Why Evil Always Breaks Free of Link’s Holy Seals

Gamers know that no matter how many times you defeat a boss, there is always another story, another reincarnation, that brings our heroes face to face with the same evil all over again. This is what makes up many ongoing franchises, particularly with Nintendo. There seems to be little to no explanation as to why Bowser, Ganon and other villains won’t just stay dead, leaving our heroes to live in peace, except for the obvious need for the creators to continue making more games to sell. This might be the only reason, but I think there’s more to it than that.

Hit the jump to read more about why Hyrule and its “neighboring” kingdoms just can’t seem to keep a lid on evil.

The Zelda franchise has multiple dastardly villains who corrupt the lands our heroes call home, but each of them gets described in relatively the same way: either the evil was sealed away and somehow escaped, or they are an anomaly of their race, spreading evil and darkness until they are eventually sealed away and escape later in another game. Doesn’t this fly in the face of what we understand to be the awesome and holy power of our swords? The Master Sword is hailed as a purifying weapon that banishes and destroys evil, and it certainly seems to live up to its name as you watch Ganon and Agahnim evaporate into nothing. However, Ganon/Ganondorf shows up all the time throughout the history of Hyrule and you must defeat Agahnim over and over again in A Link to the Past.

Even in other realms brought forward within Zelda games, evil only sleeps and never dies. In Majora’s Mask, the evil sealed away inside the mask is set loose whenever it is worn, giving it the power to control others and even create a body of its own. Who knows how many times Majora has been fought and vanquished, but here it is, all ready to destroy the world again. This is the first example of a shady, unreliable seal that we can all expect to be broken in the future, so why not just chuck the thing into the fire, hm? In Four Swords and Four Swords Adventures, evil is sealed within the Four Sword, which weakens over time. So when we defeat Vaati the first time and the sword absorbs him instead of just slaying him, it is inevitable that we will eventually fight the Wind Mage again.

From Skyward Sword to A Link to the Past to Ocarina of Time to The Wind Waker and beyond, there are very few villains that stay dead, or at least irrelevant to whatever world we just saved. Skyward Sword is, by far, the most guilty of this construct, as the seal for Demise breaks multiple times in just that one game. So what is causing this frivolous freeing of evil in the world? In my opinion, it is a combination of the purity of “Good” vs. “Evil” in that the good guys never cause undue harm, and a sad realization that we are lied to about every single blade we pick up. The Master Sword needs buffing up sometimes, and the Four Sword needs to be charged, and you obediently follow these guidelines with the promise that any evil you touch will be instantly vaporized, only to have them not really work. Therefore, the blame for persistent evil should fall on the heads of whoever designed and made such defective weapons! At the very least it is false advertising. We can also blame our heroes’ pure hearts and aversions to completely obliterating bad guys.

Maybe, even if the power of the swords is only to weaken evil, we can still use them as swords were intended and Skyward Strike villains until they just go away. We can only hope that eventually our holy weapons will work better than pulling on a dinosaur’s tail and tossing him into lava (which he sort of lives in anyway).