SPOILERS AHEAD for Toy Story 5. 'If you’re both a fan of Taylor Swift and Pixar, the last couple of months might have been an exhilarating rollercoaster (if you’ve been following what’s been going on, that is). As someone who is terminally online, I’ve been following the rumors of Taylor Swift having a Toy Story 5 song since the first big clue dropped in May. The song, titled “I Knew It, I Knew You,” is amazing, obviously, but something about it just didn’t hit right with me. (Image credit: Pixar)Taylor Swift’s Toy Story 5 Song Played With My Heart By the time Taylor Swift confirmed she’d be on the Toy Story 5 soundtrack, there was a month of lead-up, and I started to make it out to be more than it ultimately was. I had hopes that it would play during the movie itself and might coincide with Jessie reuniting with her other kid, Emily – perhaps as a callback and bookend to the Sarah McLachlan song “When She Loved Me”. I was pretty convinced it wouldn’t be an end credits song too after writer/director Andrew Stanton said when he said he's seen “the song on the end” and it was “not Taylor Swift” after the rumor started spreading. I figured that meant it was definitely during the movie, and Stanton was being cheeky, hinting at that.Then, in an effort to make the experience of Toy Story 5 a fresh experience for myself, I even decided not to listen to the song in its entirety until I watched the movie on opening night. But then I found myself a bit disappointed when the song ultimately turned out to be a song in the credits rather than coinciding with a pivotal moment in the movie. Jessie doesn’t reunite with Emily as I imagined the song was suggesting. Instead, the song isn’t really talking necessarily about the events of the movie at all and feels more like Swift was inspired by the sequel to write something that can stand on its own. I know I wasn’t alone in theorizing this because I saw other Swifties/Pixar fans guessing how the song would connect with Toy Story 5, and that’s not how things played out. (Image credit: Pixar)Why I’ll Get Over It “I Knew It, I Knew You” is not what I expected, but in some ways that’s actually a good thing. I really enjoyed Toy Story 5 – especially for its cathartic Jessie story, and it didn’t need a Taylor Swift song in the middle of it in order to be made better. I also didn’t need Jessie to reunite with Emily either. The fact that she found a lunchbox instead that led her to learn Emily had named her own daughter after her made me teary-eyed. I wasn’t expecting the reveal, and it was all the more sweet because of that.I’m happy there’s a Toy Story 5 song written by one of my favorite artists, even if the rollout had me super confused. I wish I didn’t have to feel like I was a toy being spun around by a five-year-old because Taylor Swift is part of the movie, but I guess I assumed a lot of things, too. Anyways, I absolutely didn’t know it, but the new Toy Story 5 is definitely one of my favorite 2026 movies, so there’s a happy ending to it all, either way.