Carl's Date

Originally meant to be part of the Disney+ Dog Days series, Carl's Date was put before Elemental and is also the final entry related to 2009s Up after the death of Carl Fredricksen's voice actor Ed Asner in 2021. The Pixar short sees Carl decide to go on his first date since the death of his wife but not entirely sure how to prepare himself. With help from Dug, though many of his efforts start out as dog related, Carl eventually realizes that he doesn't have to go too extreme and something simple will be best. Before he goes out on his date, to which he brings Dug as backup, he assures a picture of his late wife, Ellie, that she will always be his girl and that it's the start of a new adventure. This final epilogue to the Up franchise not only serves as a wonderful way to say goodbye to Carl, but especially to the long and incredible life of Asner. Joining Asner is Bob Peterson coming back to not only voice Dug but getting to write the final story to the same franchise he cowrote in 2009. Even if this was not meant to be the last project related to Up, the performance from Asner and the writing for him definitely feels so well done. Dug, as always, is fun thanks to Peterson's performance and his interactions with Carl will always be sweet. His writing is just incredibly sweet, emotional, and manages to round out the key aspects to Carls' character since the original movie. It also helps that, this being from Pixar, the animation is perfect and when you combine it with the music from Andrea Datzman you get something quite tearful and complete and all just from a short film with very little settings. Ed Asner had a very long and incredible career that began in 1957, so to end with Carl's Date is a perfect sendoff.