Game Theory - Link Is NOT Who You Think He Is... (The Legend of Zelda)

Episode Date: December 5, 2023

Join Game Theory Host MatPat as he reveals the TRUTH about Link from The Legend of Zelda! *Credits:* Writers: Matthew Patrick, Eddie “NostalGamer” Robinson and Tom Robinson Editors: Dan "Cybert" Seibert, Pedro Freitas, Warak, Gerardo Andrés Mejía Torres and Shannon (Bomb0i) Sound Designer: Yosi Berman

Ladies and gentlemen, the news is finally out. The Legend of Zelda is getting a live action movie. And honestly, I couldn't be more excited. Well, it's certainly not gonna be as colorful and slapstick as the Mario movie. Given its success, I think they'd be foolish not to take a few lessons from that one. Zelda can have herself some of those hashtag girl boss moments. Gannendorf can sit in his castle singing along with Zeldie, Zeldie, Zeldie, Zeldie, Zeldie, but the real mystery is in a complicated timeline of heroes,

which link is gonna be your best choice for the movie? Which one is gonna be the most iconic for the series? Which one instantly sells you on Spirit of the Hero. I know it's not necessarily live action ready, but personally I'd put my money on Wind Waker Link. He's cute, he's got an attitude, he wears a cool lobster shirt. Not to mention that he's like the only one to defeat Ganendorf and... Wait, Tom, what? What do you mean that Link isn't really a Link?

Oh, Internet, welcome to Game Theory, the show that's risking its neck by diving head first into Zelda theories. The last time we covered the Zelda franchise was when Tears of the Kingdom was first in Back when it was still known as Breath of the Wild 2 four years ago. Believe it or not, my friends, we first heard about this game back when the Avengers saga concluded. Back when people tried to storm Area 51. Back when live action Sonic looked like this. Oh, it was a simpler time. But now the game is finally released, once again blowing all previous Zelda titles out of the water.

The open world is huge, the missions are long, the crafting mechanics are hilarious, it literally makes Breath of the Wild look like a tech demo. But while everyone else is getting lost in its incredible world, or arguing about whether it deserves the title of Game of the Year, I was looking back at the games that came before it. You see, the timeline of Zelda has always been a bit of a mess. If I was gonna have any luck solving this game's place in the timeline, I was gonna make sure that I had to fully understand everything that came before. But as it tends to when we're doing the sword research, something jumped out at me, something I'd never picked up on before, something that would totally upend a major part of the franchise and the timeline, and may have even offered a solution to the Ganendorf problem once and for all,

and it all comes down to the link from the Legend of Zelda Windwitz. The Hero of the Wind. At least, that's the title he's been given over the years, but I know the truth. That title is nothing but a sham. That link is no hero. In fact, that link isn't even a link at all, which ironically enough may just be the solution that Hyrule is needed this entire time. It's pretty well established at this point that the link that we play as in each game isn't the same link. Akorina of Time Link isn't the same as The Breath of the Wild Link, and a Link to the Past Link isn't the same as Twilight Princess's Link. They're all unique characters, all with their own separate titles, like The Hero of Time, or The Hero of Legend. The same actually holds true for Zelda. In basically every new game, we're playing as a brand new version of each of these characters, all in an attempt to once again stop the evil Gannon. This was an incredibly liberating idea for Nintendo, because it allowed them to have thousands of years pass between games, explore new characters, new relationships, new settings every game, rather than being stuck in one of

very specific point in time. However, the Zelda fanbase, they weren't just gonna settle for cool idea, bro. There had to be an actual lore-based reason for all of this to keep happening. So Nintendo decided to answer the fanbase's prayers with what became the first game in the Zelda timeline, Skyward Sword. Skyward Sword was an interesting game when it first came out. It had every single fan flailing wildly in their living rooms trying desperately to defeat even the simplest of enemies. But if you manage to get past all of that, you are told the origins of the myths that we've spent years hearing about in all the other installments. We saw the founding of High Rule and after defeating the final boss demise with the master sword he casts this curse quote

Though this is not the end my hate never perishes it is born anew in a cycle with no end I will rise again those like you those who share the blood of the goddess and the spirit of the hero they are eternally bound to this curse An incarnation of my hatred shall ever follow your kind dooming them to wander a blood-soaked sea of darkness for all time Hey, demise, Edgelord much? Someone get this guy to a hot topic. Anyway, this is why Gannon's able to return in each installment. Each time he's defeated by someone with the spirit of the hero, a version of Link, his desire for revenge forces him to return to hopefully destroy Link once and for all in the next game. Now, I'm sure you're wondering what any of this has to do with this little guy right here. Arguably the cutest and sassiest link that we've ever encountered. Well, the curse puts real emphasis on the whole Spirit of the Hero thing. A title that this franchise doesn't just throw around willy-nilly. There are rules and guidelines. to being deemed the spirit of the hero. And if you take a look at the actions of Wind Waker's Link, you start to see that the pieces don't exactly line up. Link right here, by the definition of the franchise,

he's not a hero. In a link to the past, one of your goals is to rescue the seven maidens that are vanishing one by one. Once rescued, one of the maidens tells us this. Quote, if the evil one destroys the hero, nothing can save the world from his wicked reign. Only a person of the knights of Hyrule who protected the royalty of Hailea can become the hero.

Notice here that it says that the hero has to be one of the knights of Hyrule. And a link to the past's link actually shows that it goes a step further. Not only being a direct knight of Hyrule, but carrying the bloodline with his uncle, who also was a former knight. One of the other maidens even says this, quote again, You are perhaps the last one to carry on the bloodline of the knights. Now right there, it seems pretty cut and dry,

especially when other games go out of their way to tell us that the link that we play as is indeed a part of the bloodline. Breath of the Wild Link is Zelda's appointed knight. In the Hyrule history, it said that the Hero of Time was once a Heilian knight himself, or at least fell within the bloodline, but there's very little known about the hero of Wynn's lineage. For us to understand as much as we can,

we have to look closer at the timeline itself. We establish that Skyward Sword is the origin of the timeline, but after the events of Ocarina time, it all splits into three distinct branches. One is where Link is defeated by Gannon, who's then sealed away by the Seven Sages. One is the child timeline, Link's original timeline that he returns to after defeating Gannon, and then there's the adult timeline,

the one that Link time travel to during the game and sealed Gannon away. Wind Waker is the first installment of that adult timeline. Before the events of the game, Gannon escaped the sacred realm, and with the Hero of Time now having returned to the past, there's no one to stop him. The goddesses have no other choice but to intervene by flooding all of Hyrule and weakening Ganon's power. Many years pass, and we come to Wind Waker,

where Hyrule and the Royal Knights have been mostly forgotten, buried under the ancient sea. Within the Hyrule Encyclopedia, we can see how the map from Ocarina of Time before the Great Flood correlates to the map in Windwaker. Zora's domain became Dragon Rost Island, and the people of Castle Town in Kakariko Village retreated to what's now Windfall Island. But what's interesting about this map is Outset Island, the Hero of Wins' home. It's not even on Ocarina's map.

The furthest point is Lake Heilia, which the Encyclopedia says becomes Great Fish Isle. Outset Island is even further south than all of that. What this means is Link's family lived way outside of Castle Town, where all the Royal Knights were stationed. When the Great Flood happened, people ran to the closest mountains they could. If Link had any relation to the Royal Knights, he would have been living on Windfall Island, not some random island far away from the center of Hyrule. Now, some of you might be thinking that I'm trying to apply too much logic to a video game, to which I say, yeah, duh.

So based on geography, it's highly unlikely that this Link is related to the Knights of Hyrule, thereby disqualifying him as a hero. But what about his shield, I hear he's saying? In Windwaker, Link's grandma does have a shield in the house and claims, quote, hanging the family shield on the wall as decoration is another tradition that has been carried down from those days. And the shield has the Triforce crest on it, the crest of the royal family and the royal knights. So there you have it. Case closed. Map, Pat overthought something again theory debunked. Right? Wrong. I'm not convinced that this is actually their family shield. Hear me out.

Across Outset Island, there's a very similar symbol on everyone's front door, an upside-down triforce with a circle in the middle. It's also on Grandma's blanket. This isn't the Hyrullian symbol. This is a symbol of the Outset tribe, much like how the Garudo, the Gorons, and the Hylians have a crest. And if that seems like a bit of a stretch, well, you don't have to take my word for it. Just look at what the King of Red Lions has to say about this link. When asked by the water spirit if this is the hero of time, he responds, quote, he has no connection to the legendary one. And here's the thing, the King of Red Lions, he isn't just some random talking boat, he is actually the King of Hyrule. So for him to outright say that Link has no connection to the

hero of time's bloodline, nor mentioning the Royal Knight Bloodline, a group that he would absolutely know a lot about, it puts no doubt in my mind that the Hero of Wind does not meet the requirements of a hero by the definition laid out by this franchise. But the most critical piece of evidence comes all the way back around to that demise curse that we spoke about at the start of the episode. In the final moments of the game, Link defeats Ganendorf, which looks pretty painful. But thanks to the curse of demise, he'll just shrug it off and return at a later date, right? Except Ganondorf doesn't.

Looking at all the subsequent games in the adult timeline, Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks, we never see Ganon reemerge. This is the only timeline where that happened. In all the other timelines, Gannon comes back again and again and again in every installment. But in the adult timeline? No, never again. At first, I thought maybe Gannon can only revive after a new spirit of the hero's born. But that isn't true. A link to the past and Oracle of Ages and Seasons have themselves the same hero.

And yet Gannon is resurrected in each of those. In Spirit Tracks, we play as the hero of trains. Yeah, that is a real hero that exists in this universe. But he's a new hero born after the hero of wind, and yet Gannon still doesn't come back. What this means is that the hero of winds defeating Gannon at the end of Wind Waker broke the demise curse. Gannon was never able to revive himself. But why? Why only this timeline?

Well, because unlike any other time in the series, this time he wasn't defeated by the spirit of the hero. Instead, he was defeated by some random kid from a far off land. Gannon ties his life specifically to the spirit of the hero in that curse, to repeat the same old song and dance forever. So when a small child from across the ocean showed up looking the part, he thought it would be the same thing again. But it wasn't. meant to or not, the Hero of Wins tricked everyone into thinking that he was the destined hero. At the end of the day, that was what was able to get the job done and break the cycle

forever. Or at least that's how it should have been, except for when the timelines re-merged together thanks in part to Hyrule Warriors. This allows Gannon to come back across all the different timelines, which then leads to the collective events of Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom. But there is a silver lining to all this. Thanks to the deception of the Hero of Wins, we now know how to truly defeat Gannon and break the curse of demise. And it is not this guy. The people of Hiraul need to rely on someone other than the spirit of the hero. They need to stop leaving it to Destiny because Destiny clearly ain't doing them any favors.

I mean, that's the entire point of the curse. They need to train someone else to defeat Gannon and not just end the current evil, but end it permanently. And if Nintendo ever did want to retire Gannon for a new villain, I think I know the perfect person to finish it off for good. Rather than just some random character, Why not pick someone that we've seen countless iterations of? Someone who's normally just a damsel in distress.

That's right. I believe that Zelda will be the one to finally put Ganon to rest. We saw it a bit in tears of the kingdom where she saved the day by becoming a dragon, because, of course, that was the answer here. But Zelda being the final hero would be the icing on the cake for this series. It fits with the lore, where it's not the spirit of the hero trying to defeat Ganon, but someone else. Someone connected to the ongoing story, but free from the curse.

It's also super poetic. Rather than waiting for a hero to save her kingdom, she saves it herself. ending the curse that's continued to plague Hyrule for generations. It would be a legend that would be passed down from generation to generation, a legend of the descendant of the goddess, the legend of Zelda. But hey, that's just a theory. A game theory. Thanks for watching.