Hot Take: Lightyear should’ve been a love story.
Keep everything the same as it was, but change one thing: Buzz and Alisha being lovers instead of just “best friends”. Like okay yeah sure make Alisha a badass lesbian and all, but WHAT IF—
Imagine if they weren’t exactly dating, but you could tell they were romantically involved, you could see it in the way Alisha teased Buzz for his narrating, the way he looked at her when she refused to let him court-martial himself when they got stranded on T’Kani Prime.
Imagine if their arguments had that underlying tension where the silence was louder than any “i love you” they could possibly say.
Imagine if Alisha had to watch the love of her life leave her time and time again, never knowing if he was going to return, if she should “just move on, Commander” or keep waiting for something, or someone, that might never come.
we got to see how buzz realized he passed his entire life by when he finds out Alisha died, but what if it meant more, what if he had to watch Alisha move on without him, grow old with a family of her own, but every time he would come back, the furtive looks would still be there, the tender moments in the briefing room turned awkward, and Buzz still walked away.
what if in that hologram video she left him she tells him everything they had, everything they could've had, everything they lost. That she still loved him, even after all that time.
what if that realization hit him so hard he couldn’t move. What if he didn’t care if they got home, not anymore. He wished he could turn back time and go back to where they started, not what he knew what mattered. What really mattered.
it was never the mission. It was always Alisha.