The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker/Characters

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Characters in The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker.

Main Characters

Link

"[I'm] an ally of justice!"

Link lived a peaceful, happy, giant enemy bird-free life on sunny Outset Island until his birthday, when his adorable little sister Aryll was kidnapped by a giant enemy bird. Link set out to do what any Knight Templar Big Brother would—find his little sister, rescue her, and stab whoever took her, preferably repeatedly. However, it turned out that the kidnapping of his sister was part of something much bigger; having Chronic Hero Syndrome, he decides to put a stop to it.

The King of Red Lions

Link's sidekick here is a talking red sailboat capable of carrying him all over the Great Sea and giving him advice. After Aryll is rescued, it is revealed that the King of Red Lions is posessed by King Daphnes Nohansen Hyrule, who had been searching the seas for a new hero ever since the Great Flood.

Tetra

[1] Tetra in her royal garb as Princess Zelda


A young pirate girl sailing the seven seas, she meets Link fairly early in his quest and ends up taking him to the Forsaken Fortress. Even after she fires him from a cannon into the fortress wall and leaves, she and Link keep crossing paths for some reason. She's actually a descendant of the Hyrule Royal Family, although she doesn't know this.


Tetra's Pirates

A group of Pirates Who Don't Do Anything that later appear in Phantom Hourglass, led by Tetra. Despite being much older than her, they are extremely loyal to their captain and follow every single one of her commands. They reluctantly provide Link with a ride on their ship to the Forsaken Fortress in the beginning on the game and are actually joined by him in the game's end. They are hinted to be descended from the Hyrulean aristocracy; post-game, they became the first settlers of the new Kingdom of Hyrule in Spirit Tracks.

Gonzo

Apparently Tetra's first mate and also the member most dedicated to her. He shows an initial dislike of Link, though it wears off quicker than he'd willingly admit, claiming to have tricked a postman worried about him into giving him information about the whereabouts of a treasure when, really, he was just as worried about the little guy.

  • The Big Guy
  • Identical Grandson: Alfonzo from Spirit Tracks is apparently his decendant and looks absolutely identical to him, except for his clothes. Their personalities, however, vary slightly.
  • Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Despite his unfriendly behaviour, he's shown to be very caring for Tetra and blushes when Mako jokes that they should marry. Later, Aryll claims in one of her letters that underneath all his muscles, Gonzo is just a big softy.
  • The Lancer

Nudge

Senza

Zuko

Mako

The most knowledgeable member of the crew.

Niko

The lowest-ranked of Tetra's pirates, Niko is overjoyed when Link joins the crew, because now he at least outranks somebody. He narrates the opening of Phantom Hourglass with his paper cut-outs, and is later seen doing the same in Spirit Tracks. He appears in that game as an old man, presumably the last survivor of the founding generation of new Hyrule.

  • Book Ends: He makes paper cutouts for both the opening and closing sequences of Phantom Hourglass.
  • Butt Monkey
  • Drill Sergeant Nasty: He tries to be this, but fails.
  • Name's the Same: No relation to the main character from Grand Theft Auto IV. That we know of.
  • Small Name, Big Ego
  • Training from Hell: What he thinks he's putting Link through in The Wind Waker. He's a bit bitter when Link actually passes his tests.
  • Video Game Cruelty Potential: Subverted with the test he makes you take to get the bomb bag. He locks himself behind a grate in the room with the treasure, and you're supposed to press a button that will keep it open on a timer and get over there. You can just turn around and leave the ship with him still in there, but he doesn't seem bothered by it and you'll eventually have to come back and pass his test to progress through the game, fairly.


Sages Of The Master Sword

The Sages of the Master Sword are the Earth Sage and the Wind Sage. Their prayers keep the Master Sword sharp and give it the power to repel evil. Because of this, Ganondorf summoned two monsters to kill the original sages, and Link has to awaken the new sages.

Medli

A young girl of the bird-like Rito race in The Wind Waker. Maid to Prince Komali and the only female member of her race who's seen on-screen. She is later revealed to be the reincarnation of the Sage of the Earth, who blessed the Master Sword with its evil-destroying properties.

Makar

A member of the plant-like Korok Race from The Wind Waker, who are an evolved form of the Kokiri. He's later revealed to be the Sage of the Wind, the other Sage who blessed the Master Sword.


Other Characters

Aryll

Link's beloved little sister. She has a similar personality to Malon from Ocarina of Time and is always surrounded by seagulls, which is probably a nod to Marin from Link's Awakening. She is kidnapped along with several other Hylian girls at the beginning of The Wind Waker, setting Link off on his quest.

Mila

A spoiled rich girl who lives on Windfall Island, she is captured and imprisoned along with Aryll. Tetra's crew eventually bring her home, but not before demanding her father's entire fortune as a reward. Afterwards she can be seen in rags working for Zunari, and a sidequest involves Link stalking her to reveal her as the burglar stealing from Zunari.

Maggie

Another one of the girls kidnapped along with Aryll. You can find her father begging for someone to go find her when you first visit Windfall Island. Unlike Mila, she starts off pretty poor.

Villains and Bosses

Gohma

A large fiery insectoid monster that dwelled within the cavern underneath Valoo on Dragon Roost Island.

Kalle Demos

A giant Boko Baba.

  • Ceiling Cling: It uses its upper set of tentacles for this...
  • Combat Tentacles: ...And has a lower set of much larger root-like tentacles for this.
  • King Mook: Interestingly, the stem and head are actually smaller than the typical Boko Baba. But the flower it grows from is much, much bigger... and armed.
  • Man-Eating Plant

Gohdan, The Great Arbiter

A large, apparently mechanical statue guarding the top floor of the Tower of the Gods as a final test of the Goddesses for anyone attempting to enter Hyrule to claim the Master Sword.

  • Feed It a Bomb
  • Giant Hands of Doom
  • King Mook: Strangely, Gohdan comes off as a king mook for two different kinds of monsters; Beamos (shoots very similar lasers), and Armos and Armos Knight (hit a jeweled weak spot and dropping bombs in its mouth).
  • Magitek
  • Tactical Suicide Boss: If Link runs out of bombs or arrows, both of which are needed to fight him, Gohdan will gladly sneeze some out for him. Justified, since it's a test of Link's skill, not of how many bombs and arrows he entered with.

Helmaroc King

A giant Kargoroc that wears a mask under Ganon's control that stalks the Great Sea searching for "girls with long ears" in an attempt to find Zelda.

Jalhalla, Protector of the Seal

A gigantic Poe wearing a vest that is actually formed from 15 normal poes fusing together.

Molgera, Protector of the Seal

A large worm like monster that hides beneath the sand and sends smaller larval versions of itself to hunt Link from beneath the ground.

Ganondorf

"My country lay within a vast desert. When the sun rose into the sky, a burning wind punished my lands, searing the world. And when the moon climbed into the dark of night, a frigid gale pierced our homes. No matter when it came, the wind carried the same thing... Death. But the winds that blew across the green fields of Hyrule brought something other than suffering and ruin. I coveted that wind, I suppose."

Several years after being imprisoned in the Dark Realm, Ganondorf is finally able to get free, and the Hero of Time, having been sent back to the past by Zelda, is nowhere to stop him this time around. Free to do as he pleases, he plunges Hyrule into chaos once again. The citizens of Hyrule pray for the Goddesses to intervene, and so they do, by flooding the kingdom and sending selected people to the mountaintops to survive the flood and repopulate the world. Hyrule was left frozen in time undersea, but Ganondorf still managed to escape to the surface, many centuries later, in a fortress he then seized as his own. His first course of action then is to kidnap every single girl with blond hair and pointy ears he can, in an attempt to find the current descendent of the Royal Family.

  • Amazing Technicolor Population: Although the artwork depicts him as Ambiguously Brown, in-game his skin is very unambiguously green.
  • Badass: Massively so. In fact, Link's badassness is the only one that can match Ganondorf's own. No wonder he's The Hero.
  • Big Bad: Yet again.
  • Green Skinned Redhead: The red hair comes from his Gerudo heritage, the dark-turned-green skin from his fiendish form. It's practically his trademark.
  • Dual Wield: Does this for the final battle.
  • Duel Boss: Also the final battle, which is recognized as one of the best boss fights in the series.
  • Evil Laugh: A particularly awesome one.
  • Evil Overlord
  • Evil Sorcerer: He curses the sea. Need anything else?
  • Evil Tower of Ominousness: Ganon's Tower, yet again.
  • Freudian Excuse: This game introduced one for him.
    • Green-Eyed Monster: Specifically, his being destined to be the king of a barren desert where the only comfort (if it could be called that) to offer his people was death, before seeing the fertility and peace of Hyrule.
  • Full Boar Action: His Ganon form, which only shows up in stylized storybook pictures telling the game's backstory, but even then this is noticeable. Puppet Ganon as well, since it's modeled after Ganon.
  • Genius Bruiser: As usual, by this point.
  • Genre Savvy: All the time spent pondering his life while trapped in the void gave him great insight into what needed to be done upon being freed. He kills the two sages that would otherwise keep the Master Sword active and kidnaps every girl with pointy ears that he can locate across the Great Sea in order to find the most recent descendant of Princess Zelda.
  • Grass Is Greener: His desire for getting all the parts of the Triforce was fueled by his envy for the life-giving breezes of the lush Hyrulian landscape while his country suffered punishing winds that only brought death.
  • Honor Before Reason: A rare villainous example: During the final fight, after being hit by enough Light Arrows, he approaches Tetra, and, instead of stabbing her, puts away his sword and simply backhands her. Also, he seems to have a habit of, whenever knocking down Link, waiting until he gets back up before he resumes his attack or does a finishing blow.
  • Humanoid Abomination: He was human (or very close to it) to start with, but after finding the Triforce, he's become something much, much worse.
  • Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Variation: Ganondorf attempts to do a last ditch attack on Link, Link parries it, gains enough air, and then does a downward thrust through Ganondorf's head, burying the sword in up to the hilt.
  • Killed Off for Real: Stabbed through the head and Taken for Granite at the end of the game. Direct Wind Waker sequels have not used him since (with the exception of a brief cameo appearance in the beginning of the first sequel explaining the backstory of the original), so all signs point to this being the case.
  • Laughing Mad: His reaction to the waves coming down on Hyrule from Daphnes' wish to the Triforce.
  • Leitmotif: Same one he always had.
  • Lightning Bruiser: Ganondorf's gotten less reliant on hanging back and chucking magic at you or shifting into his Mighty Glacier Ganon form in favor of up-close and personal swordfights. He proves to be an astonishingly agile opponent while still being bigger and stronger than Link and Stone Walling all but the most advanced sword attacks.
  • Magic Knight: He not only possess powerful magic, but is also unbelievably strong and skilled with a sword. Or two.
  • No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Delivers a positively BRUTAL one to Link.
  • Older and Wiser: How he is depicted here. He did have a lot of time to reflect on stuff.
  • One-Winged Angel: Surprisingly averted, as he doesn't transform into Ganon in this game. The one time it looks like he does, it's actually a puppet in his place.
  • Physical God: Almost literal considering what powers him.
  • Sealed Evil in a Can: Until he got free.
  • Staying Alive: Word of God says there is only one Ganon. Several games imply or outright state it is due to the Triforce of Power making him immortal.
  • Taken for Granite
  • Villainous Breakdown: An epic one right before the final battle.
  • Well-Intentioned Extremist: Revealed to have started off as one before his rise to power, with his intention of freeing the Gerudo from the deserts. As to this, the Complete Monster he eventually became is a result of plot-relevant Motive Decay.
  • Wicked Cultured
  • Xanatos Gambit: The Master Sword was actually sealing his powers away (well, most of them, anyway). By taking it from the pedestal, Link granted him access to his full powers. But if he didn't do it, there wouldn't be any way to defeat Ganondorf.
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