The name Magda may not ring a bell for you, but I think most people who played Breath of the Wild will recall the “crazy flower lady” who was hell bent on preventing Link from stepping on her precious flowers. It’s one of the more memorable Shrine quests from Breath of the Wild due to Magda having a notoriously short temper about the safety of her flowers. Depending on how many times Link has stepped on the flowers, Magda will say something different, getting progressively more and more upset with Link’s blatant disregard for her request to leave the flowers alone. She will eventually proclaim: “I will make you understand… the flower’s rage!!!” and then attack, dealing damage to the player.
It’s wonderful that those flowers have a Lorax-style guardian who will defend them, but what of the rage of those flowers with no one to speak for them? Turns out, the Zelda series is no stranger to the aggressive ghost of a flower.
Breath of the Wild has something of a reputation for modernizing certain features from the classic original Legend of Zelda for the NES, be it the Master Sword’s Sword Beam mechanic or the Lynels. One classic enemy that did not make an appearance in Breath of the Wild was the Peahat. You know, those flying enemies that hovered around the screen frustratingly impossible to damage until they landed? The terrifying monsters that have the spinning spikes of doom on the bottom?
Though they did not appear in Breath of the Wild, they were actually one of the original Legend of Zelda monsters that went on to appear in many other titles in one form of another, including Ocarina of Time, Wind Waker, Twilight Princess, and more. In every title they’ve appeared in, they’ve both looked and acted very differently, going from a massive enemy to a neutral hookshot target. In most titles, they’re simply described as a form of plant life that takes to the skies, but in the original Legend of Zelda handbook, they have a slightly different description.
Described as “the ghost of a flower”, the Peahat seems to have originally been thought of as not just plant life, but postmortem plant life. As is somewhat expected with descriptions found in handbooks, there is not much to go off of here, but it leaves one to wonder what would cause a flower’s spirit to be tethered to the world of the living. Often, ghosts are described as tied to the mortal world due to their unresolved powerful emotions ranging from love to hate. It’s possible that Peahats are the spirits of trampled flowers who returned to seek revenge on the humans that would so blatantly end the life of a flower without a second thought.
Perhaps the reason we never see any Peahats in Breath of the Wild is because our resident Lorax, the valiant Magda, is there to defend the honor of the flowers. There’s no reason for the angry spirits of trampled flowers to return when they have Magda to look after them.
Even though it does seem like the idea of Peahats being spirits has been lost in time or translation, it puts a smile on my face to think that the departed ghosts of flowers are satisfied with their notorious protector. Either way, the history of the Peahat is an interesting one and it only makes me appreciate the Peahat as one of my personal favorite Zelda monsters all the more.
