This theory came from MatPat aka GameTheory aka FilmTheory on YouTube so make sure to go check his videos out!

The Legends of Zelda: Majora's Mask. A game about Link's death.

Have you ever heard of the Majora's Mask Grief Theory? Eel basically there are 5 major realms in the game: Clock Town, Woodfall, Snowhead, Ikana Valley, and Great Bay, not in that order.

So each area in the game features some aspect of loss, right? But the way the Game's NPCs handle these losses differ from one location to the next. In fact how the characters handle their personal losses and the order in which you confront them perfectly match up with what's known as, the "Kübler-Ross Model of Grief". Which basically says that when someone is confronted with death they go through 5 very distinct emotional phases: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and acceptance (DABNA for short).

Link's adventure in Clock Town, where all the people are in denial. Notice how even though there's a moon that's going to crash into the world, killing everyone in 3 days, no one seems to care? In fact they're planning a carnival. Take a quick peek into the mayor's office and you see Muto the carpenter calling anyone who is scared a coward. Saying that the falling moon is just a groundless theory. And there's the sword master, who even says he's gonna slice the moon into pieces. A perfect example of denial, or stage one, of the Kübler-Ross Model.

Then there's the Deku Palace in Woodfall. Here, the princess has go be missing and HOW does the Deku King respond? Obviously by raging against a monkey! He jump a to the conclusion that this monkey is the culprit and must die as punishment. The thing is, the monkey's innocent, The Deku King is just angry, lashing out at anything and anyone because he doesn't know what else to do. And thus we see the second stage of the grief model.

Stage 3: Snowhead features the Gorons, a tribe who lost their leader, Darmani. When you meet his ghost, he begs Link to use his magic to bring him back to life. He's Bargaining. Darmani is actively trying to make a deal to prolong his life just a little longer thinking that Link can provide some backdoor solution to the inevitability of his death. And when those bargains fail, you get depressed, Stage 4. This is when a person realizes that there's no escape and that there's nothing that they can do. So they instead retreat inward, disconnecting from the world, and its at the Great Bay that Link meets Lulu, a Zora who's lost her eggs. She's a mother who's lost her children and to cope, she just stands there, staring out into the distance, silent.

And finally Link makes his way to Ikana Valley. A Valley filled with death, sure, but also a place of acceptance. First you have Sharp, one of two composer brothers who help come to terms with his mistreatment of his sibling. But also more symbolically, you have the Stone Tower Temple, which had you climb upwards towards the heavens and obtaining enlightenment, here illustrated by the item of the dungeon being the Light Arrows. Link has journeyed through the Valley of Death, passed through the other four stages and here, he ascends into acceptance. There'd even the Garo Master, a creature described as emptiness cloaked in darkness. If this game is all about overcoming grief, fighting this guy is a pretty literal interpretation. He even commits suicide once you defeat him; An enemy who refuses to accept death on anyone's terms, but his own. And when you really stop to think about the whole repeating 3 days gameplay mechanic, that in essence is how grief can feel. Like you're trapped in time and can't move forward. It paralyzed you from moving on with your life.

But what is Link grieving?

I propose to you that throughout Majora's Mask, Link is actually in purgatory. The waiting room of the afterlife, and that the game represents his journey to accept his death and move on. First look at the band of the place, Termina. That's not even subtle, Nintendo. Termina? Like Terminal, THE END? It's a pretty big red flag. Look at how Link finds the place. Isn't it a bit strange that Link is falling down through a tree trunk into what equates to practically a whole new country? With its own astronomically-themed nightmare fuel that apparently no kind in Hyrule knows about? I mean, planet Earth is a really big place, significantly bigger than Hyrule, but wether you're in Spokane or Djibouti, you know how many moons we have. Really, I ask the question, where is this place supposed to be located? Underground? Then how is there as sky? And remember, Link supposedly fell a REALLY long way to end up here. If that's the case , though, he would have died. Granted there's a lot of creative license in these games, don't get me wrong, but Nintendo had always taken a falling very seriously in 3D Zeldas. Even the animation that happens while Link falls feels a bit surreal, like a bad LSD trip ripped straight out of Alice in Wonderland, which, SPOILER ALERT! Ends up being all a bad dream. And now what I mention it, where did Epona go? You see them run into this tree, and I guess they could have just jumped fron one stomp to the next, but does Epona also live through the huge fall? Even if she does, Skull Kid would have to transport her over the water, through the cave door, and over the deadly platforms, all for her to end up at Romani Ranch later in the Game. And he'd have to do that all before Link arrives so that he'd be ready to hover there all cool and Magneto-Like. It does seem pretty suspicious, like it can't be real! And that's why most of the people you see throughout Termina are identical copies of the ones you met during Ocarina of Time journey. Link's personal purgatory, his journey to acceot death, is populated with people he's encountered before. He's like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz. And consider the Masks. The transformation masks all represent characters who have died. There's Darmani the Goron, who's ghost appears to you; Mikau, the Zora guitarist , who actually dies in front of you; And although it's never actually said, the Deku Mask is most likely the deceased child of the Deku Butler. Knowing that these different transformations are Link assuming the forms of deceased characters, turn your attention to this, The Elegy of Emptiness, its a song you get late in the game that allows you to create statue clones of your current form. In a lot of ways they're like funeral effigies standing there as a memorial to the dead. Now, if the only masks that allow you to create a clone using the song are the ones that are related to dead people, and Link is somehow able to create a clone of himself, that would seem to mean Link is Dead. And that actually makes sense in the timeline too!

Majora's Mask comes before Twilight Princess according to the official Zelda timeline. And in Twilight Princess there's the Hero Shade, a Stalfos looking creature who has officially been confirmed in Hyrule Historia as the Spirit of the Hero of Time, AKA Link in Majora's Mask. And just in case you doubt they're one in the same, he's left-handed like Link. And most of the songs he uses comes from Ocarina and Majora. Zelda lore states that those who become lost in the woods are fated to become a Stalfos. "Although I accepted life as the hero, I could not convey the lessons of that life to those who came after. At last, I have eased my regrets."

So the Hero of Time is somehow prevented from teaching others his ways. And that begs the question, why? Why would this hero, who had conquered both Evil and Time, have such profound regrets? Could it be that he dried prematurely? Could it be that he died in the Lost Woods, becoming a Stalfos? Probablyn

It's also worth noting the Hero Shade's saying "Believe in your strength" directly mirrors what the Happy Mask Salesman says to Link throughout Majora's Mask: "Believe in your strengths." And speaking of the Happy Mask Salesman, he provides what I think is the strongest proof of this theory. Do you remember the first line he says to you in the game? "Youve met with a terrible fate, haven't you?"

When he says this to you at the beginning of the game, you assume he means Link being turned into a Deku Scrub, right?

That's just what happened, but that line actually repeats later in the game. Every time you let the moon crash towards Earth, the animation shows the moon destroying Clocktown, Link getting consumed by fire, then you hear the Happy Mask Salesman laugh, and see this line.

"Youve met with a terrible fate, haven't you?"

The terrible fate isn't being turned into a scrub, its Link dying. Why else would Nintendo choose to repeat that particular line, at that particular instant? So at the end of the Game where Link rides off into the fog is just him accepting his fate.

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