About Memnan Saa's prophecy... (spoilers of course, Scorched Earth onwards)

[hellboymignolafan]

Saa's goal was to use Elizabeth in order to destroy the frogs and usher in a new age IIRC. Something like that at least. He said that millions would die in the process of creating this 'new world'. As far as I'm concerned, that's exactly what happened in King of Fear. Elizabeth used her power (all of it) to wipe out all the frogs, yet she destroyed Indonesia in the process. Millions died.

This new world however. This new world has Ogdru Hem sneaking into the world, bit by bit, and causing mass death. If the frogs had won, wouldn't the same thing be happening (though maybe as an invasion as opposed to gradually slipping through the holes)? The frogs and the Black Flame also wished for a new era, most likely the same new era that's been trying to be achieved by Rasputin, Von Klempt and Zinco since the start of the series. The era of the frog race, the final race of man.

Merman Saa seemed to be aiming for a new era also, except one involving Vril and Hyperborea as opposed to the Ogdru Jahad. Saa may have been an antagonist but it seems he had genuinely good intentions.

Or perhaps, the world of the BPRD is still in the process of changing into the new world. Millions are still dying in Houston and Britain. Perhaps Saa's prophecy is still in process?

It's simply impossible to theorise what might be happening, but what do you think is currently happening in the BPRD regarding this? I've not read beyond Gods and Monsters so if it's been explained since then please use spoiler tags.

[Kees_L]

In my view, readers get to see in the narrative to Hellboy and the B.P.R.D. what 'the promise of legend and myth', 'the promise of destined heroicness', or 'the promise to ultimate power' may amount to being.

The Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense will be an organization ultimately most apt and capable of dealing with the occult and dark forces conspiring to bring about the destruction and anihillation of humankind, due to having been always positioned closest to the fireside so to speak.

So if there would be truth to weird monsters coming out to rid the world of humans, in the form of frog people both as Kata-Hems and the one Ogdru-Hem or Ogdru Jahad, the Dragon, divine or cosmic one-of-seven, if there would be truth to Hellboy's hand having been formed or forged by the actual world-creators, the seven angels, seven-of-one - then the B.P.R.D. would seem to be mankind's only hope!

An organization finding its very origin in housing a most pivotal paranormal entity of its own, in the person of Hellboy, whose very purpose or destiny would strangely enough be, as the sole wielder of the Right Hand of Doom, to ultimately be to bring about Ragnarok, the very doom to how mankind would be knowing itself as.

This destiny both as the divine design or creation to the Right Hand of Doom and with such to the purpose which Hellboy as "Anung Un Rama" would be to embody, would have been prophesized as part of a fabled "Secret History Of the World", containing all the most powerful knowledge there would be to know, in all the era's since the beginning of the world.

A knowledge and power sought and perhaps partly uncovered (and lost again) by various powerhungry factions or individuals, such as by Hyperborean or ancient priests or kings (King Thoth), or their queens (Hecate), demon lords (Astaroth) or the pancake-pained, witches or hags (Baba Yaga), quaint exotic cultists (Memnan Saa), derelict and idle noblefolk (count Giurescu, Igor Bromhead), secret societies or Helioptic brotherhoods and such, attention-seeking ex-monk necromancers (Rasputin), or utterly moronic know-nothing fanatics (nazis).

Whereas the B.P.R.D. would more rather be in league with or consisting of beings opposing any of those dark forces, from being privy to the secret actual history and lore, such as for example Dagda and the Faeries, the Baba Yaga and other witches (again), Sir Edward Grey, Mohlomi, potentially aliens or at least homunculi, weird people (with gills or pyrokinetic qualities), the dead, or even mysterious actual heroes like the famous Lobster Johnson.

It would seem to me that all of the above would potentially be distillable from the (canoninical) stories of both Hellboy or the B.P.R.D (plus spinoffs such as BPRD 40-somethings, Witchfinder, etc).
With very ultimate questions still remaining, such as:
"But, but, how? Why? To what end? Wait, what?!" And a lot of rereading would be seeming advisable, like for a certainty .

[Middenway]

It depends. The thing I like about the prophecies in Hellboy is that they do happen, just not in the way anyone expects. The prophets and those that heard them always seem to make certain assumptions that are wrong. It's these details that are in flux, but the foundations of the prophecies remain true.

And Hellboy's story isn't over yet. Hellboy has died, yes, but I believe "the end" that Hecate was talking about (to Edward Grey in the second epilogue of Darkness Calls) was the end of the world. That hasn't come yet, even though it's getting closer. And there's still many things prophesised for Hellboy that he hasn't done yet, such as going into the Pandemonium, the capital of Hell, to kill the Devil and raising the armies of Hell. Still a long way yet to go before the end. The Storm and the Fury was the close of the second chapter of Hellboy's story. There's still the third and final chapter to go.