Tears of the Sages

That final trailer for Tears of the Kingdom, which is just super addicting, is talking in riddles about what's happening in the game, but it's showing us so much at the same time that Zelda fans sure will put the pieces together.

Well, I'm a fan, and to me it looks like we're getting a scenario very close to that of Ocarina of Time. Link and Zelda found Ganondorf as the source of the Malice. Reawakened he takes over Hyrule Castle and reigns with terror over the land. To defeat him it needs the Blade of Evil's Bane, as well as the power of seven Sages, where each of them is holding on to a tear, which looks a bit like the Amber and Dusk Relics from Skyward Sword with that yin and yang form.

We have seen a couple of these potential sages in the trailer, all equipped with such a tear at some point:

• Zelda
• Riju
• Sidon
• Tulin
• The Zonai figure
  

About the last one, his name is mentioned in the leaked artbook. Diving enthusiastically back into the Zelda community after the new trailer, I happened to pick up this info by "accident"... And his name actually gives away quite a lot. You don't have to read the following if you don't want to:

He is Rauru. Yes, you've heard right. And if you look at the mysterious figure on the carvings, it does look a bit like an owl, doesn't it? But this essentially confirms that they are going with the idea of the sages here.

It's also nice that Rauru is now a Zonai, presumably, so that each sage comes from a different tribe, while in Ocarina of Time there were two Hylians as sages with Zelda and Rauru. Of course in that game you weren't meant to know that Zelda is the final sage until the very end...

Anyway, there is certainly going to be a Goron sage, where we already could see someone with Daruk's Boulder Breaker in the trailer. It's likely Yunobo, but for some reason Nintendo doesn't want to reveal this character yet.

And naturally the last sage is probably going to be a Sheikah, where I would place my bets on Paya, who is basically a young Impa. If Riju could learn how to properly fight since Breath of the Wild, then so can she.

Well, but what do the tears mean? They don't have them from the beginning, where you first can see Sidon without it and later with it. But it seems that some of these sages have faced a loss in the recent past. With Tulin it's likely that something has happened to his father, Teba, or else we probably would be accompanied by him instead. And Sidon will seemingly lose his father during the game as well, because not only has he this tear on his hand, but also the Zora crown on his head, making him the new Zora king. Maybe these tears represent their grief?

The only thing that Riju has lost so far is her hair, which is sad enough, but certainly not on the same level. But with what's happening in Gerudo Desert, she might have lost her home... (As long as it's not Patricia, it's fine, because they will need that secret weapon of mass destruction.)

And if Paya is truly one of the last sages, then this probably won't bode well for Impa, but this is getting very hypothetical at this point. Of course, this doesn't mean that something bad has to happen to these characters, because they are the sages. But it might be that their grief is ultimately what lets them become sages in the first place.

Maybe Ganondorf is even targeting certain individuals, because he is afraid that they will become the sages that he still knows from the past. In that case Impa would certainly be one of those targets, because it wouldn't be the first Impa to cross him... It does make sense and would make for a much better villain.

Zelda, Link, and co. have little knowledge about Ganondorf and what has happened in Hyrule prior to the Great Calamity. But Ganondorf knows everything. He knows about the Triforce, he knows about the Goddesses, he knows about the sages, and so on. And he will hopefully use this knowledge to his advantage to become the respectable villain that he is supposed to be.

If you look at the artworks, you can see that the tear on his forehead is red. Naturally, Ganondorf is not one of the sages, but what if he is hunting for the tears himself? The red tear might be related to the Gorons, where he took this from Death Mountain. Perhaps it's even the reason why we haven't seen the Goron sage yet, because something terrible might have happened to him after a confrontation with Ganondorf.