Hellboy recap: the story so far

No. 01 · 2004 · Film

Hellboy recap

Hellboy (2004) follows a demon summoned as an infant by Nazi occultists in 1944 and raised by the man who stopped them, now a secret agent fighting monsters. Guillermo del Toro wrote and directed it. Sixty years after the ritual, Professor Trevor "Broom" Bruttenholm (John Hurt) brings young FBI agent John Myers (Rupert Evans) into the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense to mind his adopted son Hellboy (Ron Perlman). Grigori Rasputin (Karel Roden), revived by his disciples Ilsa Haupstein and the clockwork assassin Kroenen, sets a breeding monster called Samael loose in New York. Hellboy and the amphibious psychic Abe Sapien (Doug Jones) hunt its eggs through the sewers, while Hellboy pines for Liz Sherman (Selma Blair), a firestarter who has checked herself into an asylum. When Hellboy slips away to spy on Liz and Myers, Kroenen wakes inside the base and kills Broom on Rasputin's order. The team tracks Rasputin to a Moscow mausoleum, where he steals Liz's soul to force Hellboy to open the portal. Start the series here.

How Hellboy ends

Hellboy ends with Hellboy snapping off his newly sprouted horns after Myers reminds him he can choose who he is, sealing the portal on the Ogdru Jahad. He stabs Rasputin, whose body releases a giant tentacled Behemoth; Hellboy lets it swallow him and blows it apart with a belt of grenades. He whispers to Liz in the afterlife, she wakes, and the two kiss among the flames. The script draws loosely on Mike Mignola's Seed of Destruction comic, with Myers invented for the film. Hellboy II: The Golden Army followed in 2008.

Post-credits scenes

No. Hellboy has no mid- or post-credits scene.

No. 02 · 2006 · Film

Hellboy Animated: Sword of Storms recap

Hellboy: Sword of Storms (2006) is an animated film in which Hellboy picks up a cursed katana and is pulled into a spirit version of old Japan. Phil Weinstein directed it, with animation by Madhouse, and it premiered on DVD before airing on Cartoon Network. Ron Perlman, Selma Blair and Doug Jones voice Hellboy, Liz Sherman and Abe Sapien, joined by Peri Gilpin as folklore professor Kate Corrigan and Mitchell Whitfield as the psychic Russell Thorne. The demon brothers Thunder and Lightning, trapped centuries ago inside the sword by a samurai who defied his lord, possess folklorist Professor Mitsuyasu Sakai and send him after the blade. Hellboy, guided by a fox spirit, walks west through a dreamlike land and fights kappa, flying heads, a spider woman and a giant skeleton. Back in the real world, Liz and Abe face dragons stirred up by the brothers. Part of the plot comes from the comic collection The Right Hand of Doom. Stands alone; it shares the del Toro voice cast but needs nothing from those films.

How Hellboy Animated: Sword of Storms ends

Hellboy: Sword of Storms ends with Hellboy tricked into shattering the sword on the samurai's stone statue, which frees the demons and sends him back to the real shrine. He traps Thunder and Lightning in the blade again, sealing the dragons away. The ghosts of the lord and his daughter possess Kate and Russell to replay her execution, until Hellboy persuades the lord to forgive her and the samurai, ending their cycle of deaths. Hellboy: Blood and Iron followed in 2007.

No. 03 · 2007 · Film

Hellboy Animated: Blood and Iron recap

Hellboy: Blood and Iron (2007) takes Professor Trevor Bruttenholm (John Hurt) and his team to a haunted mansion tied to a vampire he fought in 1939. Victor Cook directed this second animated film, which premiered on Cartoon Network and draws on the Wake the Devil comic. Flashbacks, played in reverse order, show young Broom tracking Erzsebet Ondrushko (Kath Soucie), a countess who bathed in her victims' blood, through an Eastern European village. In the present, billionaire Oliver Trumbolt has bought her relics for a Long Island house he wants to sell as haunted, and Broom insists on joining Hellboy (Ron Perlman), Liz Sherman (Selma Blair), Abe Sapien (Doug Jones) and rookie Sydney Leach. Ghosts of the countess's victims warn them off, harpy witches carry Abe away, and the groundskeeper turns out to be Father Lupescu, the village priest, turned into a werewolf. Hellboy meets the goddess Hecate (Cree Summer) underground. Stands alone; it follows Sword of Storms only in release order.

How Hellboy Animated: Blood and Iron ends

Hellboy: Blood and Iron ends with Erzsebet rising in Trumbolt's drained blood, only to wither again because Broom laced it with holy water; he stakes her and she crumbles. Freed, her victims' spirits leave the house. Hecate takes over the iron maiden and attacks, and a badly hurt Hellboy drags her into daylight, driving her back to her own realm. The last shot finds Broom sitting by Hellboy's bed. Plans for a third animated film never went ahead.

No. 04 · 2008 · Film

Hellboy II: The Golden Army recap

Hellboy II: The Golden Army (2008) pits Hellboy against an exiled elf prince who wants to wake an unstoppable mechanical army and wipe out humanity. Guillermo del Toro wrote and directed it, with a story by himself and Mike Mignola. Prince Nuada Silverlance (Luke Goss) kills his father, King Balor, to take two pieces of the crown that commands the Golden Army, while his twin sister Princess Nuala (Anna Walton) flees with the third. Hellboy (Ron Perlman) blows the B.P.R.D.'s cover on live television, and the bureau sends the ectoplasmic agent Johann Krauss (voiced by Seth MacFarlane) to keep him in line. The trail leads to a troll market under the Brooklyn Bridge, where Abe Sapien (Doug Jones) falls for Nuala and Hellboy kills a forest god. Liz Sherman (Selma Blair), now living with Hellboy, learns she is pregnant. Nuada spears Hellboy, and the team carries him to the Giant's Causeway in Northern Ireland. Follows Hellboy (2004).

How Hellboy II: The Golden Army ends

Hellboy II: The Golden Army ends with Hellboy beating Nuada in a royal duel and sparing him, before Nuala stabs herself to kill her brother through their shared wounds. Liz melts the crown so no one can command the army. Earlier, the Angel of Death saved Hellboy only after warning Liz he will one day doom humanity. The team quits the B.P.R.D., and Liz tells Hellboy she is carrying twins. Del Toro planned a third film to resolve that prophecy, but it was never made, and the series was rebooted in 2019.

Post-credits scenes

No. Hellboy II: The Golden Army has no mid- or post-credits scene.

No. 05 · 2019 · Film

Hellboy recap

Hellboy (2019) reboots the series with David Harbour as a Hellboy hunting Nimue, a sorceress cut to pieces by King Arthur who is being stitched back together. Neil Marshall directed it, and the story draws on The Wild Hunt, Darkness Calls and other Mike Mignola comics. After a bloody job in Tijuana, Hellboy is sent by his adoptive father Trevor Bruttenholm (Ian McShane) to help the Osiris Club hunt giants in England; the club turns on him. He is saved by Alice Monaghan (Sasha Lane), a medium he rescued from fairies as a baby, and partnered with Ben Daimio (Daniel Dae Kim), an M11 soldier who hides a were-jaguar curse. Nimue (Milla Jovovich), helped by the pig-faced changeling Gruagach and the witch Baba Yaga, wants Hellboy as her king. Merlin tells Hellboy he is the heir of Arthur and offers him Excalibur. Stands alone; it ignores the del Toro films.

How Hellboy ends

Hellboy ends with Nimue killing Bruttenholm in London and Hellboy pulling Excalibur in rage, letting demons out of Hell; Alice channels Broom's spirit to pull him back, and he beheads Nimue. Six months later, Hellboy, Alice and Daimio raid a cult and find Abe Sapien's tank. The film bombed, Marshall later disowned it, and its teased sequel never came; a second reboot, Hellboy: The Crooked Man, followed in 2024.

Post-credits scenes

Yes. Hellboy has a mid-credits scene in which the ghost of Lobster Johnson comforts Hellboy at Broom's grave, and a post-credits scene in which Baba Yaga sends a force after Hellboy.

No. 06 · 2024 · Film

Hellboy: The Crooked Man recap

Hellboy: The Crooked Man (2024) strands Hellboy and a rookie agent in the Appalachian Mountains in 1959, where a demon is buying local souls. Brian Taylor directed this second reboot from a script he wrote with Mike Mignola and Christopher Golden, adapting Mignola's comic of the same name. Hellboy (Jack Kesy) and Bobbie Jo Song (Adeline Rudolph) lose a captive spider monster when it grows huge and wrecks their train. They meet Tom Ferrell (Jefferson White), a veteran back home to face the Crooked Man, the creature he once traded with for a lucky bone. Witches led by Effie Kolb (Leah McNamara) come for the soul of Tom's former girlfriend Cora, and Tom's missing father turns out to have been changed into a horse. A snakebite shows Hellboy visions of his mother. The group shelters with the blind Reverend Watts (Joseph Marcell) as the Crooked Man attacks. Stands alone and needs no earlier film.

How Hellboy: The Crooked Man ends

Hellboy: The Crooked Man ends with Bobbie Jo going into the mines under the church and freeing the trapped souls that feed the demon, which breaks his hold on Hellboy and Tom so they can destroy him; Reverend Watts dies in the tunnels. Effie starts to age fast, and Tom slips his father's enchanted bridle onto her, turning her into a white horse marked as a witch. Millennium presented it as the first of a possible new series. Bobbie Jo is invented for the film.