By: Olivia Yu

In a key scene of the newly released Inside Out 2, two emotions have a conflict to prevent a young girl’s mind from becoming overwhelmed with anxiety.

The sequel, like the first film, revolves around Riley and her inner thoughts and emotions. However, this time, she’s facing the struggles of puberty. Her emotions are still portrayed through a variety of characters, but with some being new additions that we haven’t seen before. Anxiety, voiced by Maya Hawke, is introduced as a “wild-looking orange creature with a busy plume and a tendency to overreact,” as noted by the New York Times.

In this scene, Anxiety is directing a crowd of mind workers to create projections of everything that could go wrong in Riley’s upcoming hockey match taking place the next day. This results in Riley later “tossing in her sleep at each negative thought.”

The director of Inside Out 2, Kelsey Mann, had narrated this scene. As she spoke to the New York Times, she said, “I always envisioned this being a movie about anxiety taking over, and was reflecting on my own life and how my anxiety does that in me.”

As anxiety begins to overrun Riley’s mind and gets out of hand, Joy, voiced by Amy Poehler, infiltrates Anxiety’s plan and creates positive projections to alleviate her anxiety and cheer her up. She then attempts to encourage the mind workers to rise up against Anxiety, which brings up several film references such as Norma Rae, Jerry Maguire and a little bit of Network.