Hey, everyone! How’s it going? Today I’m here to review the drama Win or Lose, which brings us Pixar Animation Studios’ first-ever original long-form animated series, following a middle school softball team called the Pickles in the week leading up to their championship game.
The 8-episode series premiered on Disney+ on February 19, 2025, with episodes releasing weekly through March 12. Created and written by Carrie Hobson and Michael Yates, each episode runs approximately 25-30 minutes and tells the same week from a different character’s perspective. The series currently holds an impressive 89% on Rotten Tomatoes and an 8.0/10 rating on IMDb, marking a successful debut for Pixar’s venture into serialized storytelling.
What makes Win or Lose truly special is its unique visual storytelling approach. Each episode offers a look inside the off-the-field life of a character, revealing their funny, emotional and always relatable point of view in a unique visual style that shifts to match their personality and worldview. It’s a groundbreaking approach that showcases Pixar’s animation mastery while exploring the universal experience of adolescence through the lens of competitive sports.
Eight Stories, One Championship Week
The series revolves around a co-ed softball team at middle school named the Pickles in the week leading up to their big championship game, with each episode showing the perspective of each member in the same events, each reflected in a unique visual style. Rather than focus on the group of characters all at once, each episode will center on one character from their perspective, creating a tapestry of interconnected stories.
The genius of this narrative structure is how it reveals that everyone experiences the same events completely differently. What seems like a minor interaction to one character becomes a life-changing moment for another. The championship game serves as the anchor point, but the real drama happens in the spaces between practice and game day, in family dinners, bedroom conversations, and the quiet moments where these young people grapple with identity, friendship, and the pressure to succeed.
Each episode peels back another layer of the community surrounding the Pickles, showing how sports intersect with family dynamics, economic pressures, personal insecurities, and the complex social hierarchies of middle school. It’s a show that understands that for these characters, softball isn’t just a game; it’s a lens through which they view their entire world.
Coach Dan and the Adult Perspectives: Will Forte’s Grounded Leadership
Will Forte voices Coach Dan, bringing his signature blend of sincerity and subtle comedy to create a coach who genuinely cares about his players as people, not just athletes. Forte’s performance grounds the series in authentic adult perspective while never talking down to the young characters or the audience.
Coach Dan represents the kind of adult figure many of us wish we’d had during our own awkward middle school years. He’s dealing with his own personal challenges while trying to guide a group of kids through one of the most intense weeks of their young lives. Forte finds the perfect balance between authority figure and mentor, showing how the best coaches understand that their job extends far beyond teaching proper batting stance.
The episodes featuring adult perspectives, including parents and other community members, add depth and context to the children’s stories. These characters aren’t just obstacles or support systems; they’re fully realized people with their own hopes, fears, and relationships to the game and their roles in these kids’ lives.
The Pickles Players: A Diverse Team of Authentic Voices
The young voice cast, including Milan Elizabeth Ray, Ian Chen, and others, brings remarkable authenticity to their characters. Each player on the Pickles has their own distinct personality, family situation, and relationship to softball that feels specific rather than archetypal.
What’s particularly impressive is how the series handles the diversity of its characters without making that diversity feel tokenistic or forced. These are kids from different backgrounds, family structures, and economic situations who come together around their shared love of softball. Their interactions feel natural and unforced, capturing the way real middle schoolers navigate friendship, rivalry, and team dynamics.
The animation style shifts for each character’s episode perfectly complement the voice performances, creating a visual language that helps audiences understand how each character sees their world. Some episodes are more colorful and energetic, others more muted and introspective, reflecting the internal lives of the characters whose perspectives we’re following.
Visual Innovation: Animation That Serves Story
One of Win or Lose’s greatest achievements is how it uses animation style as a storytelling device. Each episode features a unique visual approach that reflects the perspective character’s personality and emotional state. This isn’t just visual flair for its own sake; it’s a sophisticated narrative technique that helps audiences understand these characters on a deeper level.
The animation styles range from hyperkinetic and colorful to more subdued and realistic, with some episodes incorporating elements that feel almost dreamlike or surreal when characters are dealing with particularly intense emotions. Pixar’s technical mastery is on full display, but it never overshadows the human stories at the series’ heart.
This approach also allows the series to explore themes and emotions that might be difficult to convey through traditional animation techniques. When a character is feeling overwhelmed, the world around them might become more chaotic and fragmented. When they’re focused and confident, everything might appear clearer and more vibrant.
Success on Disney+
Win or Lose has been praised as a successful debut for Pixar’s venture into serialized content, with the series currently holding 89% on Rotten Tomatoes. Critics have particularly noted how the show respects its young audience while creating content that appeals to adults, a hallmark of Pixar’s best work.
The series has been described as charming but compromised in some reviews, though the overall reception has been positive. Disney+ subscribers have embraced this first original Pixar series, with many praising its authentic portrayal of middle school dynamics and family relationships. The weekly release schedule has allowed audiences to savor each character’s unique perspective while building anticipation for the next episode.
Critics and audiences alike have noted how the series captures the intensity of middle school sports while never losing sight of the fact that these are still kids learning about themselves and their place in the world. It’s exactly the kind of thoughtful, character-driven content that Disney+ was designed to showcase.
If you love stories about growing up, team dynamics, and the way perspective shapes our understanding of the world, Win or Lose is the perfect series to follow weekly on Disney+. It’s a show that proves Pixar’s storytelling mastery translates beautifully to the small screen, offering the depth and emotional resonance we expect from the studio in a format that allows for even more character development.
Tags: Pixar animation, middle school sports, coming of age, Disney+ original, perspective storytelling
Summary: A brilliantly crafted series that uses innovative animation techniques and multiple perspectives to create the most authentic and emotionally resonant portrayal of middle school life in recent memory.
Series Details:
Number of Episodes: 8
Platform: Disney+ (US) / Disney+ (International)
IMDb Rating: 8.0/10
Genre: Animated Comedy-Drama
Protagonists: Milan Elizabeth Ray (Rochelle), Will Forte (Coach Dan), Ian Chen, Josh Thomson
Antagonist: Personal insecurities and competitive pressure (internal conflicts)