I still remember the moment I learned that The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom existed at the very end of a timeline that had been split for decades. It felt like the reveal of a secret I didn’t even know I was waiting for. Now, in 2026, with a few years of distance from Tears of the Kingdom, I find myself returning to that same sense of wonder – not about what happened after, but about what happened right before those games began. The series stands at a narrative crossroads, and I can’t shake the feeling that the next Zelda game will be a prequel set during the convergence of all three legendary timelines.
The uniqueness of Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom lies not just in their open-world reinvention, but in their placement within Hyrule’s grand history. Nintendo officially confirmed something that fans had speculated about for years: both games take place so far into the future that the three branching timelines created by Ocarina of Time have finally reunited. This means that every victory, every tragedy, every version of Hyrule – from the Hero of Time’s defeat in the Downfall Timeline, to the child era of Twilight Princess, to the Great Sea of The Wind Waker – somehow collapsed back into a single thread. It’s a monumental concept, and yet we have never seen how it actually happened.
That missing chapter is what excites me most. Somewhere in the vast span of years between those ancient legends and Link’s awakening in the Shrine of Resurrection, there is a moment when the timelines folded together. No game has explored this event. A prequel set in that era wouldn’t have to be a direct lead-in to Breath of the Wild’s Calamity; it could stand as its own mythic tale, as foundational as Skyward Sword or Ocarina of Time. And frankly, after spending over a hundred hours in Tears of the Kingdom, I believe the series has been quietly steering us toward exactly that.
Tears of the Kingdom placed time travel at the emotional core of its story. Zelda’s journey backward through the ages, her bond with the Master Sword, and the dragon’s tears that rippled across history weren’t just plot devices – they were a reminder that time travel remains one of the series’ most potent themes. Ocarina of Time used it to split the world. Now, after witnessing Zelda’s sacrifice and the sword’s centuries-long restoration, I see Nintendo priming us for a story that uses time not to divide, but to heal. The prequel I'm envisioning would let us participate in that healing. Players could step into the role of a hero who witnesses fragments of different timelines bleeding into one another, perhaps even traveling between them to mend tears in reality. It wouldn’t be a retread of Ocarina’s structure; it would be an inversion of it, a culmination instead of a separation.
I’m aware that Breath of the Wild already received a spin-off prequel in Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity, but that story was explicitly non-canon, a what-if scenario created by a little guardian’s interference. The mainline series deserves an official, canon bridging of its fractured history. Right now, the timeline presents a soft discontinuity – a void where three rivers should visibly merge into one ocean. A prequel would not only fill that void, but also give Nintendo the opportunity to pay tribute to every version of Hyrule we’ve loved. Imagine meeting a world-weary incarnation of Impa who carries knowledge from multiple realities, or encountering a landscape that blends the flooded peaks of the adult timeline with the dark forests of the child timeline. These would be more than fanservice; they’d be narrative pillars explaining how the unified Hyrule of the Era of the Wilds came to be.
What makes this possibility even more compelling to me is the way Tears of the Kingdom concluded. We didn’t get a DLC expansion. For a game of its magnitude, that absence felt deliberate, almost like a clean slate being prepared. Perhaps the development team decided to pour all their energy into something new rather than extend an already complete narrative. A timeline-convergence prequel would be the perfect canvas – familiar enough to feel connected to the Wild-era duology, yet distant enough to avoid being shackled by its mechanics. It could even serve as a soft reboot for the entire Zelda canon, recontextualizing every past adventure as part of a single fabric while opening the door to ideas far beyond time travel. The reference article I came across a while back even floated the idea of a multiverse, and honestly, that feels like a natural next step. If three timelines can merge into one, who’s to say there aren’t other universes beyond them? A prequel that stitches Hyrule back together could simultaneously introduce the concept of a larger multiverse, turning every conceivable version of Zelda into valid, coexisting realities.
As I wait for Nintendo’s next move, I find myself replaying both Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom with new eyes. Every ruin, every ancient tech, every vague legend recited by an NPC now feels like a breadcrumb trail leading to that unseen moment of unification. The Zelda series has always been about courage in the face of cyclical fate, and there’s a special kind of courage in finally, definitively, telling the story of how a broken timeline became whole again. I hope the next game gives us the chance to live that story – not as a distant echo, but as the hero who holds the threads and weaves them back together.