The Zelda Timeline Explained | Eras, Branches, Stories, & More
For nearly forty years, The Legend of Zelda has been growing, shifting, and reinventing itself. What began as a simple adventure in 1986 has turned into one of gaming’s most layered legends — a saga spread across generations, reincarnations, ancient wars, and vanished kingdoms. And the longer the series has gone on, the stranger its timeline has become.
Following the game Ocarina of Time, the story branches into three different timelines: the Child Timeline, the Adult Timeline, and the Downfall Timeline — three separate versions of Hyrule, each carrying its own legacy, disasters, and rebirths. And then, far beyond all of them, there’s the Wilds Era, where Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom seem to stand at the edge of everything, connected to the past but still surrounded by mystery. Of course, none of that even mentions what occurs BEFORE Ocarina of time.
So, in this video, we’re tracing the full history of The Legend of Zelda — from its earliest myths to its fractured branches to the distant age of the Wilds — in order to make sense of a legend that was never meant to be simple.
0:00 - Intro
1:21 - Creation & The Triforce
8:10 - The Sky Era & The Curse
22:25 - Early Hyrule
34:37 - Ocarina of Time
41:14 - The Child Timeline
53:34 - The Adult Timeline
1:06:27 - The Fallen Hero Timeline
1:22:27 - The Era of the Wilds
1:38:59 - Outro