'Breath of the Wild 2' Teaser Trailer Has a Secret Message About Ganondorf

It’s been a week since Nintendo dropped the first short trailer for its The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild sequel, but we’re still finding clues in this densely packed teaser. The latest spoiler seems to explain what Ganondorf was up to during the previous game, and how he’ll return in BotW 2. To figure it out, all fans have to do was decode a fictional language and translate some floating words in the teaser trailer. Easy, right?

Warning: Possible spoilers for Breath of the Wild 2 below.

If you watched the Breath of the Wild 2 trailer even once (or 100 times, we won’t judge) you probably recognize those green symbols swirling in the air around the dried up skeleton of what we’re pretty sure is Ganondorf. But what do those symbols mean? One fan may have figured it out after realizing that they actually come from a pre-existing language in the Zelda universe: Gerudo.

After analyzing the trailer and cross-referencing it with the Gerudo alphabet, the Zelda fans on 4chan’s video game message board translated the text in the teaser to read: Seal Ganon. This seems to confirm that not only is the skeleton in the Botw 2 trailer Ganandorf’s, but that he was sealed away under Hyrule Castle — until now.

The decoded trailer was re-shared on Twitter by @DreaminErryDay, who wrote, “saw this in a thread on /v/ last night but people already figured out the floating green symbols in the BotW 2 trailer are Gerudo text, and they spell out ‘SEAL GANON.’ Zelda fans are amazing.”

Here are the two images they shared:

Assuming this is correct (and not just fans overthinking a minute-long trailer), it could have huge ramifications for Breath of the Wild 2. If Ganondorf was able to cause all that damage in the original Breath of the Wild while his body was sealed underground, just imagine what he’ll be able to to now that he’s been freed.

The fact that the words are written in Gerudo also suggests the upcoming game may explore Ganondorf’s origins. The character is traditionally depicted as a member of the Gerudo, a typically all-female race where the one male born each century is revered as a king (yes, it’s pretty problematic). Breath of the Wild 2 may explore how this fits into the version of the Gerudo we saw in the previous game, and maybe correct the whole patriarchy thing too.

Either way, it’s exciting to see just how much detail Nintendo packed into that Breath of the Wild 2 trailer, and there’s probably even more clues about the next Zelda game still waiting to be discovered.