The Legend Of Links: Ranking Zelda’s mute, but expressive, heroes

Clockwise, from top-left: The Legend Of Zelda; The Wind Waker (Screenshot: YouTube), The Legend Of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild (Image: Nintendo), The Legend Of Zelda: Twilight Princess (Image: Nintendo), The Legend Of Zelda (Screenshot: Nintendo), The Legend Of Zelda: Skyward Sword (Image: Nintendo)

Although the Zelda series is one of the more diverse entries in the Nintendo canon—with games running the gamut from more structured adventures like Link’s Awakening on the Game Boy, all the way up through open-world adventures like 2017’s massive hit Breath Of The Wild—it’s employed a few key recurring elements through its almost 40-year run. Boot up a Zelda game—including Breath Of The Wild sequel Tears Of The Kingdom, out this week—and you can expect certain comforting familiarities. There’s going to be a very strong triangle. There’s going to be a woman named Zelda. A pig-man will, at some point, be a problem. And you’re probably—always, in fact—going to be playing as a kid named Link.

But not all Links are created equal. Because, while Nintendo tries to keep its green-clad heroes as neutral as possible—the better, so the logic goes, to make them easy for any and all players to identify with—it’s impossible for nearly a dozen different Links from an even larger number of Zelda games not to find ways to stand out from each other. Some Links are braver; some Links are sadder; some Links screw up the natural course of history so badly that people are still having arguments about the Zelda chronology 20 years later.

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And those differences are part of the charm of Zelda, a series that has sometimes struggled with its macro-level storytelling, even as its base gameplay has remained profoundly solid. And so we present to you: A ranking of Links—to the past, across worlds, what have you. For each entry, we’ve listed which games the fairy kid in question has come from and, just for kicks, how badly they mangled the timeline on their way across their adventures.

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11. Oracle Link

Nintendo eShop – The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons Trailer

Games: Oracle Of Seasons (2001), Oracle Of Ages (2001)

Impact on the time-space continuum: Moderate, given the time travel in Oracle Of Ages

This placement isn’t to give short shrift to the Link from these two Game Boy Color adventures—who, if nothing else, managed the rare feat of stopping a mass existential threat across not just multiple kingdoms, but multiple Game Boy cartridges. But beyond typically solid Zelda action, there’s just not that much to this particular incarnation of The Hero—with much more of the focus on the villains and the titular Oracles.

10. Minish Cap Link

The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap – Nintendo eShop Trailer (Wii U)

Games: The Minish Cap (2005) (plus Four Swords, sort of)

Impact on the time-space continuum: Negligible

A man frequently in danger of being upstaged by his own hat, the most interesting things about The Minish Cap’s version of Link are mostly stolen from other, better Links. (Who we’ll talk about way further down the list.) Admittedly, Minish Link’s shrinking abilities are neat, and his connections to oddball side-story titles Four Swords and Four Sword Adventures are interesting. But the real conflict in this game is between his talking headgear Ezio and his nemesis, Vaati, leaving this Link occasionally feeling like he has all the impact of an ambulatory, sword-swinging hatrack.

9. Skyward Sword Link

Wii – The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword Trailer

Games: Skyward Sword (2011)

Impact on the time-space continuum: Screws the pooch for everybody else

Skyward Sword Link—the first Link, canonically—has the unlucky fate of hailing from one of Zelda’s talk-ier eras; he might remain typically stoic, but the people around him love to yap, draining his adventure of some of its excitement. Still, he does have some things to offer, including being the first Link to have a job before all the high-flying adventure starts, having been serving as a trainee knight. (It’s why he starts the game with slightly more than the series’ standard measly three hearts.) He also gets credit/blame for being the reason, in-universe, that so many other blond-haired kids end up saddled with the same name/destiny, as Skyward Sword ends with the demon king Demise cursing Link’s descendants to, basically, be video game protagonists forever.

8. Spirit Tracks Link

The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks Release Trailer

Games: Spirit Tracks (2009)

Impact on the time-space continuum: Keeps things firmly on rails

Let’s keep the “Links Who Have Jobs” train rolling, choo-choo! Which is to say: This is the Link who drives a train, and who continues to drive it even as his engineer duties steadily expand to incorporate more monster-slaying and princess-rescuing side jobs. Derived from the Toon Link template (although the handheld Spirit Tracks takes place well after Wind Waker and Phantom Hourglass), this Link shares the sense of humor of those other plucky lil’ adventurers. He’s also the rare Zelda protagonist who gets a choice of what to be after the fighting is over: Spirit Tracks lets you pick whether he embraces his more martial side, becomes a wanderer, or sticks to riding the rails.

7. Twilight Princess Link

The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess HD – Launch Trailer (Wii U)

Games: Twilight Princess (2006)

Impact on the time-space continuum: Surprisingly straightforward.

He wrestles goats! He jousts on horseback! He fights duels! He is, sometimes, a dog! Link from 2006’s Twilight Princess is Link the action hero, who can never be kept down by a cosmic collapse or a bad cast of mange. (He even gets his own grizzled mentor, in the form of “The Hero’s Spirit,” strongly implied to be the bitter ghost of one of the other entrants from further along on this list.) Most especially, Twilight Link is defined by his teasingly affectionate relationship with the imp Midna, who accompanies him for the entirety of his adventure, and somehow manages to not be as irritating as the series’ infamous fairy companions. His companionship with her helps him to escape the blank slate fate of so many of his fellow kids-in-green.

6. Link Between Worlds Link/Ravio

Nintendo 3DS – The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds E3 Trailer

Games: A Link Between Worlds (2013)

Impact on the time-space continuum: The dimension-hopping stuff can be a little confusing, but no actual time-mangling

This is a twofer, since 2013 handheld throwback A Link Between Worlds is all about the alternate universe of Lorule, complete with alternate counterparts of the main characters. That includes rabbit-hatted goofball Ravio, who eventually reveals that he’s the Lorule (get it? Instead of Hyrule?) version of Link. He also helps inject some welcome character into the pairing, operating a shop that lets you pick up your usual adventuring equipment without all that pesky…adventuring. (Also, we’d be remiss if we didn’t note that this was another installment of “Links With Jobs,” with the Hyrule version of the character being a blacksmith’s apprentice this time around.)

5. The Original Link

The Legend Of Zelda

Games: The Legend Of Zelda (1987), Zelda 2: The Adventure Of Link (1988)

Impact on the time-space continuum: None (although it is weird that there are two different Zeldas in this period)

This is the OG Link, the one who started it all. He gets grandfathered into a high spot on our list, not just on strict seniority, but also on the basis of the sheer horror his adventures subject him to. The original Zelda games take place deep into a branch of the timeline where Link got killed during Ocarina Of Time, a plot decision we have to assume was implemented at least in part in order to account for how bleak the world in the original Legend Of Zelda is: A monster-filled wasteland where old people live in caves, handing out swords to every green-clad kid to come along. But Link soldiers through it all not just once, but twice, returning two years later (now all of 16, and explicitly hunted by monsters that want to collect his blood for nefarious purposes) for the only slightly less apocalyptic landscape of Zelda 2. And he never complains—even when his own shadow starts trying to stab him in the face.

4. Breath Of The Wild Link

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild – Official Game Trailer – Nintendo E3 2016

Games: Breath Of The Wild (2017), Tears Of The Kingdom (2023)

Impact on the time-space continuum: He’s situated so far in the future that Nintendo refuses to say what timeline he’s on, which remains very funny to us. N/A

The most interesting about Breath Of The Wild’s Link—who returns to Nintendo’s Switch this week as the star of its sequel, Tears Of The Kingdom—is that he has a history. Whereas most Links are met by the player on the most exciting day of their lives, this Link was already a veteran soldier by the time we take control. (Albeit a veteran soldier who’s spent a hundred years in recovery from a near-fatal wound, and with amnesia.) As such, Breath Of The Wild presents a more mature version of Link, albeit a more mature version who sometimes gets up to some extremely silly shenanigans with time-freezes and hurled bombs while trying to stay out ahead of all those damn Guardians and Lynels.

3. Ocarina Of Time Link

Nintendo 3DS – The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D Remake Trailer

Games: Ocarina Of Time (1998), Majora’s Mask (2000)

Impact on the time-space continuum: RUINS IT FOR EVERYONE

More than 20 years later, “The Hero Of Time” still stands literally at the center of the Zelda timeline, with his adventures serving as the breaking point for that ludicrously complicated flowchart of games and plots. And while he exists as both a kid and an adult, thanks to the game’s time travel shenanigans, he remains far more compelling as a child: Abandoned to be raised by fairies in the forest, tasked with the improbable job of saving the world, and ultimately, very likely failing at it. (Or disappearing, in one very dark timeline where he hops into the future and apparently never returns.) It’s the child Link who also recurs in Majora’s Mask, one of the strangest and saddest of the mainline Zelda games, being drawn into a time-looping mystery story out of his desire to save his very loud, very annoying friend Navi. Running through some of the spookiest adventures in the whole Zelda canon—nobody who has to deal, as a child, with ReDeads, Majora, and that damn mask salesman is going to end up without some trauma—only adds to the sympathetic horror we feel for this poor kid.

2. Link To The Past Link

The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening – Nintendo Switch Trailer – Nintendo E3 2019

Games: A Link To The Past (1992), Link’s Awakening (1993)

Impact on the time-space continuum: Surprisingly little

The most melancholy of the Links is just a simple, sleepy kid when his adventure starts, pulled out of a dead sleep by a psychic message from Princess Zelda informing him he’s the only one who can save Hyrule from the corruption issuing forth from the Dark World. The rare Link whose standard silence can be read as genuinely contemplative—especially in the even more existential Link’s Awakening, which serves as a direct sequel to A Link To The Past—this is a Link who’s constantly told the world rests on his shoulders, for good or ill. It can be hard to imbue a top-down sprite with character, but the slow quiet moments that dot this Link’s adventures—and the way he presses on as more and more monsters scream at him that he’s literally ruining the world as he strives for the truth—make it far more easy to relate.

1. Toon Link

The Legend Of Zelda: The Wind Waker

Games: The Wind Waker (2003), Phantom Hourglass (2007)

Impact on the time-space continuum: Adorably post-apocalyptic

First of all: Just look at him.

But, really, the Link from 2003’s The Wind Waker and its DS follow-up stands out from the pack because he’s a real character, with an expressive face that allows him to convey genuine anger, shock, and confusion. He’s also, interestingly, one of the only Links on this list who doesn’t have any prophecies, destinies, or other mystical pre-destination hanging over his head: He’s just a kid whose sister gets kidnapped, grabs a sword, and tries to help. (Sure, that means you have to do the irritating bit where he has to pull all the pieces of the Triforce Of Courage out of the ocean to prove his worthiness, but we can’t fault a self-starter.) Really, though, it all comes back to the name: Toon Link, a cartoonishly expressive character that perfectly fits the brightly colored apocalyptic world of The Wind Waker and Phantom Hourglass. Just don’t mess with him: You’ll end up with a sword sticking out of your head, as his version of series antagonist Ganon—also the best incarnation, as it happens, fight us—learns at the game’s climax.

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