Tears of the Kingdom – The Upheaval?

The "Upheaval" is what Nintendo calls the cataclysmic event that happened to Hyrule in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (see here, for example). And this is something that has been teased since the very first teaser trailer in 2019, with the rising Hyrule Castle at the end. But of course at the time we had no clue about the true extent of this.

Now, who or what has caused the Upheaval? And what for? Well, I'll make an educated guess by saying "Ganondorf" and "to get the Triforce".

In Breath of the Wild the Triforce seems like something lost in time. While Zelda uses its powers to fight the Calamity, they are not really aware what the Triforce actually is. Nor do they know about the three Goddesses and the story of the creation of Hyrule, since there is only ever talk of the Goddess, Hylia.

Hylia was the one who originally hid the Triforce, in some other realm that could only be accessed via the Sky Keep, which was hidden from the world below via the cloud barrier. This was to keep it away from Demise, an internal evil, the king of demons. But during the events of Skyward Sword Demise was ultimately defeated and the Triforce moved back to the ground. Wars were then fought over the relic of the Goddesses, so later the Temple of Time was created to seal the entrance to the Sacred Realm, which then was opened in the events of Ocarina of Time.

Now, I believe that this process got reverted at some point of time, out of pure necessity. Ganondorf, who is Demise's hatred reborn, kept reincarnating over the ages, always seeking to get his hands on the Triforce to conquer the world. So, a new Temple of Time was build to seal the entrance to the Sacred Realm once more. And Hylia, or a princess with the power of Hylia, has sent this Temple of Time into the skies, hiding it behind a new cloud barrier. We have probably seen the reincarnated Goddess in the recent trailer:

And we have seen this new Temple of Time, time and time again, in every footage about Tears of the Kingdom since the 2021 teaser trailer. It's the large structure on the golden sky islands:

Please read my post about the whereabouts of Zelda as to why this might be a different Temple of Time. The short story is: it seemingly used to be in the exact spot where the Temple of Time in Breath of the Wild resides at an earlier point in time. That one was built later, based on the first Temple of Time, but it doesn't house the entrance to the Sacred Realm. Instead, this entrance has been hidden above Hyrule, while the "new" Temple of Time might just be a decoy.

If you're on the surface in Skyward Sword, you can't really see Skyloft from there, nor the cloud barrier. It's therefore possible that these golden sky islands have already been there during the events of Breath of the Wild and long before, simply hidden from view. This has been a popular theory for a while now, which has some factual support with the three dragons, who are visibly breaching through a cloud barrier in the game. And all this time they might have been going to these golden sky islands, where we can even see a new dragon flying around.

Now, this doorway to the Sacred Realm must have been hidden in the skies for a long time. For about as long as Ganondorf has been sealed away in the deep underground of Hyrule, which must have been more than 10,000 years, because this is when the first Great Calamity happened. And he has awoken to a Hyrule, which has even forgotten that the Triforce ever existed. But he hasn't forgotten about it and he's back to claim it once more, where he's going into Hypermode.

We can see this huge blast of Malice in the sky during the trailer, unleashed by Ganondorf. And while this could just be to spread the new monsters all over Hyrule, it might also be an attack to destroy the cloud barrier. To reveal the hidden sky islands above. The power of this damages the sky islands, so that parts of them crash onto the lands below. (Update: the Blood Moon scene seems to have taken place in the distant past, so it probably has nothing to do with breaking the cloud barrier.)

At the same time he somehow unearths entire parts of Hyrule with Malice, lifting them towards the sky, including Hyrule Castle itself, so he can get closer to the Sacred Realm. Well, his motives for lifting things into the sky are actually not as clear, but it makes sense that he wants to conquer the Sacred Realm and causes the Upheaval to bring himself closer to his goals.

We also know that some structures in Hyrule will be lifted into the skies during the course of the game, like the Lomei Labyrinths. So, whatever causes parts of the land to ascend into the heavens might actually be where the Zonai come into play. Perhaps this wasn't Hylia's doing, but it was actually the magic of the Zonai which created the sky islands. This makes a lot of sense, considering that they've installed the Constructs to defend and maintain them.

Well, we don't have a full picture at this point in time, where we can only speculate. But this is exactly what Nintendo wants us to do right now, to talk about the game, and it's certainly working!