Character Analysis
Heroes don't always wear tights and capes.
Sometimes they wear drab turtlenecks and huge glasses like your Aunt Heather wore in the '80s. If Inside Out is Joy and Riley's coming of age story, it's Sadness's coming out story, as her indispensability and capacity for leadership are finally revealed by the film's end.
I Guess That's Why They Call It the Blues
Before we get to all the ways that Sadness rocks, let's rewind just a bit. Sadness spends most of the movie as a whiny, morose, low-energy killjoy. (Not literally. If Sadness offed Joy, that would be an entirely different movie, one that most definitely would not be made by Pixar.)
Sadness finds the negative side to everything, and she can be a mini Meryl Streep at times, too. Check out what happens when Dad gets a call from work and has to leave:
SADNESS: Dad just left us. He doesn't love us anymore. That's sad.
Dramatic much?
Of course Dad still loves them, but this is how Sadness sees the world. Every time a door closes a window, well, a window stays tightly closed, too, because everything's horrible. When Sadness starts going haywire, touching Riley's memories and turning them blue, Joy quickly tries to put the kibosh on it. She also encourages Sadness to see the bright side of things for once:
JOY: You focus on what's going wrong. There's always a way to turn things around, to find the fun.
SADNESS: Yeah. Find the fun. I don't know how to do that.
JOY: Okay. Well, try to think of something funny.
SADNESS: Um…oh! Remember the funny movie where the dog dies?
Similarly, when Joy and Sadness are faced with the daunting task of returning to Headquarters by way of Long-Term Memory's labyrinth of corridors, Sadness tells Joy it's a bad idea because she'll get lost in there. Again, Joy encourages Sadness to keep her chin up:
JOY: Think positive!
SADNESS: Okay. I'm positive you will get lost in there.
While Sadness is indisputably zero fun to travel with, here's the thing: Sadness can't stop being sad, just like Joy can't stop being joyful, and we can't stop thinking about nachos. It's part of our identity. And it's our fault for skipping breakfast today.
The Accidental Empath
Tingeing Riley's memories with sorrow is just the first of several ways that Sadness impedes Joy's mission to restore Riley to perpetual happiness. When she and Joy are faced with trudging back to HQ through the seemingly endless halls of Long-Term Memory, Sadness makes Joy drag her by the ankle.
Later, when Joy finally escapes the Memory Dump, Sadness runs away, telling Joy to let her go because Riley's better off without her. There's that flair for the dramatic again. You know, for such a low-energy person, Sadness sure requires a lot of effort.
She's worth it, though, and here's why: Sadness is Riley's future. No, we don't mean that Riley's going to be a morose bag of sads for the rest of her life. We mean she's growing up, and, like it or not, sadness is a part of leaving childhood behind. In fact, it's a product of it.
Inside Out sees Riley dealing with loss for the first time: loss of her old home, her old school, and her old friends and teammates. Coming to grips with loss is a big step on the road to being an adult, and Riley needs Sadness to navigate those tricky, despondent, and appropriately blue waters.
Sadness makes her usefulness to Riley apparent as Riley develops more complex emotions, like nostalgia. It's nostalgia that makes Riley turn on the water works in front of her classmates, for example. Sadness also makes her usefulness known to Bing Bong and Joy when Bing Bong loses the homemade rocket ship he was going to use to take Riley to the moon one day:
SADNESS: I'm sorry they took your rocket. They took something that you loved. It's gone. Forever.
JOY: Sadness. Don't make him feel worse.
SADNESS: Sorry.
BING BONG: It's all I had left of Riley.
SADNESS: I bet you and Riley had great adventures.
BING BONG: Oh, they were wonderful. Once, we flew back in time. We had breakfast twice that day.
JOY: Sadness…
SADNESS: It sounds amazing. I bet Riley liked it.
BING BONG: She did. We were best friends.
SADNESS: Yeah, it's sad.
Bing Bong cries on Sadness's shoulder.
Bing Bong feels better and can carry on because Sadness shows that she gets it. In that moment, he needs somebody to listen and understand, and that's precisely what she's offering. Sadness admits to Joy soon after that she doesn't actually know what she did that was helpful—all she did was listen, she explains—but that doesn't diminish the importance of her role in the new, more mature version of Riley's emotional regime.
Of course, Joy doesn't understand why Sadness is important in that moment either. She does later, though, when Sadness helps her realize that it's possible, and even advantageous and downright healthy, for Riley to experience more than one emotion, and that she doesn't have to be happy 24/7.
It's Sadness's recollection of Riley's hockey Core Memory, one that Joy had always enjoyed as a solely happy moment, that turns on that lightbulb over Joy's head.
JOY: The hockey team showed up, and Mom and Dad were there cheering. Look at her, having fun and laughing. I love this one.
SADNESS: I love that one, too.
JOY: Atta girl! Now you're getting it!
SADNESS: Yeah. It was the day the Prairie Dogs lost the big playoff game. Riley missed the winning shot. She felt awful. She wanted to quit. Sorry. I went sad again, didn't I?
Yep, she went sad again—and she led Joy to an epiphany in the process: Riley's parents and teammates were only there in the first place because Riley was sad. Sadness and Joy aren't rivals, they're partners.
Boom. Joy, you just got Sadness-ed.
MVBP: Most Valuable (and Blue) Player
Ultimately, it's Sadness who saves the day and stops Riley from running away. Joy's confident that Sadness can remove the idea to escape to Minnesota from Riley's head, and she's right: Sadness unfastens the idea, reboots Riley's darkened control panel, and reunites Riley with her parents.
It's also Sadness that prompts Riley's tearful confession to her parents that she misses Minnesota with the power of 10,000 lakes. Much to Riley's surprise (and, we're going to assume, relief), her parents admit that they miss Minnesota, too. You know what that means—the Andersens are moving back to Minnesota.
Just kidding. They're going to stay in San Francisco (obvi), but now the Andersen clan knows how to communicate a little better. Sadness has forced them all to slow down, think about the challenges ahead, and reach out to one other for help.
Up in Headquarters, Sadness is now the frumpy blue heart of the team. With Joy and the rest of Riley's emotional squad by her side, she stands—okay, slouches—at the ready, poised to help Riley navigate the inevitable traumas of teenager-hood.
Sadness' Timeline