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

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

tears of the kingdom end with everything back to where it started. Ganondorf is defeated. Zelda returns and reclaims the throne. Link even got his arm back. The versatile group of helpers he assembled on his journey together pledged allegiance to the crown. Zelda vowed to devote herself to maintaining peace in Hyrule.

Of course, we knew she wasn’t going to make it. Inevitably a new Legend of Zelda game, a new version of Ganon threatens the princess and the world and is stopped by Link, so obvious that it has been canonized in the novel itself. The three are locked in a cycle of reincarnation, controlled in space by mysterious divine forces, and out of space by the franchise’s growing popularity.

That cycle is the great tragedy underlying The Legend of Zelda’s entire story. And yet, tears of the kingdomthe end of the act as if preserving everything completely as it was before is a big win. To win is to return to the status quo.

Image: Nintendo EPD/Nintendo via Polygon

But Legend of ZeldaIts status is decreasing every year. When tears of the kingdom was first announced, a glimpse of the short-haired Zelda in the trailer was much everybody wonder if Nintendo is going to use the sequel to finally introduce a playable princess. Instead, her story remains the same as before. Even Master Sword is given more autonomy. In the scene where it appears to her in the past, Zelda says it “travels through time to find me and recover [its] power,” implies a deliberate journey, while she was simply “sent” back by unknown forces.

When she does return, of course, she will return to the throne. When she was trapped in Hyrule’s early years and met Rauru, the founder of the kingdom, she learned that she had the blood of a ruler as long as she could, and possibly before that, if rumors of Zonai’s divine blood were to be believed. Modern-day sages repeat almost verbatim the oath of allegiance that earlier sages gave Rauru. This is an ad skip game in my country, maybe for the queen’s death. Anti-monarchy protesters at the coronation of her successor is the theme to arrest.

There’s no hint in The Legend of Zelda that anyone questions her absolute rule – other than Ganon. Zelda is shown as a completely benevolent dictator. She wants peace, without admitting that this is a complicated word so that powerful people can freely go around like that. However, the only threat to that, as Mineru puts it in the dialogue, explains, is a “great demon that has emerged from the desert”. This amusing phrase and the racist narratives that have always underpinned Ganon’s story, such as the sexual aspects of Zelda’s repeated role in the story, seem to pass simply because this has gone on for so long that it makes no sense to even mention them.

tears of the kingdom doesn’t bring up its own, less troublesome topics – before discarding them for a neat conclusion. For example, the game should have something interesting to say about the body. Link lost an arm and had to have a prosthetic leg; Zelda transforms completely; Mineru is able to separate her soul and use a robot structure, which she allows Link to control as a mech.

Image: Nintendo EPD/Nintendo via Polygon

But instead of paying attention to the long-term impact of these changes or their thematic implications, the writers simply erased them. Mineru steps out of her built self and disappears, and Zelda’s resurrection is given a hand-picked explanation: Her ancestral synergy allowed her to do the impossible and turn back. Presumably, the same thing could have happened to Link’s arm, though it was never even acknowledged beyond a brief moment of surprise from our hero.

What tears of the kingdom finally talking about bodies is that in a neat, happy ending, they can only exist in one way. Prosthetics, scars, or deliberate modifications are blemishes that must be removed in the same sweep as the Demon King himself. Like the rest of the story—like the rest of the series—it doesn’t celebrate anything changing.

IN their amazing piece ABOVE Tears of the Kingdom concluding, critic Harper Jay asked if it was “a story for our present times.” They suggest that a bolder, more honest ending may have left Zelda trapped in her vampire form, never clearly remembering why she cried; that such a bittersweet move would prove that to defeat evil there must be a sacrifice that cannot be swept away by nifty magical abilities.

Image: Nintendo EPD/Nintendo via Polygon

I agree that tears of the kingdom not a story because our present times, but that’s a story from our present day – a time when it was said that clinging to the status quo equated to victory. That’s the story told to us by the bosses who said their strike workers’ claims were “unrealistic.” That’s the story being told by ineffective political leaders who refuse to challenge harmful government policy. It’s the motivating story draw back, hydrophobic law. It’s a story that allows than oil drilling in the climate crisis.

It’s also a story that reflects the current corporate communications landscape more broadly. Remake, sequel, AI revived average yield of everything it has been fed, 45 commercials based on Mattel IP including “base and gritty” hot wheel 0. Everything is something you’ve seen before, again, just bigger. Once, Nintendo successfully used Ocarina of time to make Majora’s mask, something surprising and unique. Not this time.

What would break these cycles? tears of the kingdom not interested in asking. It takes us back to the beginning so we’re ready to do it all over again, leaving no room for the fact that its apparent triumph is really a kind of tragedy of its own.