What happened to The Legend Of Zelda timeline? — A Quick Overview
If you’re anything like me, you enjoy The Legend Of Zelda timeline. It begins on a floating island in Skyward Sword, then splits with Ocarina of Time to then continue down three different paths which either leads to Ganon as a pig-beast-thing, in darkness with Majora’s Mask or swallowed by the ocean in The Wind Waker.
When the much anticipated Breath of the Wild hit shelves March 2017 (that sounds like forever ago!), it wasn’t long before the community asked “Where does this fall in the timeline?”
I queried this myself, studying the locations of Lon Lon Ranch and the Mirror of Twilight near Lurelin Village… yet it seemed this version of Hyrule was surrounded by ocean east and south? Theorists, including myself, would spend countless hours trying to figure this out, and found no solid answer.
That was until Nintendo released a statement (kind-of) confirming the location of their newest Zelda title in 2018.
“Well of course it’s at the very end. But, I get what you’re asking, it’s which timeline is it the end of?” — Aonuma
In summary, it takes place tens of thousands of years after every other story in the timeline. It doesn’t exactly fit anywhere, but rather an inevitable result of everything. However, the community is beginning to wonder if the previous titles are actual legends (huh, it is called ‘The Legend of Zelda’) instead of being true events in the Zelda universe.
And now the latest 2023 title, the long awaited sequel Tears of the Kingdom, it seems to be even more complex with *spoilers ahead* the addition of time travel…
Yep, you read that right. The Princess herself gets thrown back in time to the founding of Hyrule to discover the true events of the ‘Imprisoning War’, a battle that, to many fan’s confusion, shares the same name as the war just before ‘A Link to the Past’, which I have taken upon myself to rename as the ‘Sealing War’ as that was another name used for this battle.
Even though the Zelda timeline had plotholes and tales that didn’t quite add up, the timeline did used to make some sense. We didn’t have two wars with the same name, nor did we have gaps where literally anything could happen. However instead we have been left to our imagination (and lets face it, the theorists over on YouTube) to come up with a satisfying reason as to what happened with the Zelda timeline. I have a few ideas of my own, but that’s to share on another day. Feel free to share your own ideas with me, I love to delve into the timeline mystery and would be so happy to hear what other people think to the overly complex ‘Legend of Zelda’ timeline.
