Tears of the Kingdom – Hylia and the Zonai?

Today Zeltik has released a very good theory video about the divine being portrayed in the Zonai stone carvings that we saw. To sum things up: the designs of Zelda and this being are very similar on various ends, where this may imply that this being is in fact the Goddess Hylia. I've also noticed these similarities before, but didn't put as much thought into them, but I concur with this theory. It makes a lot of sense, especially when this divine being is linked to the sky islands somehow. After all it was Hylia who has created Skyloft.

It would be interesting if this game really were to go full circle and go back to where it all began with Skyward Sword. This would also be very fitting with the whole sky theme. The story could revolve around ending this endless cycle of reincarnations that started back then, where Zelda finally needs to face her origin and the curse of Demise needs to be lifted somehow.

At the end of Breath of the Wild I was disappointed that we didn't get to fight Demise again to truly end things once and for all. But I suppose this may have been something that they were saving for the next game. We also never truly saw Hylia in either game. We got to see Demise in Skyward Sword, but Hylia was always only shown in drawings or as statues.

The seven "tears of the kingdom" shown around Hylia could also be the golden glowing object that we saw from the snippets shown in February:

Maybe this really is your main quest collectible and you have to find a number of them to heal your arm and/or repair the corroded Master Sword. Those could even be called "Hylia's Tears". Normally, you would associate the color gold with Hylia, though this was swapped with Nayru in Skyward Sword because of the desert theme... But since Nayru is linked to wisdom, wisdom is linked to Zelda, and Zelda is linked to Hylia, this is quite interchangeable and may vary between the games.

However, this may also mean that the arm holding down Ganondorf's corpse might have actually been Hylia's. The teal color of the arm itself was similar to other spirits shown in Breath of the Wild, like King Rhoam, the Champions, or even the Lord of the Mountain, indicating that this is some form of ghost. But the spiral above goes more into a green color, where this looks like the same energy that we have seen for various actions, like morphing through a ceiling. The consensus here seems to be that this is simply magic and that this magic is related to the Zonai somehow.

But this raises the question what the Zonai have to do with Hylia...? Link's new outfit in Tears of the Kingdom is clearly inspired by the garbs worn by the ancient hero on the mural from Breath of the Wild. And if those garbs are related to the Zonai, then this could indicate that the ancient hero was part of this tribe or had something to do with it before facing the Great Calamity. Or the outfit could simply be related to Hylia and her first hero...

But the Zonai's whole disappearance may be similar to how Hylia sent off the Hylians into the sky, where the sky islands were hidden behind a cloud barrier that's not visible from the ground, exactly like Skyloft in Skyward Sword. I still like to think of these sky islands as the Sacred Realm, but Skyloft essentially was the entrance to the Sacred Realm, where you were able to obtain the Triforce from the Sky Keep and where this could be connected as well. Hylia put the Sacred Realm back to where it originally belonged.

And either Hylia placed the Zonai in charge of protecting the Triforce and the Sacred Realm... or she banished them altogether, because they were in fact more like the Dark Interlopers known from Twilight Princess, which would explain their design similarities mentioned in my previous post about this whole topic. After all the Zonai tribe was described as "barbarian", so it's likely that there was something evil about it.

Of course over time the Zonai could have turned good, similar to the Twili (at least most of them). So, even after being banished into the Sacred Realm (or its doorstep), they made it their task to protect it after realizing the error of their ways or something.

Again, this is just lots of theorizing based on speculations for the fun of it. Take it all with a grain of salt or two. And I'm very excited to find out what this all we be about next May, because this last trailer has been very intriguing.