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The Lost Woods, a crossroads to different dimensions?

Spiritual Mask Salesman

CHIMer Dragonborn
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Forests and Woods in literature almost always seem to be associated with mystery, and the unknown. It sparks curiousty which makes woods adventurous. In the Legend of Zelda series, in particular the games Ocarina of Time, and Majora's Mask, the Lost Woods depicts this feeling very well. It is a mystical place that defies the laws of physics, logic is irrelevant within it. Due to the Lost Woods' odd nature I've recently begun to wonder if maybe it is a focal point in Hyrule—a crossroads between dimensions?

Let's begin looking at the Lost Woods in Ocarina of Time. There are only certain paths through it one can take to continue proceeding futher, if you follow the right path you will enter the Forest Meadow. Though the special rule of the Lost Woods is that if you get lost (stray from the right path) you end up back at the beginning of the woods. The path seems to only be known to the Kokiri, and the only Hylians who can find their way through (via listening to the music) are children. If adults wander into the woods they will likely become lost, and if an adult becomes lost it is said they will become a stalfos, they will not simply return to the beginning of the woods like the Kokiri or Hylian children would.
images


Naturally this vast wood would be difficult to accurately navigate for someone who has never entered it, hence the name “Lost Woods”. It certainly has a magical enchantment. Though there is more mystery to this wood. There are certain areas inside it which can get one to very far regions of the Hyrule instantly (A pool of water which if dived down in can transport one near the entrance of Zora's Domain, A doorway which has it's other end in Goron City, high ontop of Death Mountain). It's safe to assume this area is unlike any other in Hyrule, and after the part it played in Majora's Mask I believe maybe it's a crossroads between dimensions.

In Majora's Mask Link, while in pursuit of Skull Kid, is lead to a sort of portal which takes him to a a parallel world called Termina. Keep in mind that Link was very deep in the Lost Woods when this happened—which suggests that there are likely things about the woods that even the Kokiri are oblivious to. Due to the mystical nature of the wood, I believe that maybe the portal to Termina is just one of various portals possibly leading to other dimensions. We know the Happy Mask Salesman, one of the series' strangest characters was in the Lost Woods when he was jumped by Skull Kid. He said he is a traveling mask salesman, it is possible he was just in the woods because he knew it's secrets to get to different regions of Hyrule faster, although I believe he was in the woods so he could use it to travel to different dimensions.
images


Take Majora's Mask itself, a mask like that would probably have had a big impact on the land it orginates from, and the way the Happy Mask Salesman talks about it, the mask did. We really have no menetioning of Majora's Mask in Hyrule, and it's obvious the mask isn't native to Termina (I breifly touched on this in more detail in the recent Kafei theory posted). I've long believed Majora's Mask is likely not native to Hyrule, or Termina, but possibly orginates from some unknown dimension that the Happy Mask Salesman probably found while traveling between dimensions.
images


Maybe this is far-fetched, but the idea exists, I'd reference Marvel Comics and the Crossroads of Infinity, a place which has endless portals to different dimensions. The Lost Woods, in my opinion, is probably the Hylian equivalent to such a place. The portal to Termina certainly makes this theory concievable, and the mystical elements of the Lost Woods in particular would make it the perfect place for such a focal point.

In the end there are no other examples besides the portal to Termina to support this theory. It's possible that the maybe portal to Termina is the exception, there are no other portals like it. Maybe the Lost Woods is just a really odd, enchanted forest that one can easily become lost in, can find paths to travel to far regions fast, and has one portal to a parallel world. Maybe it's a focal point for mutiple portals to different dimensions? If there is one thing we know that is certain, it's that the Lost Woods is clearly out of the ordinary.
 
Last edited:

Lord_Cathaseigh

Like a sir.
Joined
Apr 21, 2012
The forest you travel through in the original LoZ is actually the same Lost Woods spoken of within OoT, Majora's Mask, ALttp, TMC, and more. Although it's referred to as simply the "forest maze" by the NoA translation, the Japanese name for it is the exact same one that the others use. Just figured I could throw that out there!
 
Joined
Feb 25, 2016
Location
Koholint
Yes, this makes perfect sense. Presumably it's called the "Lost Woods" because of all the people who went in and never returned, or returned many years later with a bunch of crazy stories that no one actually believes. The Kokiri idea of people getting lost and becoming Stalfos makes sense in this context also - without a fairy to help the person keep track of where they are and how they got there, it isn't a stretch that they'd die or disappear (I'm operating under the assumption that Stalfos are undead corpses reanimated by forest magic, similar to how Redeads are reanimated by dark magic, but that might just be my headcanon). With the Lost Woods' changing nature making it difficult or impossible to map, who knows how many interdimensional portals or shortcuts are hiding in there?
 

Link Floyd

ᵒⁿ ᵗʰᵉ ʳᵘⁿ
Joined
Sep 23, 2014
The Lost Woods does have mysterious portals to the Goron City and the Zora river, so it is possible that there are portals leading to other dimensions as well, and it would make sense that a portal to the world of Termina would be deep within the woods.
 

Terminus

If I was a wizard this wouldn't be happening to me
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Sub-Orbital Trajectory
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Anarcho-Communist
Oh boy, I made a post on this when I first joined but it's gone now. Anyhow, if we accept the Superstring Theory or M-Theory of multiple universes, we have an infinite 12-dimensional space with 11-d universes suspended in hypervacuum.

BraneTheory370.jpg


Anyhow, if two "branes" were close enough and an irregularity caused them to touch, a wormhole could conceivably open. I put forward that the Lost Woods is one such irregularity, hence the door to Termina (and again, it's confirmed to be a different universe, not another country or purgatory).
 
Joined
Jul 1, 2018
Location
Canada
I can buy this, it makes sense that the Lost Woods would be a focal point as a crossroad between dimensions, and perhaps through time as well. In Twilight Princess, the Sacred Grove which is effectivly the Lost Woods, allows you to go back to the Temple of Time's past.
 

YIGAhim

Sole Survivor
Joined
Apr 10, 2017
Location
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Forests and Woods in literature almost always seem to be associated with mystery, and the unknown. It sparks curiousty which makes woods adventurous. In the Legend of Zelda series, in particular the games Ocarina of Time, and Majora's Mask, the Lost Woods depicts this feeling very well. It is a mystical place that defies the laws of physics, logic is irrelevant within it. Due to the Lost Woods' odd nature I've recently begun to wonder if maybe it is a focal point in Hyrule—a crossroads between dimensions?

Let's begin looking at the Lost Woods in Ocarina of Time. There are only certain paths through it one can take to continue proceeding futher, if you follow the right path you will enter the Forest Meadow. Though the special rule of the Lost Woods is that if you get lost (stray from the right path) you end up back at the beginning of the woods. The path seems to only be known to the Kokiri, and the only Hylians who can find their way through (via listening to the music) are children. If adults wander into the woods they will likely become lost, and if an adult becomes lost it is said they will become a stalfos, they will not simply return to the beginning of the woods like the Kokiri or Hylian children would.
images


Naturally this vast wood would be difficult to accurately navigate for someone who has never entered it, hence the name “Lost Woods”. It certainly has a magical enchantment. Though there is more mystery to this wood. There are certain areas inside it which can get one to very far regions of the Hyrule instantly (A pool of water which if dived down in can transport one near the entrance of Zora's Domain, A doorway which has it's other end in Goron City, high ontop of Death Mountain). It's safe to assume this area is unlike any other in Hyrule, and after the part it played in Majora's Mask I believe maybe it's a crossroads between dimensions.

In Majora's Mask Link, while in pursuit of Skull Kid, is lead to a sort of portal which takes him to a a parallel world called Termina. Keep in mind that Link was very deep in the Lost Woods when this happened—which suggests that there are likely things about the woods that even the Kokiri are oblivious to. Due to the mystical nature of the wood, I believe that maybe the portal to Termina is just one of various portals possibly leading to other dimensions. We know the Happy Mask Salesman, one of the series' strangest characters was in the Lost Woods when he was jumped by Skull Kid. He said he is a traveling mask salesman, it is possible he was just in the woods because he knew it's secrets to get to different regions of Hyrule faster, although I believe he was in the woods so he could use it to travel to different dimensions.
images


Take Majora's Mask itself, a mask like that would probably have had a big impact on the land it orginates from, and the way the Happy Mask Salesman talks about it, the mask did. We really have no menetioning of Majora's Mask in Hyrule, and it's obvious the mask isn't native to Termina (I breifly touched on this in more detail in the recent Kafei theory posted). I've long believed Majora's Mask is likely not native to Hyrule, or Termina, but possibly orginates from some unknown dimension that the Happy Mask Salesman probably found while traveling between dimensions.
images


Maybe this is far-fetched, but the idea exists, I'd reference Marvel Comics and the Crossroads of Infinity, a place which has endless portals to different dimensions. The Lost Woods, in my opinion, is probably the Hylian equivalent to such a place. The portal to Termina certainly makes this theory concievable, and the mystical elements of the Lost Woods in particular would make it the perfect place for such a focal point.

In the end there are no other examples besides the portal to Termina to support this theory. It's possible that the maybe portal to Termina is the exception, there are no other portals like it. Maybe the Lost Woods is just a really odd, enchanted forest that one can easily become lost in, can find paths to travel to far regions fast, and has one portal to a parallel world. Maybe it's a focal point for mutiple portals to different dimensions? If there is one thing we know that is certain, it's that the Lost Woods is clearly out of the ordinary.
We do not know that the woods they are in is the lost woods, but it would make sense if it was.

The happy mask salesman is clearly an adult, or some sort of nunhuman god-like spirit being or something (Tetraforce my guy).

Perhaps he knew so much about the lost woods because he went there when he was a child. This explains why the skull kid in OoT wants a mask. He had probably seen the salesman before and wanted it.

A little off track...

Anyways, it is very possible. Maybe a certain path in the lost woods brings you to Termina
 

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