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On Fi’s Awakening and the Return of Demise

[Theory by Mod Fae]

As we’ve all come to know, at the end of Skyward Sword, Demise’s “residual consciousness [was] absorbed into the Master Sword... and [was] sealed away.” Demise, the demon king, was now decaying slowly within the Master Sword. After, Fi specifies that Link has “successfully protected the goddess reborn and defeated Demise” and that he “achieved the purposes [he] was chosen to fill,” therefore dissolving the need for their contract as it no longer served a purpose and falling into a “sleep without end.” And, while Fi’s farewell after may have included a wish to meet in another life, I don’t think Fi could’ve known what her awakening might be a herald of.

In Breath of the Wild, in the final memory where we see Zelda cradling a defeated Link after a hard-won battle with hundreds of guardians stalkers, a light emanates from the Master Sword and a familiar sound-effect rings out--the sound of Fi awakening to inform Zelda that Link can, indeed, be saved. She probably threw in a percentage pulled from her calculations; “Princess, there is a 95% chance that if Link is taken to the Shrine of Resurrection on the Great Plateau and the Master Sword is driven back into its pedestal in the Korok Forest, he will be able to continue living and defeat Calamity Ganon.” 

So, with this single action, Fi confirmed that her “sleep without end” could indeed be ended. She may be able to awaken on her own if the situation is dire enough, or...

Some outside force could prompt her awakening.

On that first point, Link nearly dying at the hands of the armies of Ganon would be considered an outside force by some measure, but the death of a hero hasn’t called for her intervention before; the downfall timeline only exists because one with the spirit of Hylia’s chosen hero was defeated Ganon. 

So for that second point, I ask: what outside force would cause Fi to reawaken? 

Fi stated that her entire purpose was to guide Hylia’s chosen hero on his quest to defeat Demise, and since that purpose was fulfilled, she therefore had no functioned and was essentially deactivated. So, the only thing that could cause her reactivation would be a reinstatement of her purpose.

To help defeat the Demon King.

That was her one purpose, and it was fulfilled. Now that has been reversed, she needs to fulfill it again, thus reawakening her. 

But how would Demise be back, how would he even be resurrected to cause Fi to awaken?

Before Fi awakens to impart to Zelda the information she needs to avert disaster, the Master Sword wasn’t exactly in the best shape. It was chipped, it was scratched, it was rusted... well, it was all those things except for being rusted. Earlier on that day, or even earlier on in the months before the Great Calamity, the Master Sword didn’t look a day past 1,000. It simply couldn’t rust that fast. And, in fact, it didn’t; the dark stains on the ruined Blade of Evil’s Bane are dried, flaking, purple malice. Malice is portrayed as being vaguely fleshy whenever it congeals into a tangible form, so it being similar to rust or even blood when dried makes at least a modicum of sense.

Breath of the Wild, as may be obvious, holds a considerable amount of manifestations of Demise’s curse. Although malice isn’t unique to Breath of the Wild (as it has been pointed out before that the evil crystal material from Skyward Sword is likely the same substance), it has the highest concentration of it by far.  It literally became flesh and blood, not just through Ganon, but through the actual meaty pools of the stuff spattered about Hyrule like a messy murder scene. And what might be the point of that, spending so much energy on drowning Hyrule in dark energy?

So that Demise can reabsorb the dark energy and resurrect himself once again.

It’d be frustrating to anyone to get front-row seats to a constant cyclical reproduction of the events that made you the biggest laughing stock of the demon world. His curse has sent countless demons and incarnations of his hatred and malice upon those with the blood of the goddess and the spirit of the hero, and the Master Sword has been used to cut down so, so many of them. So, Demise’s decaying consciousness may have finally had enough; after all, they say, if you want something done right, just do it yourself.