The Legend of Zelda has long been renowned for its blurred, complicated timelines and extensive history. Tears of the Kingdom is releasing soon and it may just blur things even more.
One of the most appealing characteristics of The Legend of Zelda games is their ability to integrate features of time travel in both gameplay and story. While it has given the games some serious depth, this has also made for quite the complicated history for those attempting to understand Hyrule.
Child Link, adult Link, past Link, future Link… Hylia, Zelda, Hilda, Sheik… Calamity, Demise, Ganon, Ganondorf…. Where do all of these timelines end? Where do they begin? Many Zelda fans have at least a brief understanding of Hyrule’s history and their favorite games’ spot within the lore.
However, many others struggle with the concept of various timelines that separate groups of Zelda games may belong to. They also may not understand how those timelines connect, or where the upcoming Tears of the Kingdom game fits within that complex web.
We have therefore compiled a brief explanation of how time travel has worked in some of the games, and how the Breath of the Wild sequel may have set itself up to integrate similar concepts.
A brief history of time travel in The Legend of Zelda
The Legend of Zelda is no stranger to breaking the boundaries of time and space. One of the first games that comes to most players’ minds when considering time travel in Zelda is Ocarina of Time, a game in which the central theme itself revolves around Link traversing time.
By using his ocarina, Link is able to travel to different locations and is later able to go back in time. This ability to travel between his adult and childhood years comes after he is pushed seven years into the future. Clearly, Ocarina of Time is all about muddling already confusing timelines.
In Majora’s Mask, Link must frequently use his ocarina to play the Song of Time so as to go back and try to prevent the end of the world. He is also able to use the ocarina to play the Song of Double Time, which conversely allows him to travel into the future.
Another important game to note featuring elements of timeline boundary crossing is Twilight Princess. This one stands out especially as Tears of the Kingdom’s own trailers seem to imply that the Breath of the Wild sequel has drawn on Twilight Princess’ lore for inspiration (for example, Ganondorf’s resurrection in Tears of the Kingdom mirroring his death in Twilight Princess).
In Twilight Princess, Link is able to visit an ancient version of the Temple of Time. The portal he goes through is known as the Door of Time, and it serves as a gateway between Hyrule and the Sacred Realm, a parallel world.
A Link Between Worlds is another especially strong example of time or space-bending within the Zelda series, as Link traverses an upside-down version of Hyrule known as Lorule. The surreal counterpart to Hyrule is also host to Hilda, Lorule’s very own Zelda.
One also cannot bring up any history of timeline-jumbling in Zelda without looking to the game that served as an origin point for the lore. In Skyward Sword, Link is able to hit Timeshift Stones so as to alter the time surrounding the respective stone. Following such a hit, each stone will revert the area around it so that it appears as it did in the past.
More importantly, Link himself uses the Gate of Time to go all the way back to Hylia’s Realm, a higher plane which existed thousands of years prior to the game’s current events. With all of this time travel and space traversal taking place in The Legend of Zelda, Breath of the Wild is actually the odd one out for not being as heavy with such themes. This could mean that Tears of the Kingdom will return to these darker, time-bending roots.
How Tears of the Kingdom could break Zelda’s timeline
Something that has been puzzling Zelda fans since Tears of the Kingdom’s earlier trailers is the strange music and voices that can be heard throughout. These almost sound as though they are playing in reverse, which could insinuate time travel.
The 2019 trailers for Tears of the Kingdom which were then titled simply as “Breath of the wild 2” reveals included some of these supposed hidden messages. When slowed or reversed, fans could discern lines like “help us please” over and over again.
I played that garbled part of the Zelda trailer backwards to see if it was a reversed message and it sounds kind of like "must kill us" or "must give us… you" pic.twitter.com/4YM3RvsTOD
— James Troughton 🌈 (@JDTroughton) February 9, 2023
Newer trailers for Tears of the Kingdom, including the most recent one, have similar creepy snippets of voice that sound as though they are muddled or reversed. Whether one believes the lines sound like “rescue us,” “help us,” or “kill us” when slowed down and examined is still undetermined, but the clear time-jumbled feel of them is enough to imply elements of time-traversal existing in the upcoming game.
One major mystery that has been boggling fans’ minds since the release of Tears of the Kingdom’s final trailer is Zelda herself. She appears to be calling out to Link, telling him that he must find her. At first glance, most viewers would interpret this as the usual rescue-the-princess trope in which the knight, Link, must find and save Zelda from wherever she is trapped within Hyrule.
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What if, however, Zelda is not trapped somewhere? What if Zelda is trapped someWHEN?
Zelda could be calling Link from another timeline
One player took to Reddit to share his discoveries after spending a while scouring Zelda’s background in the trailer to find her precise location. While he did in fact locate Zelda, there were still unanswered questions. If this is Zelda speaking from Tears of the Kingdom, where are the iconic sky islands that are coming with the game’s version of Hyrule?
If there are no sky islands, could this mean that Zelda is in another version of Hyrule? Is she in Breath of the Wild’s Hyrule, whereas Link is in Tears of the Kingdom’s? Is Tears of the Kingdom set in another Hyrule, or another time period for the same Hyrule? Regardless, Zelda remains central to each of these questions as she is the subject of yet another related mystery.
Who is the mysterious woman shown in the final Tears of the Kingdom trailer? While she does initially appear to be an unrelated character, upon closer inspection she actually looks… well, like she IS Zelda. Maybe not THAT Zelda, but a Zelda nonetheless. The female figure has blonde hair, is wearing the same circlet, has the same yellow “tear” around her neck as Zelda, has the same earrings, etc.
If she is Zelda, then she must be a different timeline’s Zelda. This would explain why the short-haired Zelda is searching for Link. He could be in the long-haired Zelda’s version of Hyrule. This would also explain the scene shown in one of the official Tears of the Kingdom trailers in which Link and Zelda appear to be falling out of one another’s grasps.
Maybe, just maybe, they are falling into separate Hyrulian timelines. One in which short-haired Zelda is princess, and another in which long-haired Zelda rules. This is all-too reminiscent of the parallel between Zelda and Hilda in A Link Between Worlds.
The distinction between Ganon and Ganondorf is another mystery that could be explained by separate timelines in Tears of the Kingdom.
In Breath of the Wild, Ganondorf does not make an appearance. Instead, Calamity Ganon does. This was more of a “spiritual essence” form as opposed to the physical, mortal form that Ganondorf presents Ganon as. Ganondorf himself (the emaciated body) was trapped underneath the castle in a death-like slumber as he had no strength left.
Tears of the Kingdom’s trailers show not just Ganon, but Ganondorf, seemingly coming back to life to face Link and Zelda. If there are separate timelines, Ganondorf could be alive in one while Ganon as the essence could be in the other (where the mortal body he takes on is still stuck in the deep slumber).
This would also explain why Ganondorf is seen with one of the tears in the final pre-launch Tears of the Kingdom trailer. That very tear may have been spotted in Breath of the Wild by eagle-eyed fans atop a Gerudo Champion’s grave. The red tear could then be yet another possible insinuation of two different timelines.
Tears of the Kingdom’s tears themselves then present an interesting question. Could the game’s title itself imply time travel or jumping between timelines?
Tear could also have a double meaning, such as a tear through time or space. Even without the possible double entendre, the colorful tears themselves obviously reference the medallions belonging to the Seven Sages in Ocarina of Time. What, if anything, was the central theme in Ocarina of Time if not breaking the boundaries between timelines?
One final, albeit more minor, time-related feature that can be found in Tears of the Kingdom is one of Link’s own new abilities. “Recall,” as its known, is how Link is able to manipulate time to rewind objects or replace them. The example given in one of the game’s trailers shows Link using recall to reach a sky island.
He manipulates time and space surrounding a boulder that has fallen from the sky, causing it to rise back up with him on it.
This time reversal is simple and Link uses it to elevate himself, but it is still time reversal nonetheless. Even though it is just a small feature, recall further supports the idea of time manipulation being present within Tears of the Kingdom.
While there are likely many other elements pointing to time travel or boundary breaking in Tears of the Kingdom, we will not know what all of them are for sure or what they truly mean until the game’s May 12 release date. Until then, we can speculate by drawing from the series’ earlier entries and the upcoming Breath of the Wild sequel’s trailers for clues.