Tears of the Kingdom – Of Champions and Sages

The Japanese eShop card for Tears of the Kingdom comes with a new screenshot, which shows the two mysterious characters from the trailer standing right next to each other (see NintendoEverything).

This adds further evidence for my theory that we're going to experience the era where Ganondorf has last been sealed in the form of flashbacks / memories. And these characters are part of the Seven Sages from that era, responsible for the seal. The blonde woman could simply be the Zelda from that time or it could be some other reincarnation of Hylia.

Whenever the story of previous Sages took place, it will be before the battle against Calamity Ganon from 10,000 years ago, where the first Champions came to be. Calamity Ganon seems to be just a Phantom Ganon, born from the Malice flowing out of the sealed Ganondorf. So, what Hyrule has been fighting for thousands of years now was only a manifestation, but not the source of the evil. The source was sealed by the Zonai magic hand that we saw in the 2019 teaser trailer long before that.

I don't think that we will experience this era directly, so it will be like in Breath of the Wild, where most of the story was told via the memories and focused on the Great Calamity from 100 years ago, as well as the Champions trying to stop it. And the Champions from 100 years ago really were the stars of Breath of the Wild, where they got their own amiibo, got more story via DLC, and also took control of the Divine Beasts at the end in the form of spirits.

This was at the expense of their descendants, where Sidon, Riju, Yunobo, and Teba helped you board the Divine Beasts, but this was the end of their part. They didn't take on the mantle of new Champions in Breath of the Wild and their full potential only came to fruit in the spin-off, Age of Calamity.

In Tears of the Kingdom this may be the other way around. We will probably get to see all the previous Sages via memories, but they won't be the stars of the story. Those will be the new Sages, because these are the characters that Link will relate to, where at least Riju and Sidon finally get to shine. They won't ever be the new Champions, where the Divine Beasts are gone anyway, but they will become something much more important to the lore of Zelda.