes him an easy favourite with younger viewers.
- Voice
- Paul Walter Hauser
Nostalgia
Cameo emotion
Nostalgia is an elderly, misty-eyed emotion who shuffles into Headquarters ready to get sentimental about memories that are barely a week old. The others firmly send her back with the reminder that it's too early for her. It's a short joke with a bittersweet edge: she'll have plenty of work later in Riley's life.
- Voice
- June Squibb
Riley and the humans
The real-world plot is deliberately small: three days at a hockey camp. That makes the people around Riley matter a great deal, because every look and remark from them sets off a storm in Headquarters.
Riley Andersen
Protagonist · 13 years old
Riley is a hockey-mad girl who, in the first film, moved with her parents from Minnesota to San Francisco at 11. In the sequel she's a newly minted teenager invited to a training camp run by the high school team, the Firehawks. She wants to make the team, impress the older players and keep her best friends, all at once. Watching her make choices she doesn't recognise, and then forgive herself for them, is what gives the film its weight.
- Voice
- Kensington Tallman (Kaitlyn Dias in Inside Out)
Bree and Grace
Riley's best friends
Bree and Grace are Riley's two closest friends and hockey teammates. On the drive to camp they let slip that they'll be going to a different high school, which is the news that sends Anxiety into overdrive. Riley's treatment of them over the weekend, and her attempt to make it right, is the film's real emotional thread.
- Voices
- Sumayyah Nuriddin-Green (Bree), Grace Lu (Grace)
Valentina "Val" Ortiz
Firehawks star player
Val is the confident, friendly older player Riley idolises. Nothing Val does is unkind; Riley's emotions simply blow up every interaction into a test she has to pass. She's a good example of how the film avoids villains in the human world.
- Voice
- Lilimar
Coach Roberts
Firehawks coach
Coach Roberts runs the camp and quietly evaluates every player. Riley's attempts to win her approval, including a moment of snooping, push the plot toward its climax.
- Voice
- Yvette Nicole Brown
Mom and Dad
Jill and Bill Andersen
Riley's loving, slightly goofy parents play a smaller part in the sequel, mostly at the start and end of camp. In the first film the camera visits their heads too, where Mom's emotions are led by Sadness and Dad's by Anger.
- Voices
- Diane Lane (Mom), Kyle MacLachlan (Dad)
Inside the mind: other characters
Both films are full of the workers and oddities of Riley's mind. The sequel adds a vault of buried secrets and childhood favourites Riley would rather forget.
Bing Bong
Imaginary friend · Inside Out
Bing Bong is Riley's childhood imaginary friend: part elephant, part cat, part dolphin, made of cotton candy and crying sweets. He helps Joy find her way back to Headquarters and gives himself up in the Memory Dump so she can escape. It's one of Pixar's most remembered sad moments.
- Voice
- Richard Kind
Lance Slashblade
Video game hero · The Vault
Lance is a brooding hero from a video game Riley had a crush on, now locked in the Vault. His stiff, low-polygon movements are one of the film's best visual jokes.
- Voice
- Yong Yea
Bloofy and Pouchy
Preschool cartoon pair · The Vault
Bloofy is the hyper-cheerful 2D host of a cartoon Riley loved as a little kid, and Pouchy is his talking bum bag full of handy items. Riley is mortified by them now, which is exactly why they're locked away.
- Voices
- Ron Funches (Bloofy), James Austin Johnson (Pouchy)
Deep Dark Secret
The Vault
A large shadowy figure locked in the Vault, guarding something Riley never wants anyone to know. The film plays it for a small, very relatable joke.
The Mind Workers
Memory and dream staff
Riley's mind is staffed by workers who sort memories, clear out forgotten ones and run Dream Productions, the studio that makes her dreams. They're the setting of the Disney+ spin-off series of the same name.
Inside Out 2 voice cast
Three of the original five emotion actors returned for the sequel. Fear and Disgust were recast, and Riley has a new voice now that she's older.
| Character | Inside Out 2 (2024) | Inside Out (2015) |
|---|---|---|
| Joy | Amy Poehler | Amy Poehler |
| Sadness | Phyllis Smith | Phyllis Smith |
| Anger | Lewis Black | Lewis Black |
| Fear | Tony Hale | Bill Hader |
| Disgust | Liza Lapira | Mindy Kaling |
| Anxiety | Maya Hawke | — |
| Envy | Ayo Edebiri | — |
| Ennui | Adèle Exarchopoulos | — |
| Embarrassment | Paul Walter Hauser | — |
| Nostalgia | June Squibb | — |
| Riley Andersen | Kensington Tallman | Kaitlyn Dias |
| Mom | Diane Lane | Diane Lane |
| Dad | Kyle MacLachlan | Kyle MacLachlan |
| Bing Bong | — | Richard Kind |
For more on how animated casting works, and why sequels sometimes change voices, see our voice acting guide.
How Riley's mind works
The films build a consistent map of the mind, and knowing its parts makes the sequel easier to follow:
- Headquarters is the control room where the emotions work the console. Whoever is at the controls shapes Riley's reactions.
- Memories are glowing orbs coloured by the emotion attached to them. The first film's core memories powered the Islands of Personality: Family, Friendship, Hockey, Honesty and Goofball.
- Beliefs and the Sense of Self are the sequel's big addition. Memories send threads down to a well of beliefs, which grow into a glowing structure that represents who Riley thinks she is. Anxiety's version is built from fear of not measuring up.
- The back of the mind is where Joy has been sending unwanted memories. The emotions travel there to retrieve them, which is the sequel's version of the first film's journey.
- The Vault holds secrets and embarrassing childhood favourites.
What the emotions are really about
The first film argued that sadness isn't a problem to fix. The sequel makes a similar case about anxiety: it's useful in small doses, harmful when it takes over, and impossible to banish. The ending doesn't defeat Anxiety. It sits her down in a chair, calmer, and lets every emotion contribute to a messier, truer sense of self.
That's why the film landed so widely with teenagers and adults alike. It became one of the highest-grossing animated films ever made. Schools and therapists have used it to talk about mental health, much as families use Bluey to talk about feelings with younger children. If you like casts built around personified ideas and a single relatable lead, Encanto covers similar ground about family pressure, and Frozen explores fear and self-control through Elsa. You'll find every other Pixar lead in our Pixar characters guide.
Where to start
- Inside Out (2015) — introduces the five core emotions, Bing Bong and the map of Riley's mind. The sequel assumes you've seen it.
- Riley's First Date? (2015) — a short that pops into Mom's and Dad's heads as well as Riley's.
- Inside Out 2 (2024) — the new emotions, hockey camp and the Sense of Self.
- Dream Productions — the Disney+ spin-off series about the studio that makes Riley's dreams, set between the two films.
All Inside Out character names A–Z
A–B
- Anger — Original emotion
- Anxiety — New emotion
- Bing Bong — Imaginary friend
- Bloofy — The Vault
- Bree — Riley's friend
C–E
- Coach Roberts — Firehawks
- Dad (Bill Andersen) — Human
- Deep Dark Secret — The Vault
- Disgust — Original emotion
- Embarrassment — New emotion
- Ennui — New emotion
- Envy — New emotion
F–J
- Fear — Original emotion
- Grace — Riley's friend
- Joy — Original emotion
L–N
- Lance Slashblade — The Vault
- Mom (Jill Andersen) — Human
- Nostalgia — Cameo emotion
P–V
- Pouchy — The Vault
- Riley Andersen — Protagonist
- Sadness — Original emotion
- Valentina "Val" Ortiz — Firehawks
Frequently asked questions
What are the new emotions in Inside Out 2?
Four new emotions take over Headquarters when Riley hits puberty: Anxiety, Envy, Ennui and Embarrassment. A fifth, Nostalgia, turns up briefly and is told she's arrived far too early. They join the original five: Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear and Disgust.
How many emotions are in Inside Out 2?
Ten in total: the five originals (Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear, Disgust) plus Anxiety, Envy, Ennui, Embarrassment and a cameo from Nostalgia. Nine of them share the console for most of the film; Nostalgia is sent back to wait her turn.
Is Anxiety the villain of Inside Out 2?
She's the antagonist, but not a villain. Anxiety genuinely wants to protect Riley from failing and being left out. The problem is that she does it by imagining every possible disaster and steering Riley's whole personality around them. The film ends with her learning to take a seat rather than being defeated.
How old is Riley in Inside Out 2?
Riley is 13 in Inside Out 2, about to start high school. She was 11 in the first film, when her family moved from Minnesota to San Francisco.
Who voices Fear and Disgust in Inside Out 2?
Tony Hale voices Fear and Liza Lapira voices Disgust in the sequel. In the 2015 original they were voiced by Bill Hader and Mindy Kaling. Amy Poehler (Joy), Phyllis Smith (Sadness) and Lewis Black (Anger) returned in their roles.
Is Bing Bong in Inside Out 2?
No. Riley's imaginary friend Bing Bong belongs to the first film, where he fades away in the Memory Dump so Joy can escape. The sequel nods to Riley's childhood in other ways, through the Deep Dark Secret vault and its forgotten characters.