The ending of TOTK sums up 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 ends with everything being back where it started. Ganondorf is defeated. Zelda returns and takes her place on the throne. Link even regains his arm. The ragtag band of helpers he’s gathered on his journey come together to swear allegiance to the crown. Zelda vows to work to keep the peace in Hyrule.

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

This cycle is the great tragedy among the entire narrative of The Legend of Zelda. And yet, Tears of the KingdomThe ending seems like keeping things the way they were before is a great victory. To win you have to go back to the status quo.

Image: Nintendo EPD/Nintendo via Polygon

But The Legend of ZeldaThe status quo is getting thinner every year. If Tears of the Kingdom First, it was announced that you could get a glimpse of a short-haired Zelda in the trailer many People ask me if Nintendo would use the sequel to finally introduce a playable princess. Instead, her story is the same as ever. Even the Master Sword gains more agency. In the scene where it appears to her in the past, Zelda says it “traveled through time to find me and recover me.” [its] Strength”, implying a deliberate journey while simply being “sent back” by unknown forces.

Of course, when she returns, she also returns to the throne. When she was stranded in Hyrule’s early years and met Rauru, the kingdom’s founder, she learned that a ruler’s bloodline stretches as far back as possible, and possibly even before that, if rumors of the Zonai’s divine blood are to be believed. The modern sages repeat almost verbatim the pledge of allegiance given to Rauru by the earlier sages. This is a game that has no ads in my country. possibly because of the death of the queen. Anti-monarchy protesters at the coronation of their successor were subject

In The Legend of Zelda there is no indication that anyone questions their right to absolute rule – except for Ganon. Zelda is portrayed as a completely benevolent dictator. She wants peace without acknowledging that this is the case a complicated word that those in power throw around so casually. Still, the only threat to it, as Mineru puts it in explanatory dialogue, is a “great evil emerging from the desert”. That ridiculously charged sentence, and the racist tropes that have always underpinned Ganon’s story, like the gendered aspects of Zelda’s recurring role in the narrative, seem to pass simply because this has been going on for so long that it seems blase to mention them.

Tears of the Kingdom brings in his own, less well-trodden themes – before discarding them in favor of a clean ending. For example, the game could have had something interesting to say about bodies. Link loses an arm and gets a prosthetic; Zelda transforms completely; Mineru is able to separate her mind and use a robotic construct that lets her pilot Link as a mech.

Image: Nintendo EPD/Nintendo via Polygon

But instead of paying attention to the lasting effects of these changes or their thematic implications, the authors simply erase them. Mineru leaves her constructed self and disappears, and Zelda’s revival is given a hand gesture explanation: the combined powers of her ancestors allowed her to do the impossible and return. Presumably the same is true for Link’s arm, although our hero doesn’t even acknowledge it, save for a brief moment of surprise.

What Tears of the Kingdom Ultimately what bodies are saying is that in a beautiful happy ending they can only exist one way. Prostheses, scars, or intentional alterations are blemishes that must be removed at the same turn as the Demon King himself. Like the rest of the narrative – like the rest of the franchise – it celebrates no change.

In her outstanding piece At Tears of the Kingdom At the end, the critic Harper Jay asks if it is “a story for our time”. They argue that a braver, more honest ending could have left Zelda trapped in her draconian form, never quite remembering why she was crying; that a bittersweet move like this would show that in order to defeat evil, there must be a sacrifice that cannot be swept away by practical magical ability.

Image: Nintendo EPD/Nintendo via Polygon

i agree Tears of the Kingdom is not a story for our present time, but it’s a story out of Our present time – a time that says that sticking to the status quo equals victory. It’s the story bosses tell us they say The demands of their striking workers are “unrealistic”. It is the story told by ineffective political leaders who refuse to challenge harmful government policies. It’s the story that motivates regressive, transphobic laws. It’s history that allows it more oil drilling during the climate crisis.

It’s also a story that reflects the current corporate media landscape more broadly. Remakes, sequels, AI that performs the most average of anything that’s been fed to it, 45 commercials based on Mattel IP including the “down to earth and somber” Hot Wheels 0. Everything is something you’ve seen before, only bigger. Once upon a time, Nintendo capitalized on the success of ocarina of time make Majora’s mask, something surprising and tonally unique. That wasn’t the case this time.

What would break these cycles? Tears of the Kingdom is 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 his apparent victory is actually a tragedy of its own.