Baba Yaga (Hellboy)
A legendary witch who commands souls and curses her foes.
Baba Yaga is a supervillain in the comic book series Hellboy, created by Mike Mignola and based on the Slavic folklore character of the same name. She is a legendary witch who lives in a chicken-leg house and counts dead men's fingers. The character appeared in the 2019 film Hellboy, portrayed by Emma Tate and Troy James.
Quick Facts
- Character name
- Baba Yaga
- Publisher
- Dark Horse Comics
- Debut
- Hellboy: Wake the Devil (1996)
- Creators
- Mike Mignola
Facts from the source article.
History
In 1895, before the fall of the Romanovs, Baba Yaga contacted a young Grigori Rasputin and told him the fates had chosen him as their agent of change. To protect his spirit, she placed half of it within the roots of Yggdrasil, the world tree. Rasputin came to call her "grandmother," and they formed a strong bond. Ages earlier, Baba Yaga exploited Koschei's fear of losing his soul by telling him he could still be redeemed despite his dark path. She sent him to slay the last breeding pair of dragons and their hatchlings in Russia, which led him to murder his adoptive father's family. In March 1964, Hellboy first encountered Baba Yaga while investigating missing children she had kidnapped to satisfy her cannibalistic hunger. While she counted fingers of the dead in a cemetery and attempted to use a skull from a former devotee named Katayev to lead her to the Sabbath, Hellboy ambushed her. During the struggle, her left eye was shot out, and she retaliated by attacking him with tombstones. After her defeat, she cursed the village of Bereznik: no spring that year and every newborn blind in one eye. Her diminished power forced her into a pocket dimension resembling old Russia, though she can briefly return to the real world. She believed Hellboy would succumb and destroy the world but faced disbelief when he did not. She later met Rasputin at Yggdrasil, trying to convince him to stay in her realm, but he declined. After Hecate dispatched Rasputin, Baba Yaga collected what remained of his soul.
Powers and abilities
Baba Yaga is one of the most powerful magic users in the Hellboy universe, feared across Russian lands, especially in the wilderness. Before losing her eye and being depowered, she often visited graves to count corpses' fingers, then sucked in their souls and breathed them into empty skulls to create ghostly lanterns. These lanterns hang from the world tree's branches and fill her chicken-leg house. Her magical expertise lies in spiritual magic involving soul control or manipulation; she has thousands of lanterns in her collection. She commands a vast undead army that dominates her faux Russia with little resistance, except from the Leshii. She controls Koschei the Deathless, keeping his soul in an egg inside a duck inside a rabbit inside a goat. Her ghostly lanterns appear to be the source of her power, and she can use them to amplify other beings' powers. She can remove portions of a soul and place them elsewhere to grant extended life, as with Rasputin. She travels great distances in a giant wooden mortar, similar to a witch's broom. She has prosthetic wooden legs and a wooden lower torso, likely magic-powered. She can see great distances outside her pocket dimension into the normal world and communicate with witches there when necessary.
Film
In the 2019 film Hellboy, Baba Yaga is voiced by Emma Tate and performed on-screen by Troy James. She summons Hellboy to her chicken-leg house, explaining that he had shot out her right eye years earlier when he stopped her from resurrecting the ghost of Joseph Stalin. Hellboy agrees to give her one of his eyes in exchange for the location where Nimue plans to restore herself, but he reneges by saying he did not specify when he would give it. Baba Yaga curses him and expels him back to Earth. In a post-credit scene, she enlists an unseen force to seek Hellboy.
More in Characters & Cast
Elsewhere in Hellboy
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