In the beginning, it was just a punchline, a gag. The original Toy Story (1995) ended with a scene in which Woody and Buzz, having patched over their differences, sit in Andy’s room on Christmas Day, waiting to find out what the newest additions to the household will be. Woody, seeing that Buzz is nervous, teases him by saying, “Now Buzz, what could Andy possibly get that is worse than you?” Suddenly they hear a dog bark, as Andy’s voice comes from downstairs: “Wow, a puppy!” Woody and Buzz give each other startled looks, and the film cuts to black. Roll credits.
Toy Story 2 (1999) played with this final-act twist by introducing the puppy — now named Buster — as the sort of mess-maker that you’d expect, based on the first film’s closing lines. But then we learn that the dog is actually friendly with the toys, and that he has even been trained to obey Woody’s commands.
Jump ahead a decade or so to Toy Story 3. Andy is about ten years older than he was when we first met him, and the toys must cope with the fact that the boy they’ve known and loved has quite possibly outgrown them. But what about Buster? Well, a TV spot released just yesterday answers that question: Buster, like everyone else, is ten years older too. But unlike Andy, who is still very much a student or “young man” — and unlike the toys, who are eternally youthful provided they don’t get damaged too much (Woody, after all, was created back in the 1950s) — Buster is now old and tired. He’s on his last legs. He’s a senior citizen, as dogs go.
I don’t know where the filmmakers are going to go with this, exactly, but it occurs to me that this could be one of the film’s more poignant elements. Death comes to us all in the end — a fact that was hinted at in Toy Story 2 — but for some, such as Buster, it may come a whole lot more quickly, and inevitably.
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