Everyone likes a dragon — they make cool enemies and great friends. This is why it’s awesome that a decent chunk of the Legend of Zelda series features different dragons. Some make re-appearances in the different games — usually when the worlds are directly connected — while others only show up for a brief moment before disappearing again.
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Some dragons get a lot more attention while others, like the Gleeoks, are generally overlooked due to not being super elegant and having unique names (especially in the later games). But it does leave you wondering just how many different dragons are actually in the Legend of Zelda series. Let’s answer that question!
There Are 20 Dragons In The Legend Of Zelda Series
There are a grand total of 20 different dragons scattered through the Legend of Zelda series. Most of them are not friendly to you and, in the earlier games, they are very dangerous bosses.
Of course, most of the early Zeldas don’t tend to have a lot of dragons, which is understandable. What fun would it be if every boss you came across was a dragon? The lack of variety would be appalling.
However, with the gradual introduction of friendly dragons, the later entries see a dramatic increase in dragon presence. The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom actually sports the highest number of dragons in the series, with a total of five different dragons making an appearance.
3 Dragons Are Confirmed Shifters In The Legend Of Zelda Series
Although we don’t really know where the dragons in the Legend of Zelda series come from (for the most part), we do know about the dragons that are, technically, shifters.
Either they were originally dragons in the first place — like Onox from the Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons — or they became dragons by swallowing a Zonai Stone, like the Light Dragon and Demon Dragons in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.
Of course, the latter opens up questions about where the other dragons came from — did they also swallow stones to dedicate themselves to a life of protecting Hyrule? Or were they already dragons?
12 Dragons Are Enemies In The Legend Of Zelda Series
Unfortunately, most of the dragons that you run across as you traverse the different games are not going to be friendly to you. Whether you’re facing off against a boss, the many different Gleeoks that plague the games, the Gleerok (not to be confused with the Gleeok), or the Demon Dragon himself, Link is never safe.
Just about every single game that has a dragon (aside from The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword and The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker) has an evil dragon too. Maybe dragons are just more inclined to evil and it’s the friendly ones that are the odd ones out?
Eight Dragons Are Friendly In The Legend Of Zelda Series
The first friendly dragon to show up in the Legend of Zelda series is Valoo, who showed up in The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker as a friendly side character. Unlike the other games, Valoo has no evil counterpart, which means that the ratio of good dragons to evil dragons in the Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker’s world is thrown drastically off.
This is probably why the next games only featured an evil dragon… at least up until The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, when we were once more rewarded with three friendly “dragons.” They don’t particularly look like dragons (they look like giant slugs with huge torsos, small arms, and human faces), but they’re being called dragons, so they get added to the count anyway.
Finally, we reach The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, which not only feature the most “friendly” dragons but also feature dead dragons. “Friendly” goes with quotation marks with these dragons because they are, at most, neutral, with the exception of Naydra and the Light Dragon.
Naydra is actually evil for a little bit but then Naydra goes friendly, so it’s all fine in the end… mostly.
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