u/TheLuigiBro100

I felt like this needed to be said again for like the 1000th time. That is all =)

This is a theory I've had for a while noww, and I thought I'd post it.

A long time before the events of Wind Waker, the goddesses flooded the land because no hero could stop Ganondorf upon his return. This is presumabely because in the Adult Timeline, Zelda sent Link back in time. But why would this matter? Wouldn't a hero just appear to face evil, just as in all the other games (Zelda 1, Minish Cap, BOTW, etc)?

Well, what if no hero could appear, because who is going to recieve the Spirit of the Hero as well as of Demise and so on, are predestined occurences? In which case, it would have already been predestined that the next hero would be a descendant of the Hero of Time. But because we can infer with some confidence that not all Links are blood related due to The Hero of Winds, it wouldn't make sense in my opinion to just assume it could have been any blood descendant of the Hero of Time.

It'd make more sense if every Link we see is an individual predestined to recieve the Spirit of the Hero, thus we can assume that the Hero of Legend and the Hero of Twilight are not only from the same bloodline, but in fact the same person, just from different timelines. This makes sense with the backstory of Wind Waker then. No hero appeared because the Link who we see in both Twilight Princess and Link to the Past couldn't be born.

There's also more supporting the idea that Twilight Princess and Link to the Past are in fact the same events taking place in different timelines. Both feature Ganon being sealed in a different realm which he has corrupted, trying to return and conquer Hyrule. Both have a villain working under him, though different. In both, when Link enters the corrupted world he turns into an animal. When you go get the master sword, the temple of time around it has turned into ruins. Both have a civilised Hyrule at the center, with dark forces threatening it

If these are the same events, it's likely something similar also happened in Wind Wakers backstory. Ganondorf corrupted the sacred land, and turned it to something similar to the Darkworld/Twilight Realm. Then he made his way out of there through the help of some other villain, and conquered Hyrule. But because the next Hero was supposed to be a guy born from the descent of the Hero of Time and he had no descendants here because Zelda sent him back in time, Ganon in this timeline wasn't able to be stopped by any hero.

This would also mean later heroes are the same person. Link from A Link Between Worlds, Four Swords Adventures, and Wind Waker would be the same person, which makes a lot of sense imo because they all have the similar Toon Link aesthetic. They may all be some short guy lol. It even makes sense with smash bros, since it'd mean Toon Link is the same person across different games, Brawl Normal Link is also that since he's the Hero of Legend and the Hero of Twilight, and young Link is the Hero of Time etc, which would mean almost all individual Links have been featured in smash. That's more of a meme but it's kinda fun nonetheless ig imo. That could also make the original Hero of Hyrule and the Hero of Trains the same person, though that's more unlikely imo, there may be more links in between that we just haven't heard about.

Anyways, that's about it for the theory. Curious to hear some thought on this, and if you made it this far, thank you for reading, and I hope you're having a good one today!