It took several years, but we finally closed the X-Files. It was shortly after we bought the house, I believe, when we decided to watch the series the whole way through. This was prompted by my wife giving me season eleven as a present, and I was wondering if I’d lost track of the thread. We recently finished the last episode of the last season, with the movies interjected into the correct locations. It was an impressive franchise. I didn’t watch The X-Files when it originally aired. We didn’t watch TV in those days (Nashotah House didn’t have cable and reception was awful), but another reason was that I was unmercifully teased for being interested in such things as a kid, and now it was trendy. Once I got started, though, I was hooked.
Copyright: FOX; fair use screen capture
A few things struck me this time through, but one of the bluntest instruments to hit me was just how profoundly religion was interlaced with the series. Many episodes involve religion directly, and others address faith and belief, even if outside the confines of established religion. Since I tend to pause to reflect, I come a bit late to the table most of the time. If I’d been on the ball, and if I’d begun writing books on horror sooner, I might’ve found a project in the religion of the X-Files. As it is, several books have been written analyzing the series. Maybe that’s where I’ll turn next.
You see, the original projected end for the series was season seven in 2000. The mythology was wrapped up, and David Duchovny was leaving the show, which was, in essence, the story of Fox Mulder. Two more seasons were ordered, however, with Fox on the run. Things again were wrapped up in season nine. Season ten came to air in 2016 and we watched it in real time, with primitive streaming. In 2018, however, moving ended up being chaotic, and any watching would have to wait. It seems pretty clear that, even with endless resurrections of the Smoking Man—Mulder’s Darth Vader—that the crisis of the world’s end (on which season ten ended) had finally been resolved. That season, however, was eerily prescient regarding the pandemic. Season eleven was a strong pushback against the Trump presidency with its “fake news” and constantly shifting facts. Many of the episodes note how dangerous this is. At the end it seems that the miraculous son, dead and resurrected, immaculately conceived, survives, as do the father and, if it’s not reading too much into it, a holy spirit.
