Yet Another Theory On How The Ending Of Zelda 64 Is Supposed To Work Out
By: Metal Luigi

A while back I wrote another article on this subject. Looking back, I'm embarrassed at how stupid sounding it is to me now. However, THIS time, I'm sure I've got it.

You know the ending...Link takes his final slash at Giant Pig-Headed Mutated Disgusting Freaky Gannondorf (otherwise known as Ganon), and Zelda uses her magic to hold him in place, while calling the other sages to take action. Ganon is sealed in the Sacred Realm. Zelda sends Link back to his 9 year old self, back to good ol' Hyrule, supposedly before Ganon starts mucking around looking for the Spiritual Stones. All the creatures of Hyrule (besides the monsters) celebrate in the middle of Lon Lon Ranch, while the Sages look on happily from Death Mountain. You see Gannondorf, trapped in the Sacred Realm, cursing everyone. Nice and happy. Wheee.

Or maybe not so nice.

There's been some...wait, no, a LOT of dispute over the ending. Various parties shouting down each other's theories. Everyone finally giving up after about a year of dispute, deciding that IT'S JUST IMPOSSIBLE. END OF STORY. But maybe it isn't.

Let's rewind. Link makes his strike. The Sages go into action. Gannondorf is trapped in the Sacred Realm with his piece of the Triforce, thus shutting off one door out into the real world from the SR.

NOW, Link and Zelda are standing happily up on Cloud Nine (Well, on some cloud, anyway), chatting away peacefully. Zelda offers to send him back home, to the way he used to be when he was little. He hands over the Ocarina of Time, and she plays her song, and sends him back...

...but NOT before all the trouble started! Instead, she sends him back to just a few mere minutes after he first yanked the Master Sword out of the Pedestal, and found out that Gannondorf had been merely using him. Now, with Gannondorf mucking around in the Sacred Realm, Link pops out of nowhere with the Master Sword in his hands. He steps up to the Pedestal, inserts the sword, and *plunk* blocks off the only gateway in this time period between the Sacred Realm and the Real World, trapping Gannondorf BEFORE he can take over the world and junk things up for everyone and morph into Ganon.

In other words,

Link pulls out the Master Sword and gets sucked into the Sacred Realm.

Gannondorf gets sucked into and reforms the Sacred Realm.

Link From The Future drops into the past and traps them BOTH in the Sacred Realm.

Naturally, this creates some pretty funky complications. Now, the REAL pre-evil Hyrule Link is trapped in the Sacred Realm. So is Gannondorf. Obviously, the whole "Gannodorf takes over Hyrule" timeline is destroyed. And yet, it HAS to exist, because post-evil Hyrule Link is living in the past (in the place of the pre-evil Hyrule Link, who's trapped in the Sacred Realm), and if the timeline post-evil Hyrule Link comes from has been erased, where did post-evil Hyrule Link come from?

Major headache. But the theory DOES make sense.

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