Tears of the Kingdom – Where is Zelda?

The final trailer ends with Zelda's words that Link must find her. But where is she really? And why might it be a challenge for Link to find her? During this scene she stands on a platform, which is located at the Great Plateau. It feels even a little bit like Maz Koshia's arena, but it's much closer to the surface. In fact, it's about the view that you get from the Temple of Time (see Looygi Bros.). Now, we can spot a similar platform at the beginning of the trailer when Link is sky diving into the logo:

It's like an entrance to the huge shrine that we keep seeing on the golden sky islands and the general architecture seems to be the same. But it looks a lot more withered. This also seems to be the spot where Link is receiving the Recall ability with a golden light, which we saw in the early 2022 teaser, where we know that the ability is connected to the tear that Zelda is holding, because it has the same symbol.

I call it the Tear of Time and it might have more usage than simply reverting an object's path in time. It even looks like Zelda is tending to the Master Sword in her shots, where she might try to use these time powers to revert the damage done to it. Obviously, it hasn't fully worked, but Link draws the sword in front of the glowing light:

We don't really know what is happening, but we can also see in the previous trailer how Link reaches for Zelda with his Zonai arm, while she is wearing her new Zonai dress:

Something tells me that he is not actually able to grab her. This could be projection where you can communicate to Zelda on this special platform, but she is somewhere else.

And there are two possible explanations here. One is that she is stranded in a different time. If her tear allows for time manipulation, then she might have saved herself by traveling through time, ending up in a completely different era.

It could be the time where Ganondorf was last sealed and the last battle of Ganondorf against the sages took place. We will most likely see this in some sort of the flashback, as indicated by the shot of the Zonai character's face:

He's in a battle situation and around him you can spot other warriors, where one to the left appears to be a Rito warrior. This could likely be the other sages from that time. And the blonde women with the same dress and golden tear as Zelda's could be the Princess Zelda from that era.

Maybe this is where Zelda has ended up. But the Zonai talks to her about the situation in the present, with Link and the Master Sword as their last line of defense. And how is Link supposed to find her if she is truly lost in time? Even if he could use the tear for time traveling somehow, it might not be easy to find her. Also, I don't think the game will go into such territories. Breath of the Wild stayed entirely in the present, outside of the memories, and I think that this will be true for this game also, unless Nintendo wanted to make three different versions of the same Hyrule. But it just complicates things.

A different explanation is that both she and the Zonai are inside the actual Sacred Realm. I kept theorizing that the golden islands are the Sacred Realm, but maybe they are more something like the remains of that realm within the real world.

The large shrine could even be like a new version of the Temple of Time, an entrance to the Sacred Realm, which is still sealed. And maybe you need to unite all the tears to open it, similar to the Spiritual Stones in Ocarina of Time, which would be yet another connection to that game.

Given that this shrine seemingly was located on the Great Plateau at some point in time, right where the current Temple of Time resides, this adds additional meaning. Maybe the Zelda / Hylia from that era has used her powers to lift the entrance to the Sacred Realm into the sky and hid it behind a cloud barrier, just like Skyloft in Skyward Sword. This was to prevent from anyone ever finding it again, but now Ganondorf came and blew the skies wide open, causing the "Upheaval", but also revealing the hidden sky islands.