In both the Toy Story franchise and “Buzz Lightyear of Star Command”, a lot of the main
focus is put on the relationships between the characters - whether they be platonic, rivals
or even occasionally romantic. Unsurprisingly, Pixar’s newest film “Lightyear” is no exception,
and we’re here to look at and rank each of these relationships.
I’m Caleb with WickedBinge, and this is Lightyear Relationships: Healthy to Toxic.
Naturally, major spoilers ahead for the entirety of the movie. As for the list itself,
we’ll be starting with the healthiest relationships before moving onto the
ones that could use a bit - or a lot - of work. These relationships are The Healthy.
For our healthiest relationship of “Lightyear”, we had to go with Alisha and her wife, Kiko. Although
we only get a couple brief scenes with them, we can infer a lot from these scenes - namely that
they were able to create a happy life together despite less than ideal circumstances. While
they may have been of different ranks and part of different groups - with Alisha being a former
Space Ranger and Kiko being a member of the science crew - they seemed to work together well
as a couple. Really, the fact that they were able to raise a happy and successful son speaks volumes
about how successful they were as both a couple and as parents. While we weren’t able to see much
of it, the two were able to build a happy life together - and what could be healthier than that?
Following that, we have the grandmother-granddaughter relationship
of Alisha and Izzy. Again, not much of this relationship is shown to us on-screen,
with two of them only getting one real scene together. Still, the strong connection they
have is felt throughout the film. Just based on how Izzy talks about her grandmother,
it’s made clear that she greatly admires and respects her. Though Alisha was willing to tell
Izzy stories about her Ranger days and even teach her some things, she never seemed to
pressure Izzy to be like her, instead caring more about simply spending time with her granddaughter
and playing games with her. Unfortunately, while Alisha herself might never have pressured Izzy
to live up to the Hawthorne name, Izzy still tries to hold herself to that standard and
does seem to put a lot of pressure on herself. Again, this wasn’t necessarily Alisha’s fault,
but it does make their relationship less than perfect, as Izzy still most likely sees Alisha
as not only a loving grandmother but as a legacy she has to try and live up to.
Reaching the last of our Alisha-focused relationships, we’ve arrived at best friends
Buzz and Alisha. We should mention this first and foremost: although Alisha is technically
Buzz’s superior and Buzz has a bit of an ego, there never really feels like there’s
a power dynamic between the two of them. They truly do feel like a couple of close friends,
complete with bickering, inside jokes and friendly banter. They’re able to work off each
other extremely well, always having each other’s back when it comes to combat or outside dangers.
While Alisha can sometimes be a bit pushy and Buzz can be a bit dismissive, they both truly
do care about each other. One of the most notable moments of their friendship is when Alisha decides
that the chance to leave Tikana Prime isn’t worth sacrificing Buzz’s life. You could argue
“the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one”, but it still shows that she ultimately
wants Buzz to find happiness and peace with their situation just like she has. Even after accepting
Buzz’s choice, she makes sure that she has someone helping him deal with his time displacement,
giving him Sox. Though Buzz is firm in his desire to “complete the mission”, he never resents Alisha
for living her life or for being content to stay on the colony. He’s even shown to be happy for her
when he hears she’s engaged and later sees that she’s pregnant. This is further emphasized towards
the end of the film when Buzz becomes unwilling to correct his worst mistake knowing that doing so
would essentially erase Alisha’s happy life with her family - as well as the lives of everyone else
on the colony. Even after nearly a century, Buzz’s connection with Alisha is still incredibly strong
and is a perfect example of a friendship that’s built to last - even after death.
Next up, we have the unexpected but still incredibly sweet friendship between Buzz and Sox.
Forget the classic pair of a boy and his dog, how about a man and his robo-cat? At first,
Buzz doesn’t seem to want much to do with Sox, being someone who enjoys working alone. But,
thanks to Sox’s kindness and sympathetic nature, the two are able to form a strong
connection eventually. Sox doesn’t just care about Buzz’s emotional state, but his safety too.
Though he also did it to partially save himself from being decommissioned,
Sox did tranquilize someone in order to protect Buzz, and later on even attacks a robot to try and
save Buzz. Buzz, in return, is very protective of Sox, growing to see him as more than just
a machine or an assistant. By the time the film ends, you truly feel like the two are best buds,
easily making it one of the most endearing relationships of the film.
Finishing up the Healthy Relationships, we have the Junior Defense Force trio.
This being Izzy, Mo and Darby. Although the latter two members may not always get along,
as we’ll explain in a moment, as a trio the Junior Defense Force do come off as good friends.
While they may not always be successful, they do at the very least try to work
together and refuse to leave anyone behind. Though not the strongest or brightest,
they’re able to accomplish quite a bit together and with Izzy being both the encouraging leader
and the sort of middle-man that’s keeping Mo and Darby from bickering too often,
this trio is able to land on the fairly healthy side of things when it comes to being a team.
Moving on, we’ve arrived at the tier that’s right in the middle of healthy and
toxic. These are the Grey Relationships.
Starting off this tier is the friendship between Buzz and Izzy. With how similar Izzy is to her
grandmother in terms of personality, you would think that these two would hit it off right away,
becoming just as close as Buzz and Alisha were. Unfortunately, that just isn’t the case.
While he’s hopeful once he learns of her lineage, it doesn’t take Buzz long for him to start looking
down on her simply for being a rookie. It doesn’t help that Izzy’s youth and overeagerness further
adds to the distance first felt between them, making it hard for Buzz to completely trust
her. Instead, he only wants her to stay safe, essentially still seeing her as that kid he
saw in Alisha’s holo-message. Though they keep their sort of mentor-student
relationship throughout the film, they are able to eventually bond. Izzy is able to help ease
Buzz’s guilt when he feels like he failed to give Alisha a chance to be a Ranger again, telling him
that Alisha’s life still mattered. Later on, when Izzy messes up their mission big time,
though Buzz is obviously disappointed and upset, he doesn’t start yelling at Izzy for this mistake.
He even encourages her later on, admitting that he needs her help and letting her know that he needs
her, not her grandmother. While it may have been a bit bumpier than some of the other relationships
we’ve talked about so far, it’s positive turn-around puts it just at the edge of grey.
Keeping the focus on the new Team Lightyear, we wanted to touch on Buzz’s relationship with
the defense trio as a whole. We’ll try not to repeat ourselves too much here but yeah,
once Buzz realized they were all rookies, his trust in them dwindled fast. Though he didn’t
want to see them be hurt or killed, it was obvious that he was annoyed and frustrated at being forced
to drag them around. In fact, Buzz was so focused on getting them out of his hair that he forgot
to tell them about the stealth mode time-limit, leading to the trio getting put into unnecessary
danger. Though Buzz is able to form a bond with Izzy over time, he struggles quite a bit to bond
with Mo and Darby. Even so, he’s willing to give them a compliment when they do well,
share a meal with them and even tries his best to comfort Mo, opening up to them all about
his own past failures as a Ranger. As such, the trio are able to in turn respect Buzz and want
to do all they can to help him despite only just meeting him. It may not be the deepest friendship,
but you can understand why Buzz wanted to take them on as full-time teammates in the end.
Speaking of Buzz, we’ve now come to the professional relationship between Buzz and
his current commander, Burnside. Though really, we use the term ‘professional’ loosely, as neither
one of them seems to show a ton of respect towards each other at first. While Burnside calls himself
a fan of Buzz, even mentioning how he looked up to Buzz as a kid, he’s pretty dismissive and even a
bit callous when he tells Buzz that they’re shutting down his mission in order to focus
on the colony. As we stated in a previous video, while we may understand Burnside’s side of things,
he could have put a bit more care into discussing the topic with Buzz instead of simply forbidding
him from trying the test fuel again. As for Buzz, well, he obviously didn’t bother trying to respect
Burnside’s authority and didn’t seem to hesitate in stealing a ship once he realized he finally had
a chance at successfully breaking lightspeed. Buzz does eventually surrender and face responsibility
for this action, and Burnside in turn lets him lead the reformation of the Space Rangers Corps.
Admittedly, this turn-around does come out of nowhere, feeling more like a forced happy
ending than Burnside actually wanting to do something nice for Buzz or the two of them coming
to understand each other. As such, it doesn’t do much to boost this relationship’s ranking.
At the end of grey, we have the occasionally clashing relationship of Darby and Mo. In one
of the first interactions we see from these two, we see them lightly bickering and questioning
each other’s goals - that being “kill robots” and “don’t die”, emphasizing their differences
in personality. After that, we see Darby chiding Mo for being what she considers “a
quitter” and in all honesty, these two scenes sum up their relationship pretty well. They may say
opposites attract, but that isn’t so in this case. While Mo may not have much malice towards Darby,
being more confused by her than anything else, Darby is clearly annoyed and aggravated with Mo
for most of the film. She even says to his face that he’s the last person she’d want to be in
a life-or-death situation with. We can’t say that the two outright hate each other,
as they are able to work together and help each other out when they need to.
However, you never really get the feeling that these two would be friends if outside
forces hadn’t pushed them together, which is why they land so close near the bottom.
Finally, we have the relationships that have very little good to them.
These relationships are the Toxic.
Before we get to the main relationship of this tier, we had to touch on the fractured friendship
between Zurg and Sox. While essentially the Buzz and Sox relationship from an alternate timeline,
it’s made clear that any connection they might have had isn’t quite as strong as they used to be.
Although Zurg keeps Sox around, he’s let Sox get damaged over the years,
not even trying to fix him up despite having an entire ship filled with equipment and resources
at his disposal. When he meets past!Buzz and sees that he nearly isn’t as obsessed or as selfish
as Zurg is when it comes to fixing his mistakes, Sox ends up tranquilizing Zurg, not really caring
if he’s going against his own Buzz and even saying that he likes the “new Buzz” better.
When Zurg wakes up from this attack, he not only goes after Buzz but goes out of his way to destroy
his timeline’s Sox, calling the cat a traitor and essentially putting the final nail in the coffin
of what was their former friendship. It really is sad to see how this version of these two ended up,
giving what was otherwise still a pretty sweet relationship a bit of tragedy to it.
Finally, our Gold Medal of Toxicity is naturally going to Buzz and Zurg. AKA
Buzz and his older alternate-timeline self. Talk about taking the “Man VS Self” theme to the next
level… Looking at these two, it almost feels like a sort of retread of Carl and Charles Muntz
from “Up”. Despite Zurg essentially kidnapping his younger self, the two Buzzes start off on
the same page with Zurg being pretty cordial towards Buzz. However, once their differences
in personality become clear, Zurg’s inner darkness is shown in how okay he is with destroying Buzz,
if it means finally completing his mission. While Buzz does try to convince his older self to stop,
it only takes him a few minutes to essentially see Zurg as a lost cause and he doesn’t bother trying
to talk him down again. Although technically being the same person, they both become more
than willing to destroy the other, not really having any hesitations when it comes to their
respective attempted kill-shots. Like with Zurg and Sox, it’s almost tragic in a way with how
quickly they turn against each other and how hostile they become. For these reasons, this
twist on the hero-villain dynamic easily earns the title of Most Toxic Lightyear Relationship.
But let us know in the comment section if you agree with our ranking,
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