Inside Out 2

Plot

Two years after her move to San Francisco,[c] Riley has turned 13 and is about to enter high school. Her personified emotions-Joy, Sadness, Fear, Anger and Disgust -have since created a new section of Riley's mind called "Sense of Self", which houses memories and feelings that make up Riley's core personality. Joy, intending to fill the Sense of Self with only positive memories, has also invented a mechanism that launches any negative memories to the back of Riley's mind. Riley and her best friends Bree and Grace are invited to a weekend ice hockey camp where Riley hopes to qualify for her school's team, the Firehawks. On the night before the camp, a "Puberty Alarm" sounds off, and a group of mind workers barge into Headquarters to upgrade the emotion console.

The Emotions discover that Riley wildly overreacts to any inputs they make to the console. Four new emotions also arrive at Headquarters and introduce themselves: Envy, Embarrassment, Ennui, and Anxiety. Though initially friendly, the new and old emotions clash over their approaches; in particular, Joy thinks Riley should focus on having fun at the camp, while Anxiety wants her to win a spot on the team and make new friends, especially since Riley has learned that Bree and Grace will be going to a different high school.

While being led by Joy, Riley inadvertently causes the other campers to be collectively punished by the camp's strict director, Coach Roberts. Feeling that Riley needs to change her personality to fit in with the older players, Anxiety dumps the Sense of Self into the back of Riley's mind and has the old emotions captured and thrown into a memory vault. She and the other new emotions then use negative memories to create a new, corrupted Sense of Self and encourage Riley to make friends with popular hockey player Val, which strains her friendship with Bree and Grace. The old emotions escape the vault and split up; Sadness uses a recall tube to return to Headquarters while the others go to the back of Riley's mind to retrieve her old Sense of Self.

Sadness makes it back but is unable to prevent Riley from sneaking into Coach Roberts' office to read her notebook. Discovering from it that Coach doesn't consider Riley ready to become a Firehawk, Anxiety determines to take further control over her. The old emotions make it to the back of Riley's mind and get her Sense of Self from the top of a mountain made up of the bad memories deposited by Joy's mechanism. With no other way to get back in time, the emotions cause an avalanche of bad memories, which they ride back to Headquarters; however, the memories spill into Riley's Sense of Self, corrupting it further. Anxiety is shocked to discover that, despite her intentions, her cultivation of the new Sense of Self has caused it to evolve into one of self-doubt, leading to her frantically controlling Riley during a crucial hockey game. This results in her hogging the puck, missing most of her shots, and accidentally hurting Grace, getting her sent to the penalty box. Horrified, a frenzied Anxiety swarms the control console in a blinding whirlwind, causing an overwhelmed Riley to suffer a panic attack.

The old emotions finally return to Headquarters, and Joy convinces Anxiety that she doesn't need to make Riley change herself to have a better future. Anxiety relents, and the original Sense of Self is reinstalled, but Riley's attack persists. After the repentant Anxiety reiterates that she can't determine who Riley is, Joy realizes that the same, likewise, applies to her. She removes the first Sense of Self again, allowing for a new, complex, and varying Sense to form from all of Riley's positive and negative memories. Together, the emotions embrace this third Sense and stabilize it, finally allowing Riley to calm down and reconcile with Bree and Grace. Now in full control of her emotions for the first time, Riley actively calls for Joy to take command and finishes the game smiling.

Sometime later, Riley attends high school and becomes friends with Val and the other Firehawks while staying true to herself and maintaining her friendship with Bree and Grace. At lunch, she and the team wait around her phone for Coach to post the list of new Firehawks recruits. Now living in peace, the first and second generations of emotions work together to protect Riley's forever-changing Sense of Self. Riley checks her phone to see if her name is on the list[d] and looks at herself in the mirror with a proud smile.