Over a month after the release of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, players have finally spent enough time in Hyrule, above, and below, that they’ve begun to form some seriously complex theories about what’s going on with the game’s lore. And one element appears to be puzzling the community more than any other: the Depths.
We’ve written before about the most interesting mystery of Tears of the Kingdom’s Depths, which is that it’s a dark mirror image of Hyrule above – a “dark world,” if you will. But even with that understanding, there are still tons of questions plaguing the minds of Tears of the Kingdom community about what the Depths really is, how it came to be, how old it is, and what it all means.
A recent thread on r/zelda highlights many of these questions, most notably because the community can’t seem to come to any kind of agreement on an answer for most of them. And boy, do people have theories. Some of them have more holes in them than others, but all of them speak to the deep curiosity of the community around this mysterious, dark Hyrule.
Here are a few of our favorites. Be warned: serious spoilers ahead for what’s in the Depths and what it means for the plot of Tears of the Kingdom.
The Depths are a pseudo-afterlife
u/huggiesdsc has a cool theory that, while unlikely, is still fun to imagine. They suggest that the Depths are a “pseudo-afterlife” that can be visited by living people similar to how characters from Greek mythology can visit the underworld. Chasms serve as portals to the underworld that connect the two realms thanks to Ganon’s magic.
Farfetched? Maybe – there are some holes in this theory, such as what this means for the Goron city of Gorondia or why the Zonai were able to mine materials in the underworld and then use them above ground. But it’s a fun thought experiment when you consider the Poes – lost souls that need to be guided to the afterlife via Bargainer Statues – and the ghost warriors holding weapons. One cool (or creepy) element of this theory is that it suggests Kohga, the leader of the Yiga that Link cast into a pit in Breath of the Wild, is actually dead. Link fights his vengeful spirit in the Depths, and Kohga is able to communicate with his living followers who descend to visit him in this way.
There’s a lot more to this theory, and the subsequent replies both debunk elements of it as well as add potential further support, but the idea of the Depths as having some connection to death is certainly a strong one regardless of whether or not it’s literally a Hyrule Hades.
The Depths are OLD. Real old.
This is less a theory and more an understanding many community members have come to based on lore directly from the game. We know for certain the Depths have been around in some fashion since before the Zonai appeared in Hyrule, since the Zonai found them already there and were able to build mines and extract Zonaite. So they’re definitely older than 10,000 years, likely significantly more so.
It’s not fully clear whether or not the Depths had anything resembling civilization down there at the time, though. While Gorondia being in the Depths indicates the Gorons either came from the Depths originally or at least dwelled there for a time, it’s equally possible that Gorondia was on the surface and just sank into a volcano at some point. Whatever the case, though, it’s clear that either the Gorons emerging or Gorondia sinking happened so far out of Goron historical memory that the legend of it has all but faded by the time of Tears of the Kingdom – again, we’re talking really old here.
Of course, this opens up a number of other questions. For instance, why is there a mine exactly where Tarry Town is? Did the Zonai somehow know Tarry Town would be built by Link thousands of years later, or did Tarry Town come into existence, subconsciously or otherwise, because of the mine? If that’s the case, why isn’t there a mine under what used to be the Hyrule Castle Town? No one seems to have a good answer for these questions. One theory, suggested by u/lolIiollie and u/MiddleNightCowboy, is that the Depths are actually an “ancient” version of Hyrule that’s been long-since buried, implying that the Zonai built the mines where they did on the ruins of ancient versions of present-day towns. Maybe there was a Tarry Town more than 10,000 years ago!
The Depths are at least somewhat magical
Several community members, including Ryon21_ and Iguanaught, have suggested that the Depths are a little bit magical, while also being a physical phenomenon, and other community members have suggested similar ideas. The gist of them all put together is that while the Depths is a real place – not an Afterlife, but an actual part of Hyrule, it exists in a world where magic is absolutely a thing, magical beings created the world originally, and magic has an influence on what happens in it. In that context, it’s completely plausible that an underground world could exist full of magical rocks and wandering spirits that’s over 10,000 years old but also perfectly mirrors the present day world. Maybe there’s no explanation beyond that.
That ties in with another thread many community members have pulled on – that the Depths are a concept we’ve seen in other Zelda games repeatedly. Multiple games have dark worlds, mirror worlds, or otherwise reversed or aesthetically dark versions of the main Hyrule that Link can visit and explore, and we don’t always get a full lore explanation for why or how any of those exist in the first place. So in that respect, maybe there is no answer for the Depths.
But that’s no fun. So let’s get really wild with this last one.
Demise originated in the Depths
Okay, this is absolutely a stretch, but enough folks mentioned it we have to share it. Several community members are suggesting that the Depths are actually where Demise – the primary antagonist of Skyward Sword and the demon that repeatedly reincarnates at Ganon – came from.
The evidence for this is flimsy. Skyward Sword states that Demise is an eternal entity who came out of a fissure in the ground to find the Triforce, and was eventually sealed away by the Goddess Hylia. Community members such as u/OSCgal have noted a canyon on the Tears of the Kingdom/Breath of the Wild map called the “Breach of Demise”, implied to be where Demise first came out of. But if that were the case, he could have conceivably been hiding out in the Depths prior to that.
There’s nothing else really to suggest this is actually the case, though admittedly if it were true any evidence he had been down there would have been long gone by the time Tears of the Kingdom rolled around given the rather convoluted Zelda timeline. But it’s a fun thought experiment to imagine that the demon king himself, the spirit reincarnating as Ganondorf, was Hyrule’s feet the entire time before.
If you read all of this very spoilery stuff before finishing the game and still need help in Tears of the Kingdom, take a look at our Tears of the Kingdom Walkthrough and Guide about making your way through Hyrule. In fact, you can start here:
16 Things to Do First in Tears of the Kingdom14 Things Tears of the Kingdom Doesn’t Tell YouHow to Uncover the Full TOTK MapHow to Expand Your Inventory in TOTKPSA: Your Old BOTW Save Unlocks Something Cool in TOTK
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. You can find her on Twitter @duckvalentine.
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