Tears of the Kingdom’s Mysterious Depths Is Still Sparking More Questions Than Answers

It’s been over a month since The Legend of Zelda: Kingdom of Tears’ release, and players have finally had enough time up and down Hyrule to find out some very complicated things about what’s going on in the game’s lore. began to develop theories. . And there’s one thing about him that confuses the community more than anything else. It is “deep”.

We previously wrote about the most intriguing mystery of Tears of the Kingdom’s Depths. That is, it is a dark mirror image of Hyrule above, or “dark world.” But even with that understanding, what the Depths are, how they came into being, when they’ve been around, and what they all mean is still plaguing the Tears of the Kingdom community. I still have a lot of questions.

a Recent Threads about R/Zelda highlights many of these questions, most notably because the community does not seem to have reached any consensus on the answers to most of them. And do humans have theories? Some of them have more holes than others, but they all speak to the deep curiosity of the community around this mysterious and dark Hyrule.

Here are some of our favorites. be careful: There are major spoilers about what’s in Depths and what that means for Tears of the Kingdom’s plot.

The depths are a pseudo-afterlife world

u/huggiesdsc has a cool theory that’s unlikely, but fun to imagine. They suggest that the depths are a “pseudo-afterlife” that living people can visit, much like Greek mythological characters visit the underworld. Chasm acts as a gateway to the Underworld, where he connects the two realms thanks to Ganon’s magic.

Farfetched? Perhaps there are some holes in this theory. For example, what this means for the Goron city of Gorondia, why the Zonai were able to mine material in the underworld and use it above ground. But when you think of Poe, a lost soul who needs to be led to the afterlife by a negotiator statue, and a ghost warrior with a weapon, it makes for a fun thought experiment. One of the cool (or creepy) elements of this theory is that it suggests that Koga, the Yiga leader Link threw into a pit in Breath of the Wild, is actually dead. Link fights the spirit of vengeance at a deep level, and Koga is able to communicate with living followers who come down to visit him in this way.

There is much more to this theory, and subsequent replies not only debunk the elements that are its fallacy, but add the possibility of further corroboration, but the idea that the depths have something to do with death is a far cry from it. It’s certainly a powerful one, whether or not it’s meant literally. Hyrule Hades.

Depth is old. Really old.

This is less a theory than an understanding many community members have based on lore taken directly from the game. It is certain that the Depth existed in some form before the Zonai appeared in Hyrule, as the Zonai were able to discover the Depth in Hyrule and build mines to extract the Zonite. So they are definitely older than 10,000 years and probably much older than that.

However, it’s not entirely clear if anything resembling a civilization existed in the Depth at the time. The presence of Gorondia in the depths indicates that the Gorons originally came from the depths or lived there at least for a period of time, but it is possible that Gorondia was on the surface and only submerged in a volcano at some point. So is gender.In any case, however, it is clear that either the appearance of Goron or the sinking of Gorondia took place far from the memory of Goron history, and that legend is implied by the Age of Tears of the Kingdom. Almost Gone – Again, We’re Talking TRUE This place is old.

Of course, this raises many other questions. For example, why would there be a mine where Tarrytown is? Or otherwise, did it exist because of mines? If that’s the case, why aren’t there underground mines in what used to be Hyrule’s castle town? No one seems to have good answers to these questions. A theory has been proposed. u/lol good and u/middle night cowboy, that the Depth is actually a long-buried “ancient” version of Hyrule implies that the Zonai tribe built a mine on the ruins of an ancient version of the present-day town. Maybe Tarrytown existed over 10,000 years ago!

The Depths is at least somewhat magical

Including a few community members Ryon 21_ and iguanoute, He suggests that Depths is both a physical phenomenon and a bit magical, with other community members suggesting similar ideas. Putting all this together, the gist of it is that while the deep is not the afterlife, it is a real place that is actually part of Hyrule, while it exists in a world where magic absolutely exists, and where magic exists originally. The world was created and magic existed. affect what happens in it. In that context, it’s entirely possible that there could be an underworld full of magical rocks and wandering spirits that is over 10,000 years old yet perfectly reflective of the modern world. Probably no further explanation.

It ties in with another thread many community members have pulled, a concept we’ve seen repeatedly in other Zelda games in depth. Multiple games have dark worlds, mirror worlds, or flipped or aesthetically darker versions of the main Hyrule that Link can visit and explore, complete lore about why and how they exist in the first place. is not always available. In that regard, Depths may not have the answer.

But it’s not fun. So let’s go big with this last part.

The end started from the abyss

Okay, this is completely overkill, but enough people have mentioned it that it should be shared. Some community members have suggested that it is actually where Demis (Skyward Sword’s primary antagonist and recurring demon in Ganon) came from.

This evidence is fragile. According to Skyward Sword, Dimis is an eternal being who emerged from a chasm in search of the Triforce and was eventually sealed away by the goddess Hylia.community members, etc. u/OSCgal I noticed that there is a canyon on the map of Tears of the Kingdom: Breath of the Wild called “Breakthrough of the End”. This is implied to be where Doomsday first appeared. But if so, he may have been hiding in the depths before then.

There’s nothing else to suggest that this is actually the case, but if it’s certainly true, considering Zelda’s rather complicated timeline, he’ll be out by the time Tears of the Kingdom starts. The evidence that it was there would have disappeared long ago. But it’s a fun thought experiment to imagine that the demon lord himself, a spirit incarnated as Ganondorf, was once the foot of Hyrule all along.

If you’ve read all of this highly spoiler-filled content before exiting the game and still need help with Tears of the Kingdom, check out the link below. Tears of the Kingdom walkthrough and guide On how to pass through Hyrule. In fact, you can start here.

Rebekah Valentine is IGN’s Senior Reporter. you can find her on her twitter @duck valentine.