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 Kingdom ends with every little thing again the place it started. Ganondorf is defeated. Zelda returns and retakes her place on the throne. Link 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.

Of course, we all know that she gained’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 Link, 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 recognition.

That cycle is the nice 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 solely how they had been earlier than is a grand victory. To win is to return to the established order.

Image: Nintendo EPD/Nintendo through Polygon

But The Legend of Zelda’s establishment is working thinner yearly. When Tears of the Kingdom was first introduced, a peek at a short-haired Zelda within the trailer had many individuals questioning if Nintendo would use the sequel to lastly introduce a playable princess. Instead, her story is identical because it ever was. Even the Master Sword is given extra company. In the scene the place it seems to her prior to now, Zelda says that it “traveled through time to find me and recover [its] strength,” implying an intentional journey, whereas she was merely “sent” again by forces unknown.

When she returns, of course, she returns to the throne. In being stranded in Hyrule’s early years and assembly Rauru, the founder of the dominion, she has realized that she has a ruler’s bloodline stretching again so far as it could possibly go, and probably earlier than that, if the rumors of the Zonai’s divine blood are to be believed. The modern-day sages repeat nearly verbatim the vow of loyalty that the earlier sages gave to Rauru. This is a recreation that skipped promoting in my nation, maybe as a result of of the demise of the queen. Anti-monarchy protestors at her successor’s coronation had been topic to arrests.

There’s no trace in The Legend of Zelda that anybody questions her proper to absolute rule — aside from Ganon. Zelda is introduced as a completely benevolent dictator. She desires peace, with out acknowledgement that it is a difficult phrase for these in energy to be throwing round so casually. Still, the one menace to that’s, as Mineru places it in expository dialogue, a “great evil emerging from the desert.” This laughably loaded phrase and the racist tropes which have at all times underpinned Ganon’s story, just like the gendered points of Zelda’s repetitive function 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 recreation ought to have had one thing fascinating to say about our bodies, as an example. Link loses an arm and positive factors a prosthetic; Zelda transforms herself solely; Mineru is ready to separate her spirit and use a robotic assemble, one that she permits Link to pilot as a mech.

Image: Nintendo EPD/Nintendo through Polygon

But slightly than giving any consideration to the lasting impacts of these modifications 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 unattainable and return. Presumably, the identical may be mentioned for Link’s arm, though it’s by no means even acknowledged past a short second of shock from our hero.

What Tears of the Kingdom in the end says about our bodies is that in a neat, completely happy ending, they’ll solely exist one method. Prosthetics, scars, or deliberate modifications are blemishes that have to be erased in the identical sweep because the Demon King himself. Like the remaining of the narrative — like the remaining of the franchise — it doesn’t have fun something altering.

In their glorious piece 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, extra trustworthy 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 needs to be a sacrifice that may’t be swept away by handy magical talents.

Image: Nintendo EPD/Nintendo through Polygon

I agree that Tears of the Kingdom isn’t a narrative for our present instances, however it’s a story from our present instances — one that claims that clinging to the established order is the equal of victory. It’s the story informed to us by bosses who say their hanging employees’ calls for are “unrealistic.” It’s the story informed 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 enables for extra oil drilling throughout 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 commercial motion pictures based mostly on Mattel IP together with the “grounded and gritty” Hot Wheels 0. Everything is one thing you’ve seen earlier than, once more, simply larger. Once, Nintendo used the success of Ocarina of Time to make Majora’s Mask, one thing stunning and tonally distinctive. This time, it didn’t.

What would break these cycles? Tears of the Kingdom isn’t enthusiastic about 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 actually its personal form of tragedy.