Lightyear follows many of Pixar’s traditions, especially when it comes to Easter eggs and nods to other Pixar movies, including one teasing the studio’s next project, Elemental – and here’s where Pixar’s next movie Easter egg is in Lightyear. Pixar continues treating its audience to at least one movie per year, and 2022 saw the release of two very different stories: Turning Red, released directly on Disney+, and Lightyear, the first Pixar movie to be released in theaters since Onward.
Lightyear took the audience back to the Toy Story franchise to show the audience the movie that a young Andy watched in 1995 that made him a fan of the always great Buzz Lightyear. The movie, then, follows Space Ranger Buzz Lightyear (voiced by Chris Evans) as he explores a habitable planet with his commanding officer and crew, but after some dangerous encounters with the planet’s hostile lifeforms, they end up stranded on this planet. Buzz and company then try to find a way back home, but these attempts lead him to jump many years into the future, where he meets a new crew and comes across the evil Emperor Zurg (James Brolin), who hides a big secret.
Even though none of the characters from Toy Story appear in Lightyear, it has various references to the saga as well as the traditional Easter eggs and references in any Pixar movie, such as the Pizza Planet truck and A113. Another traditional Pixar Easter egg is the one teasing the following movie, in this case Elemental, but it’s not an easy one to find in Lightyear.
What Is Elemental? Everything We Know About Pixar's Next Movie
Lightyear’s Elemental Easter egg is very easy to miss, as it’s on-screen briefly and it’s blocked by one of the characters. The Easter egg can be found in the scene where Mo Morrison (Taika Waititi) gets snacks for the crew from the vending machine, and at the bottom of it, are bottles of Wade Water, featuring Elemental’s main character. Elemental will be Pixar’s 27th studio release and will be directed by Peter Sohn, who voiced Sox the robot cat in Lightyear, and is scheduled for a June 16 2023 release. Plot details about Elemental haven’t been revealed but accompanying the announcement of the movie’s release date was a piece of concept art showing the two main characters: a water-based male character and a fire-based female character, with the background characters representing the two other elements (earth and air).
Pixar has been hiding an Easter egg teasing its following movie in almost every one of its projects since Monsters Inc, with Cars being the only exception so far and Inside Out not getting one in the movie before due to changes in Pixar’s release schedule. The Easter egg teasing the next Pixar movie has become a must for the studio and is one that viewers immediately try to find, though in most cases (especially when it’s a new movie and not a sequel) it’s a bit difficult to catch. Lightyear continued this and many other Pixar traditions, and now it’s just a matter of waiting for Pixar to share more details about Elemental.