TOTK’s ending encapsulates one of The Legend of Zelda’s biggest issues

[Ed. note: Spoilers follow for the ending of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.]

Tears Of The KingdomThe game ends where it started. Ganondorf defeats. Zelda returns, and she regains her position on the throne. Link even gets his arm back. Link’s motley team of companions that he gathered on his quest come together and pledge loyalty to the Crown. Zelda promises to devote herself to maintaining the peace in Hyrule.

Of course, we know that she won’t succeed. The inevitability of a new Legend of Zelda game, a new iteration of Ganon threatening the princess and the world and being stopped by Link, is so obvious that it’s been canonized within the fiction itself. The three are locked in a cycle of reincarnation, driven in-universe by mysterious divine forces, and out of universe by the franchise’s ever-growing popularity.

That cycle is the great tragedy beneath the entirety of The Legend of Zelda’s narrative. But yet. Tears Of The Kingdom’s ending acts as if preserving things entirely how they were before is a grand victory. Returning to the previous status quo is winning.

Image: Nintendo EPD/Nintendo via Polygon

You can also read about it here The Legend of Zelda’s status quo is running thinner every year. Every year, the status quo gets thinner. Tears Of The KingdomWhen the game was announced, the glimpse of a Zelda with short hair in the trailer made many wonder if Nintendo intended to use the sequel as a way to introduce a princess that could be played. Her story remains the same. The Master Sword has more agency. In the scene where it appears to her in the past, Zelda says that it “traveled through time to find me and recover [its] strength,” implying an intentional journey, while she was simply “sent” back by forces unknown.

She will return to the throne when she comes back. In being stranded in Hyrule’s early years and meeting Rauru, the founder of the kingdom, she has learned that she has a ruler’s bloodline stretching back as far as it can go, and possibly before that, if the rumors of the Zonai’s divine blood are to be believed. They repeat the vows of loyalty the previous sages made to Rauru almost verbatim. The game was not advertised in my home country because the queen died. Anti-monarchy protestors at her successor’s coronation were subject to arrests.

There’s no hint in The Legend of Zelda that anyone questions her right to absolute rule — other than Ganon. Zelda’s character is portrayed as a completely benevolent leader. The word peace is used casually by those who are in charge, but Zelda wants it. Still, the only threat to that is, as Mineru puts it in expository dialogue, a “great evil emerging from the desert.” This laughably loaded phrase and the racist tropes that have always underpinned Ganon’s story, like the gendered aspects of Zelda’s repetitive role in the narrative, appear to skate by simply because this has been going on so long that mentioning them feels blasé.

Tears Of The Kingdom does bring in its own, less well-trodden themes — before discarding them in favor of a neat conclusion. For instance, the game could have said something intriguing about body parts. Link gains an arm after losing one; Zelda changes herself completely; Mineru can separate her spirit from a robot that she lets Link pilot.

Image: Nintendo EPD/Nintendo via Polygon

Instead of addressing the long-term effects of the changes, or even their implications in terms thematically, the authors simply delete them. Mineru steps out of her constructed self and disappears, and Zelda’s revival is given a handwave explanation: The combined powers of her ancestors allowed her to do the impossible and return. Presumably, the same can be said for Link’s arm, although it’s never even acknowledged beyond a brief moment of surprise from our hero.

You can find out more about this by clicking here. Tears Of The Kingdom In the end, what it says about our bodies is that, in a tidy, happy ending they can only be one way. In the end, the body is a blemish that needs to be removed in the same way as the Demon. Like the rest of the narrative — like the rest of the franchise — it doesn’t celebrate anything changing.

The article on Tears of the Kingdom’s ending, critic Harper Jay asks if it’s “a story for our current times.” They argue that a bolder, more honest ending might have left Zelda trapped in her draconic form, never quite remembering why she is crying; that a bittersweet move like that would demonstrate that in order for evil to be defeated, there has to be a sacrifice that can’t be swept away by convenient magical abilities.

Image: Nintendo EPD/Nintendo via Polygon

Yes, I am in agreement Tears Of The Kingdom isn’t a story You can also find out more about the following: Our current time is only a part of a larger story You can also find out more about us on our website. our current times — one that says that clinging to the status quo is the equivalent of victory. It’s the story told to us by bosses who say their striking workers’ demands are “unrealistic.” It’s the story told by ineffective political leaders who refuse to challenge harmful government policy. It’s the story that motivates regressive, transphobic laws. It’s the story that allows for more oil drilling during the climate crisis.

It’s also a story that reflects the current corporate media landscape more broadly. Remakes, sequels, AI regurgitating the most average output of everything it’s been fed, 45 advertisement movies based on Mattel IP including the “grounded and gritty” Hot Wheels 0. Everything is something you’ve seen before, again, just bigger. Nintendo once used the success to its advantage. Ocarina Of Time Make Majora’s Mask, It’s a surprise and a unique tone. It didn’t happen this time.

What is the solution to these cycles? Tears Of The Kingdom isn’t interested in asking. It takes us back to the beginning so that we’re ready to do it all over again, leaving no room for the fact that its apparent victory is really its own kind of tragedy.