Inside Out 2 Reveals Newest Emotion: Slow-Creeping Existential Dread
by Megan Dang
LOS ANGELES, CA — Pixar has just announced the newest addition to Inside Out 2’s zany cast of personified emotions: Slow-Creeping Existential Dread.
Inside Out 2 follows beloved protagonist, Riley, as she blossoms into a young woman—an experience inevitably accompanied by abstractions of Kafkaesque horror. Now that Riley is 13, she’s beginning to ponder about what every 13-year-old girl does: Is there a God? Am I a hologram? Does my singular voice make any difference in the monstrous echo chamber that America calls democracy?
These relatable quirky girl feelings are what make up the adorably wacky Slow-Creeping Existential Dread, who will be voiced by Matthew Morrison. When asked about the casting choice, director Kelsey Mann explained, “Nobody strikes primal, cold-blooded fear in the heart quite like Matthew. His deeply disturbed mind allows him to tap into the character perfectly.”
Like the other emotions in Inside Out, Slow-Creeping Existential Dread will have his own colored memory balls. “As you may remember from the first movie, Sadness had blue balls,” said Mann. “Anger’s balls were really red, and so on. Slow-Creeping Existential Dread will be bright orange to match the color of Riley’s Zoloft bottle.”
Pixar says Slow-Creeping Existential Dread will get Riley into all sorts of goofy hijinks: lying awake at night plagued by despair about the future, dissociating in the bathroom mirror, and binge-watching four hours of Family Guy clips on TikTok instead of actually watching Family Guy. Her fruity-ass enabler parents will be just as useless as last time while their little girl grieves the bleak state of the world they’ve left for her, eventually succumbing to the voices in her head.
