[Ed. note: Spoilers follow for the ending of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.]
Tears of the Kingdom ends with every little thing again the place it started. Ganondorf is defeated. Zelda returns and retakes her place on the throne. Hyperlink even regains his arm. The motley crew of helpers that he assembled on his journey comes collectively to pledge fealty to the crown. Zelda vows to dedicate herself to sustaining peace in Hyrule.
After all, we all know that she received’t succeed. The inevitability of a brand new Legend of Zelda recreation, a brand new iteration of Ganon threatening the princess and the world and being stopped by Hyperlink, is so apparent that it’s been canonized throughout the fiction itself. The three are locked in a cycle of reincarnation, pushed in-universe by mysterious divine forces, and out of universe by the franchise’s ever-growing reputation.
That cycle is the good tragedy beneath the whole lot of The Legend of Zelda’s narrative. And but, Tears of the Kingdom’s ending acts as if preserving issues completely how they have been earlier than is a grand victory. To win is to return to the established order.
![Queen Sonia stands in front of a copse of trees, facing the camera while speaking, in a cutscene from The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom](https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/AU5Pdx4Yd9fmw2ZfFOR9obRoe9U=/0x0:1280x720/1200x0/filters:focal(0x0:1280x720):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24801203/totk_queen_sonia_ending_loz.jpg)
Picture: Nintendo EPD/Nintendo by way of Polygon
However The Legend of Zelda’s established order is working thinner yearly. When Tears of the Kingdom was first introduced, a peek at a short-haired Zelda within the trailer had many people wondering if Nintendo would use the sequel to lastly introduce a playable princess. As a substitute, her story is identical because it ever was. Even the Grasp Sword is given extra company. Within the scene the place it seems to her up to now, Zelda says that it “traveled by time to search out me and get well [its] energy,” implying an intentional journey, whereas she was merely “despatched” again by forces unknown.
When she returns, after all, she returns to the throne. In being stranded in Hyrule’s early years and assembly Rauru, the founding father of the dominion, she has discovered that she has a ruler’s bloodline stretching again so far as it will possibly go, and presumably earlier than that, if the rumors of the Zonai’s divine blood are to be believed. The trendy-day sages repeat nearly verbatim the vow of loyalty that the earlier sages gave to Rauru. It is a recreation that skipped promoting in my nation, perhaps due to the loss of life of the queen. Anti-monarchy protestors at her successor’s coronation were subject to arrests.
There’s no trace in The Legend of Zelda that anybody questions her proper to absolute rule — apart from Ganon. Zelda is offered as a completely benevolent dictator. She needs peace, with out acknowledgement that that is a complicated word for these in energy to be throwing round so casually. Nonetheless, the one menace to that’s, as Mineru places it in expository dialogue, a “nice evil rising from the desert.” This laughably loaded phrase and the racist tropes which have at all times underpinned Ganon’s story, just like the gendered elements of Zelda’s repetitive position within the narrative, seem to skate by just because this has been happening so lengthy that mentioning them feels blasé.
Tears of the Kingdom does herald its personal, much less well-trodden themes — earlier than discarding them in favor of a neat conclusion. The sport ought to have had one thing fascinating to say about our bodies, for example. Hyperlink loses an arm and beneficial properties a prosthetic; Zelda transforms herself completely; Mineru is ready to separate her spirit and use a robotic assemble, one which she permits Hyperlink to pilot as a mech.
![The mech construct in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, which the sage Minaru has transferred her spirit into](https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/NYEJNfkCAwSgTxSwy3bjvyaxy-0=/0x0:1280x720/1200x0/filters:focal(0x0:1280x720):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24801211/totk_spirit_temple_minaru_mech.jpg)
Picture: Nintendo EPD/Nintendo by way of Polygon
However moderately than giving any consideration to the lasting impacts of those adjustments or their thematic implications, the writers merely erase them. Mineru steps out of her constructed self and disappears, and Zelda’s revival is given a handwave rationalization: The mixed powers of her ancestors allowed her to do the not possible and return. Presumably, the identical could be stated for Hyperlink’s arm, though it’s by no means even acknowledged past a short second of shock from our hero.
What Tears of the Kingdom finally says about our bodies is that in a neat, completely satisfied ending, they’ll solely exist a method. Prosthetics, scars, or deliberate modifications are blemishes that have to be erased in the identical sweep because the Demon King himself. Like the remainder of the narrative — like the remainder of the franchise — it doesn’t rejoice something altering.
In their excellent piece on Tears of the Kingdom’s ending, critic Harper Jay asks if it’s “a narrative for our present occasions.” They argue {that a} bolder, extra sincere ending may need left Zelda trapped in her draconic type, by no means fairly remembering why she is crying; {that a} bittersweet transfer like that may display that to ensure that evil to be defeated, there must be a sacrifice that may’t be swept away by handy magical talents.
![Link holds his prosthetic, infused arm, which he gained from Rauru, toward a twilit sky in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom](https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/wxq0jBeWUbDwlWcwuFI_YwDABWo=/0x0:1200x800/1200x0/filters:focal(0x0:1200x800):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24801214/totk_link_rauru_arm_zonai.jpg)
Picture: Nintendo EPD/Nintendo by way of Polygon
I agree that Tears of the Kingdom isn’t a narrative for our present occasions, however it’s a story from our present occasions — one that claims that clinging to the established order is the equal of victory. It’s the story instructed to us by bosses who say their placing employees’ calls for are “unrealistic.” It’s the story instructed by ineffective political leaders who refuse to problem dangerous authorities coverage. It’s the story that motivates regressive, transphobic legal guidelines. It’s the story that permits for more oil drilling in the course of the local weather disaster.
It’s additionally a narrative that displays the present company media panorama extra broadly. Remakes, sequels, AI regurgitating probably the most common output of every little thing it’s been fed, 45 advertisement movies based on Mattel IP together with the “grounded and gritty” Sizzling Wheels 0. All the pieces is one thing you’ve seen earlier than, once more, simply larger. As soon as, Nintendo used the success of Ocarina of Time to make Majora’s Masks, one thing shocking and tonally distinctive. This time, it didn’t.
What would break these cycles? Tears of the Kingdom isn’t interested by asking. It takes us again to the start in order that we’re able to do it once more, leaving no room for the truth that its obvious victory is absolutely its personal sort of tragedy.