Tears of the Kingdom: True Ending Explained

tears of the Kingdom has two endings kind of one is the normal ending for completing the game and one is the true or secret ending which is the normal ending plus an extra cutscene after the credits now the story and endings may not be as ambiguous or confusing in Zelda as they are in say Elden ring where I have explained endings before but there are enough moving parts that I think an explanation video will help piece everything together there's a lot more to say about this game than there was in breath of the wild so I want to put together a clear narrative in this video feel free to subscribe to the channel if I do a good job and obviously big spoiler warning I think a good starting point for our discussion is the end sequence of the game when you Journey Into the Depths under Hyrule castle and begin the final boss fight if you completed all of the sage quests then the five sages of the current age will join you Tulin sidon unibo reju and mineru you all fight the small mobs and eventually each one of their respective scourges show up the sages find their respective match and leave you link to go forward and confront Demon King Ganondorf as we enter the lair we find shriveled up Ganondorf sitting atop a tree stump the whole room is covered covered in Roots evoking the spreading of his Gloom throughout the lands of Hyrule it also connects back to when we first woke up after being attacked at the beginning of the game the room link wakes up in on the great sky island is similarly covered in Roots and branches and in typical evil villain fashion Ganon monologues about how peace is bad before transforming into his original Warrior form granted he does have the secret Stone in his forehead but beyond that it's how he looked as a normal Gerudo we engage in single combat with a demon king before he goes full-on anime literal this is only a fraction of my power extending his health bar across the screen looking like a glitch type Anime Transformation there isn't much to explain with this sequence other than its Ganondorf recharging the power that was sealed Away by rauru and that power is getting strengthened by the secret stone that Ganon still has after the transformation the sages slowly trickle in only to be knocked out by a power Blast from Mister continues to be super anime fingertaunt then it's back to one on one but even with all the gloom and heartbreaking Ganondorf is no match for link the master sword and gibdo bone-infused arrows however Ganondorf has dedicated his entire existence to conquering so defeat is not something he's prepared for instead of accepting his loss he rips the secret Stone from his forehead gives up having a Consciousness and eats the stone along with half of his forearm the practice of eating secret Stones leads to draconification becoming a dragon in the game's fifth listed memory minaru says that to swallow a secret stone is to become an immortal Dragon one blessed with eternal life she also says to become an immortal dragon is to lose oneself she says that doing so causes the user to lose their heart and mind to lose what makes you you and we see this in action with Zelda who swallows her secret Stone and in a massive explosion of light becomes an immortal Dragon Zelda did this so she could bathe the master sword in sacred energy for centuries so that it would be strong enough to defeat Ganondorf by the time link could wield it but back in our present time Ganondorf does not seek to become a dragon for the benefit of longevity he eats the stone because he cannot bear to lose so he thinks turning into a dragon will bring the power upgrade he needs to cast the world into Eternal Night and fitting with his dark Powers the stone turns him into a demon dragon fortunately a much smaller Dragon Zelda is around to help link out and fun fact when we first start the game we can see Zelda flying around the great sky island so it doesn't seem that draconification fully nullifies the person who swallowed the stone since Dragon Ganon still wants to destroy the war world and dragon Zelda still wants to help link stop him we end the game just as we began it flying through the air link Must Destroy each of the groups of Gloom eyes on the demon dragon's back before finally attacking a super-sized secret Stone on its forehead from a few sacred light infused attacks the stone shatters and Ganon vaporizes in a planet-shaking explosion of red light well that does it for the main villain we still get a fair bit more in terms of cutscenes and plot conclusion before the curtain closes after the explosion as link rides on the light dragon his arm the arm of raru glows it envelops him taking him and the dragon into a realm of blue green light reminiscent of the shrines rauru's power and the echo of Zelda we saw at the beginning of the game the arm sends small bits of light to Dragon Zelda as the spirits of rauru and Sonia appear we will get more information in the final cutscene about how Spirits work so for now I'll just take that aspect at face value once raru and Sonia appear the arm starts sending more light and as both of them put their arms on links even more light energy is sent to the dragon this ends up transforming the dragon back into Zelda just as she was before she transformed during the time of the zonai she is in the zonai clothing and even still has her secret Stone we can't say exactly how it was that Zelda's draconification process was reversed but it is likely due to the specific powers of everyone involved Zelda herself had power of time and of sacred light from his Hylian lineage and or his new arm link probably has light and time power too after touching the echo of Zelda he is able to reverse time with his arm which is not something we ever see rauru do and he has been bathed in light at every Shrine he has visited plus he is the first one sending energy to Zelda then we have raru who has light power and Sonia who has time power raru is a zonai who minaru tells us came from the heavens and were said to be descendants of gods this information plus the existence of a goddess statue in the Temple of Time May draw a connection between rauru and the goddess hylia hylia is the goddess referenced by the game statue and the namesake for plenty of landmarks around Hyrule in past games she is referenced as the goddess of Light which would give us another connection for raru Link's dilia would help explain the ability to deed draconify Zelda as hylia would be one of the most powerful entities in existence plus the dragons come about from the secret Stones which the murals depict as coming from the heavens with the zonai if the stones are of the heavens then it makes sense that influence from hylia being the goddess could impact them even alter their effects we can also see a Hylian influence in Sonia there are quite a few parallels to be drawn between Sonia and Zelda being part of the royal family Zelda is Sonia's descendant and Sonia confirms this by saying that she feels her own time power along with rauru's light power within Zelda other Zelda lore says that the first Zelda was a mortal Reincarnation of hylia and that each future Zelda is a descendant of that Zelda if the Zelda of Tears of the kingdom is also a descendant of Sonia this could mean that Sonia is a descendant of the Mortal hylia too and we do have another piece of connection to the gods that all four of these characters share Sonia Zelda and Link all have characteristically long Hylian ears raru being a goat person zonai has even longer ears in the manual to a link to the past and in the Hyrule Historia long pointed ears are associated with the gods and goddesses specifically to listening for special messages from these Divine beings all this connection to hylia and the realm of the Gods should give some justification for how Zelda is able to be turned back she was first transformed by a Stone from the Heavens to a mix of heavenly power undoing this transformation seems reasonable even if we were told that it should be impossible another detail that is easy to miss in the Big Flash untransformation is that Link's arm is healed too he no longer has the raru arm but his original Hylian arm or some Recreation of It Now link never ate a heaven Stone he just got bodied by some gloomy darkness and with all the time and light power flowing it's not too big of a task to heal some normal flesh it definitely doesn't need as much justification as the reversal of an irreversible draconification process so I think we can say it makes sense with that raru and Sonia Fade Away in some form of spirit passing on moment link is sent back to the normal sky and races to catch a falling and unconscious Zelda he catches her and the two land in the lake from the game's beginning and then we get the standard final cutscene Zelda with her secret Stone intact takes in what has happened she realizes Ganondorf has been defeated and she kind of awkwardly speaks to us well ostensibly link by staring directly into the camera she mentions that she woke up from Dragon City sleep after feeling a warm loving Embrace which we can interpret as the power from link raru and Sonia Hyrule Castle still sits up in the air hoisted by a Chasm pillar and Zelda closes out the normal ending of the game with an almost cliched warmth then after the credits we get the true or secret or final cutscene the Gang has made their way to the flying temple of time to see Spirit mineral off minaru super briefly explains that rauru's light power and Sonia's time power channeled through link to turn Zelda back but we saw before that there does seem to be more of a justification for the action than just that after saying so minaru begins to fade she notes that she can move on join raru and the others others and the world will be safe this could just be talking about playing dying but the language really makes it seem like passing to an afterlife or some other plane of existence maybe the spirits of raru and Sonia had not passed on since they knew the threat of their time the demon king had not been stopped or they felt they had a duty to return Zelda to her original form we did previously get some Spirit interaction with rauru at the beginning of the game and we could have attributed that to the arm and its power but this seems to show that there is some more depth to the spirit side of things in this world the sages then assembled to pledge their fealty and support to Zelda in a touching callback to the actions of the first group of sages we can also see they all still have their secret Stones we don't see zeldas in this cutscene but after seeing it in the first we should expect that she still has it or it's still somewhere around it's also a bit interesting to see that all the sages are more developed and grown versions of those we helped in breath of the wild other than Tulin who is still a youngling to be fair he's not as much of a baby as he was in the last game but he is very much more of a child than his father Teba who previously served as the Rito companion miniru says rauru and Sonia will be happy to hear of the field he pledge which confirms that there is some spear playing that they're all possibly chilling at having a ball hopefully Ganondorf Spirit doesn't go to the same place or things would be pretty awkward to say the least miniru assures Zelda that she'll tell Sonia and raru how much Zelda cares for them and then she fully disappears along with her secret Stone this means there are only five secret Stones left at least that we know of and as someone of an aside roru and Sonia standing as parental figures for Zelda really drives home The Descendant point I talked about before and this also confirms again the post-death plane of existence where they have some sort of Consciousness and they can communicate with each other then Zelda finishes the scene with a speech about establishing an eternally lasting piece before the camera pans out and the soundtrack kicks in with a rendition of the main Zelda theme which of course doesn't play long enough [Applause] and thus ends Zelda tears of the Kingdom I do have one more point to make regarding the hylia connections though some of the design for Ganondorf in this game really look like a reference to demise the antagonist from Wind Waker and kind of an evil counterpart to the goddess hylia and the place where Ganondorf launches his original attack onto Hyrule is even called the breach of demise in the maps for breath of the wild and tears of the Kingdom I figured this was one more piece of Zelda lore that made its way into this game and kind of reinforces the connection to hylia and with that we should have the core points of the true ending to tears of the Kingdom covered and explained a huge thank you and shout out to my fellow video maker V limit Who as a one-man Army of Zelda lore helped me flesh out lots of the ideas in this video he makes super high quality content and I definitely recommend you check out his channel I'll be doing more Zelda videos so subscribe if you want to see that and lastly a big thanks to my patrons on patreon for supporting my work thanks for watching everyone peace

Channel: MadLuigi

Views: 166,496

Keywords: zelda, totk, tears of the kingdom, ending, ending explained, totk ending, totk ending explained, totk lore, totk true ending, true ending, secret ending, totk secret ending, zelda theory, zelda lore, link, zelda: tears of the kingdom, the legend of zelda: the tears of the kingdom, the legend of zelda: tears of the kingdom, nintendo

Id: APInbkTXtG0

Length: 12min 57sec (777 seconds)

Published: Sat May 20 2023