Top 5 Best Impactful Zelda Endings

Throughout The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, players are “assisted” by an initially self-absorbed and (literally) impish creature referring to herself as Midna, who dubiously claims to be the princess of a race of people hailing from a parallel dimension called the Twilight Realm (currently invading Hyrule under the command of new antagonist Zant). By the game’s ending, Midna’s claims are not only proven true, but her actual (and surprisingly beautiful) appearance is seen; yet despite having grown closer with Link, she decides to return to and permanently seal off the Twilight Realm.

2. The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker (2003)

Taking place in an indeterminate point in the very far future, The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker depicts a heavily flooded world where the kingdom of Hyrule (as well as Hylians, the elf-like denizens of all previous entries) are now all about distant memories – though with some pointy-eared humans still existing in small numbers in the story’s present. At the end of The Wind Waker, a heavy decision is made that extinguishes the remnants of Hyrule and its longstanding history…but this is framed as a positive action that allows the world to finally move beyond the past and claim a brand-new future.

1. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (2017)

And closing out this list on what felt like it could’ve very well been the distant finale of the overarching Zelda franchise as a whole (retcons presented in 2023’s The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom notwithstanding), the ending of Breath of the Wild sees the horrific lingering presence of Ganon’s “malice” finally destroyed with assistance from Princess Zelda. The ending is especially moving if players finish all of the side quests depicting Link’s memories of 100 years prior to the story, putting the defeat of Ganon’s most destructive incarnation into a much more emotional light.

Parting Thoughts

It’s worth noting that while the multilayer “branches” of the Zelda overarching timeline established in supplemental material such as Hyrule Historia have provided a loose trajectory of where each of the mainline games occur and tie into the larger series narrative, it’s still subject to retcons like the ones mentioned above (and with growing scrutiny by its highly attentive fanbase). And while it’s understandable to want to try and make sense of the series’ “chronology” (not to mention its larger-scale cosmology), it’s still ultimately up to each person to draw their own conclusions from the material.

Speaking for myself, I primarily lean towards the interpretation that each game (unless directly continuing from a specific entry like Link’s Awakening and Majora’s Mask) is effectively a retelling of the exact same story with sometimes minor and major alterations to smaller character details and events…but always taking on the familiar conflict between Link, Zelda, and Ganon. In this sense, I take the “meta-fictional” view of the series by face value: it’s a literal legend that is told again and again through time and will continue to take on newer story details while staying largely the same.