Amy (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
brightknightie) wrote2024-11-09 10:57 am
brightknightie) wrote2024-11-09 10:57 am
Entry tags:
"Goodbye" > "See you later" (a small story echo that I enjoy in Twilight Princess)
In the climactic final battle of Twilight Princess, when Midna throws herself -- with the full power of the fused shadow -- into battle against Ganondorf, and clearly believes she's sacrificing her life to save Link and Zelda (and, of course, the people of both realms), she pointedly says "Goodbye" to Link, just before she warps him and Zelda away to Hyrule Field.
But at the end of the game, the very end-credits end, when Midna is in the slow-moving act of destroying the Mirror of Twilight, the one and only connection between her world and theirs -- by casting her brightly shining crystal tear to shatter the mirror after she steps through the portal -- she instead, carefully, after a few broken false starts, says "See you later" to Link.
I like to imagine that this is one more character-growth moment for Midna, the character who by far grows the most throughout this story. I like to think that it signals one more development for her from doing it all herself, as again in that battle a few days before the end-credits scene, through the interventions of the Light Spirits after, to Zelda's ringing articulation of Zelda's own understanding -- that the goddess had directly intervened to preserve the mirror to ensure the three of them met -- such that Midna no longer feels it is all on her own shoulders, and no longer shrugs off, defies, underestimates, or -- most touchingly -- feels personally abandoned by her own or Hyrule's divinities (which I'm pretty sure she did before, cf. Zelda's remark about what Midna has suffered). Nothing will be impossible, Midna may be admitting, no hope is beyond reason, by saying "See you later" rather than "Goodbye."
But she still has to shatter the mirror. She cannot allow it to be misused again from either side. No matter what it costs her, personally.
Some corners of the fandom sometimes speculate that Midna killed herself in destroying the mirror. If one wants to make a story where that was an unintended consequence, more power to storytelling! But on purpose? No way. If that, she would have said "Goodbye" again. And she didn't.
But at the end of the game, the very end-credits end, when Midna is in the slow-moving act of destroying the Mirror of Twilight, the one and only connection between her world and theirs -- by casting her brightly shining crystal tear to shatter the mirror after she steps through the portal -- she instead, carefully, after a few broken false starts, says "See you later" to Link.
I like to imagine that this is one more character-growth moment for Midna, the character who by far grows the most throughout this story. I like to think that it signals one more development for her from doing it all herself, as again in that battle a few days before the end-credits scene, through the interventions of the Light Spirits after, to Zelda's ringing articulation of Zelda's own understanding -- that the goddess had directly intervened to preserve the mirror to ensure the three of them met -- such that Midna no longer feels it is all on her own shoulders, and no longer shrugs off, defies, underestimates, or -- most touchingly -- feels personally abandoned by her own or Hyrule's divinities (which I'm pretty sure she did before, cf. Zelda's remark about what Midna has suffered). Nothing will be impossible, Midna may be admitting, no hope is beyond reason, by saying "See you later" rather than "Goodbye."
But she still has to shatter the mirror. She cannot allow it to be misused again from either side. No matter what it costs her, personally.
Some corners of the fandom sometimes speculate that Midna killed herself in destroying the mirror. If one wants to make a story where that was an unintended consequence, more power to storytelling! But on purpose? No way. If that, she would have said "Goodbye" again. And she didn't.