Spoilers incoming. You have been warned…
Prior to the mid-credits scene, which gives us a bit more of Thomas Haden Church’s Lobster Johnson, Neil Marshall’s Hellboy is capped off with a sequence that teases a potential sequel. Oddly enough, much of the footage from that final sequence was included in the trailers, but those marketing materials did not spoil the last little moment that brings the film to a close.
Six months after the final battle, which sees Hellboy, Alice Monaghan and Ben Daimio uniting to fend off the “Blood Queen” Nimue and save the world, the trio raids the Oannes Society and slays everyone in sight. In the bowels of the lab, they discover the reason they’re there: a tank housing a fellow by the name of Abe Sapien, whose hand is glimpsed before the credits roll.
The promise of that little tease is that Abe Sapien will be joining the B.P.R.D. in Hellboy 2, a film that likely won’t actually be happening. While we’re still waiting to see if the international numbers are any better, the rated “R” reboot of Hellboy has to date made just $12 million at the domestic box office, a tiny portion of its $50 million production budget.
And that’s not even counting the additional money spent on marketing. Yikes.
Abe Sapien was of course played by Doug Jones in Guillermo del Toro’s two Hellboy movies, and Jones had recently noted that he turned down a cameo appearance in Marshall’s reboot due to scheduling issues. We can’t help but wonder if perhaps Marshall was hoping to get Jones to reprise the role of Abe Sapien in the final moments of his movie, but that’s purely speculation on our part. Jones had told THR: “There was a chance that a cameo might have happened, but not as things progressed. Reboot means recasting, and I’m told this first reboot does not have anybody in it from the original film. I received an offer to do a cameo, but I was deeply immersed in Star Trek: Discovery when that offer came in, so I couldn’t do it.”
In any event, the tease in the final moments of Marshall’s film sticks pretty true to Mike Mignola’s comic books, where Abe Sapien was indeed housed (and born, quite literally) at the Oannes Society headquarters. Long story short, a man named Langdon Everett Caul is turned into a body-horror nightmare by a jellyfish-like deity that the Society performed a ritual on – as Wikipedia notes, the Oannes Society is “an occult organization who believed in life and all knowledge having come from the sea” – eventually becoming the creature known as Abe.
In the comics, Sapien is abandoned in the lab and eventually discovered in 1978, ultimately taken in and made part of the B.P.R.D team. Marshall’s mythology rewrites Mignola’s lore a tad bit, with Hellboy, Alice and Ben rescuing Abe Sapien in the present day. Unfortunately, we may never know what’s next for Abe, at least not in this particular take on the mythology.
As for Del Toro’s mythology, Abe is already a member of the B.P.R.D. when we first meet him.
Doug Jones had recently told Screen Rant, “I’m told that Abe Sapien doesn’t really show up in this first reboot movie, so for a minute here I’m kind of – I’m OK with the fact that I don’t have to watch somebody else do that role just yet. If and when Abe Sapien does enter the storyline in subsequent movies, I honestly would not have any advice for anyone besides have patience with the make-up, but otherwise make the character your own. And, also, anytime you take on a comic book character you must know your source material. The fans depend on it.”
If Del Toro was given the opportunity to make his planned third installment, Jones would’ve reprised the role of Abe Sapien, but alas, his trilogy seems destined to remain incomplete. On a related note, Hellboy writer Peter Briggs shared details on a planned Abe Sapien solo film a couple years back, which would’ve starred Jones but was killed off by this year’s reboot.
It may be a long time – if ever – before we see Abe Sapien back on the big screen, but hey, at least we’ve got The Shape of Water. With a little imagination, it’s totally Abe’s origin story!
