When last we left our heroes, one of them had left us too. Season Eight of The X-Files picks up right where Season Seven dropped us off: Mulder has been abducted, Scully is secretly pregnant, and now the search is on.
The transitional nature of this season didn’t go down easy for the entire fanbase, but we (meaning us and our returning guest panelist, #TrustNoOne watcher KatyBeth) are here to tell you that it’s been long deserving of a reexamination. David Duchovny’s departure as a lead ultimately gave us compelling new characters, an authentic emotional through line, and a welcome but all-too-brief refocusing of the show’s mythology. Sure, there are bumps in the road, but it’s actually kind of miraculous how these episodes revived a tired narrative. Not sure whether you agree? Read on and let us convince you. —Sage
- Favorite Mythology Episode?
Sage: Every single mythology episode in Season Eight owns, and it’s been many years in TV time since I’ve been able to say that. I could make a case for each of them here, but I’m going to go with “Within,” because it’s a way more confident premiere than I would expect from a show that just lost one of its two main characters. “Within” says, “Sit down, bitches, we still have story here,” and I am seated.
First and foremost, Gillian Anderson continues to be a revelation, finding all these new emotional textures for Scully amid Mulder’s disappearance. (That “It’s Quiet Uptown” morning sequence alone!) There are new dynamics to feel out, most importantly Scully’s immediate dislike and distrust of John Doggett, who is baiting her on purpose with good, if misguided, intentions. And her relationship with Skinner changes too, as it already had back when she told him she was pregnant in “Requiem.” They are the ones taking Mulder’s abduction personally, and you can feel their frustration as they struggle with the red tape Kersh has put in their way to keep them from leading the search.
One of the areas in which the series usually falls short to me is in letting its characters grapple with the ramifications of the crazy shit that happens to them. But here, Chris Carter finally wrote himself into a corner in that sense, since Season Eight can’t really be about anything else but the emotional aftermath of Mulder’s abduction. And “Within” does a beautiful job of balancing the action and the intrigue (we know we’re going to see a Mulder who’s not Mulder by the end of it, but the teases still hit) with character stuff that feels organic and true. Granted, it furthers some plot points that I stubbornly refuse to recognize as canon (secret “brain disease,” please get fucked), but it also smoothly integrates some old mythology players (Gibson Praise, the super soldiers) into this new phase.
Kim: The best mythology arcs are the ones with a clear objective. After being real messy post-blowing everything up in “Two Fathers/One Son,” Mulder’s abduction brings everything with the mythology back into focus and Season Eight feels more serialized than The X-Files has ever been. “This Is Not Happening” is the climax of the Mulder abduction story, and boy is it a doozy. We meet Monica Reyes for the first time in this one! There are some classic scenes to fuel the Skinner/Scully ship! It ties up all the threads that have been dangling since the events of “Requiem” and it charts the course for the rest of the season. I think it was a pretty inspired idea to bring Jeremiah Smith back in for this one because it links the Mulder abduction arc to greater mythology that we are all familiar with and it retroactively makes “Talitha Cumi” and “Herrenvolk” (the most boring series finale/premiere combo of the entire series) more significant.
For as much as people bitched about how different The X-Files was in Season Eight, “This Is Not Happening” feels like a classic episode with real and immediate stakes. But I think what my favorite thing about the episode is that it’s a master class in how to write impending doom. The tension ratchets up in every scene as it looks less and less likely that Mulder is going to be returned unharmed but like Scully, we cling to hope that he’ll be the exception because it’s MULDER. Mulder can’t DIE! But then they find him…seemingly dead. The final minutes of the episode are basically The Empire Strikes Back, only instead of Luke Skywalker screaming “Nooooooo!” we have Dana Scully shouting, “This is not happening!” at the sky after Jeremiah Smith, her only hope of salvation, disappears. Boom. To Be Continued. It’s an agonizing cliffhanger! What more can you ask for from a midseason finale, other than NOT taking the show off the air for four weeks and absolutely destroying the season’s momentum? The answer is not much.
KatyBeth: In 2001, two network television shows killed off their main characters: one, as a sacrifice to save humanity and the other, after abduction and torture by aliens over several months. In both cases, the surviving friends and loved ones struggled to handle their loss. And in both cases, the characters came back to life through seemingly magical means. But only one of these characters had friends who had the sense to check if they were alive. (Sorry to this Buffy Summers, your friends were well-intentioned but terrible.)
Things were grim for X-Philes in the Spring of 2001. On the night “Deadalive” aired, it had been 35 days since the previous episode had ended with the discovery of Mulder’s dead body in a field. The cold open of this episode shows us Mulder’s funeral. There was no hope, okay?
Enter Walter Skinner.
Skinner finds out that Billy Miles has been found in the ocean, shockingly still breathing. He follows Doggett’s patented A to B to C logic and decides the safest thing to do is exhume Mulder’s body, three months after burial. Just in cases.
Doggett, bless his skeptical heart, tries to talk Skinner out of it. Scully doesn’t need the stress. She’s had a difficult pregnancy. (Pause while I picture Doggett and Skinner being Scully’s patient advocates at her medical appointments because they are good friends, okay.) But Skinner won’t listen – he can’t risk the chance that Mulder is alive in that grave. Doggett stays with Skinner, both of them witness to the successful outcome to the greatest “Mulder leap” of the entire series. Because within the coffin isn’t a corpse. Mulder is still alive!
Walter Skinner: hero, icon, legend, friend. Responsible for saving Fox Mulder from the clutches of death yet again.
- Favorite Standalone Episode?
Kim: I am usually very much against backdoor pilots. It always feels a bit like a betrayal, you know? It’s like you’re sitting down to watch one show and basically getting another one instead. “Empedocles” isn’t a backdoor pilot, per se, but it’s definitely a soft launch of the Doggett/Reyes partnership and it WORKS.
The reason that this bit of repiloting works is that it keeps Mulder and Scully in the narrative without having them doing the heavy lifting for the case. In fact, the Mulder and Scully storyline is basically a fanfic come to life where they are so domestic it’s tooth-rotting. They’re fucking nesting, okay! They are teasing each other about the pizza man! Mulder puts his hand on Scully’s belly and looks at her in awe! Mulder gives her a fucking family heirloom! This is everything I have ever wanted!
Monica is the one driving the story here, and Annabeth Gish carries the episode with such confidence and grace that by the time Mulder says there may be an opening coming up in the X-Files office, we’re like, “Well of course it’s her!” The case and the flashbacks to the death of his son helps flesh out Doggett in the same way that the Samantha story did for Mulder back in Season One. I love how this episode plays with all the character combos too. We get some great Monica and Mulder content, and it’s so fun seeing these two very different believers bounce off each other. We have more of Mulder and Doggett trying to establish their dominance, which is always fun to watch. (The amount of times Sage and I shouted “Whip them out, boys!” is ridiculous.) We have Scully looking luminous in her hospital bed even in the middle of a medical emergency and we have Doggett being the concerned best friend, which in turn makes Mulder even more territorial until Scully basically tells him to knock it off cause Doggett’s really nice and deserves a chance. It’s all just a wonderful way to start handing off the torch to Reyes and Doggett. I barely remember the specifics of the case, but I do remember the character work in this episode and that’s what makes it stand out the most to me.
KatyBeth: All I want is a buddy-cop comedy series where Fox Mulder and John Doggett team up to investigate spooky happenings and go from potential enemies to reluctant friends. In the absence of this, “Vienen” works in a pinch. Doggett’s just trying to do his job. Mulder’s just trying to have an adventure and find the “truth” because he doesn’t trust Doggett to do the job properly. They’re brought together by an oil rig in the middle of the ocean (There was only one oil rig??) and a surprise appearance by the Black Oil. Mulder saves Doggett. Doggett saves Mulder. Scully and Skinner work together to save them both from back home at the FBI. At the end, the boys escape by jumping off the top of the rig into the ocean below as it explodes behind them. Imagine if the show was like this every week!
Sage: There is only one God Himself Vince Gilligan joint in Season Eight, but what a God Himself Vince Gilligan joint it is. “Roadrunners” achieves new levels of batshit, even for The X-Files, without veering into offensive or even goofy territory – it is simply about a cult who believes that a parasitic banana slug is the son of God. And who are we to argue, frankly? This country was founded on religious freedom!
The premise of this episode is deliciously bonkers, yet there’s nothing campy about its execution. “Roadrunners” is a 44-minute horror movie with Dana Scully as our Scream Queen. (I’m sure she maxed out on it, but my kingdom for 2023!Gillian to star in some Hitchcockian psychological thriller or some creepy, elevated A24 thing) The cold open is one of the show’s darkest and best, and the script builds dread for our heroine from the moment she pulls into that dusty gas station. By the time all is revealed, she’s already in the shit.
Scully is cool under pressure, so it adds to our own terror any time she really loses it. (“That thing inside my spine is a HIM!?”) Season Eight lets her have some big emotions across the board, to the point where I don’t think another Emmy nomination would have been inappropriate, even though the popularity of The X-Files was on the downswing.
Amid all the cult stuff and the body horror, this episode does have something (and something significant!) to contribute to the season arc. Scully didn’t want Doggett cramping her style, so she arrogantly went out there alone. If she hadn’t, she wouldn’t have been as vulnerable. “Roadrunners” gives her the opportunity to learn that lesson – that she needs a partner to watch her back even though she’s now the seasoned veteran of the division – without being condescending about it. It’s not that she specifically needs saving (though, John carrying her out of that house of horrors: hot!), it’s that learning to trust someone else when she feels so incapable of it is necessary to her survival, physically and otherwise.
- Least Favorite Episode?
Sage: When I tell you that I was thisclose to falling asleep during “Surekill.” Kim and I were watching together as usual, and I think maybe a 25-minute period went by during which neither of us said a word, so lulled into a trance were we by its glacial pacing and simplistic, bland-ass plot.
KatyBeth: “Badlaa” is horribly ill-advised, extremely offensive, and super-gross. It has two redeeming factors: Dana Scully’s breakdown at the end, and the casting of Deep Roy, notable for his work in Star Wars, Return to Oz, and two classic Doctor Who stories including “The Talons of Weng Chiang.”
Kim: One would think that The X-Files writers would learn their lesson when it comes to writing any form of Eastern Mysticism considering that they haven’t nailed a single episode involving it over the course of 170 episodes and seven and a half seasons. But just like Kit Keller and those high and tight fastballs, they can’t resist taking a swing at it over and over again and so, “Badlaa” exists. John Shiban!! We expect so much better from you, my dude. This mess is your ONE contribution to Season Eight? Not only is the script offensive in its sweeping generalizations about India and its culture, the story itself is somehow both nonsensical AND boring AND a bit fatphobic. Plus you have the nerve to cast the great Deep Roy as your villain but not give him ANY lines? As a character that would later come to be known as the “Butt Genie”? Shameful. No wonder a producer eventually told a show biographer that it was the only episode he wished they hadn’t done.
- Scariest Episode?
Kim: GHVG’s “Roadrunners” is basically a PSA warning women that you should never take a solo road trip through the desert because you might just get abducted by a cult that believes a giant banana slug is the second coming of Jesus Christ and thinks that your body should be it’s next home. This one is such a wild pivot into pure horror for GHVG, whose solo catalog up to this point had been mostly made up of character driven thrillers or wicked comedies with razor-sharp banter. With “Roadrunners,” his transformation into the mastermind behind Breaking Bad is nearly complete, and what a pleasure it’s been to have been on this journey with him. Just stay away from rickety looking gas stations, okay?
KatyBeth: As a single thirty-something woman who loves to travel alone and knows the cell phone dead zones in the Mojave desert well, “Roadrunners” is horrifying. No gas and no phone service is bad enough, but then you add in a scary cult and top it off with A GIANT WORM INSERTED IN YOUR BACK and oh dear god I may never leave the house again.
Sage: “Badlaa,” but mainly scary how racist it is.
- Underrated Episode?
Kim: “Redrum” is one of those solid, down the middle episodes that never gets enough credit for how good it actually is. It’s a high-concept episode, not all that unlike Season Six’s “Monday,” except this time we have a man moving backwards through time to stop his wife’s murder instead of a Groundhog Day scenario trying to stop a bank robbery. It’s an episode that’s light on Scully and Doggett, so the bulk of the episode is carried by the guest star, much like Season Seven’s “Hungry.” That can be a tough concept to pull off… except when your guest star is the magnificent Joe Morton. Thirteen years before he sets our televisions ablaze with Shonda Rhimes-penned arias on Scandal, Joe fucking delivers as Martin Wells, a (dirty) prosecutor inexplicably traveling backwards in time as he tries to solve and prevent his wife’s murder. It’s a fantastic performance, and in a lovely bit of character actor magic, he gets to share the screen with his future Scandal co-star Bellamy Young, who plays his defense attorney. It’s not an episode that reinvents the wheel, but it IS a compelling and interesting watch, and eight seasons in, that’s really all we can ask for.
Sage: Don’t let anybody ever tell you that “Medusa” is a bottle episode, since the show had to construct an awfully big bottle – a replica of the Boston underground transit system – from scratch to pull it off. Proper nomenclature aside, I do love an episode that takes place entirely in one location and in something approximating real time. We’ve again got capitalism as the enemy here, represented by Scrubs’ Ken Jenkins as Deputy Chief Karras, who refuses to give up those rush hour fares to find the flesh-eating contaminant in his subway. Splitting Doggett and Scully up makes the investigation more dynamic, and the whole thing feels like a mid-budget ‘90s action movie – very much my shit.
KatyBeth: “Medusa” has a premise that feels like it could have been lifted from any early-aughts procedural, but plugging in Doggett and Scully makes it shine like the weird stuff on peoples’ skin down in the subway tunnels. Scully hasn’t yet trusted Doggett with her secret, but he doesn’t push her decision to send him below ground to investigate while she stays in the safety of the office. He also listens much better than Mulder would have done in the same situation. Scully and Doggett work together to save the day and thousands of commuters who just want to get home to “watch Survivor II”, and to lay yet another piece of trust to the foundation of their friendship.
- Best Mulder Moment?
Sage: I crave domestic MSR, and we get so precious little of it. That’s partially why Mulder gently teasing Scully about having an affair with the pizza delivery guy in “Empedocles” warms my cold, dead heart so much.
When it comes to their non-platonic relationship, Scully is the one who acts boldly and sometimes without thinking, whether that’s picking up a random for a one-night stand when she gets frustrated with Mulder not seeing her as a woman or initiating things when she finally gets the sign she’s been looking for. Mulder is the tentative one. He lets Scully believe he’s high on painkillers in “Triangle.” He kisses her under the umbrella of plausible deniability afforded by a holiday tradition. And he doesn’t know if he’s supposed to act like an expectant father or a friend of a lady having a baby when he comes back from the dead to find Scully pregnant.
“You got something going on with the pizza man I should know about?” is Mulder being Mulder, but it’s also him feeling out the situation, still trying to work out “where he fits in,” as he phrases it. It’s a completely different kind of teasing than we’ve heard from him before – there’s no sarcasm in it, because he’s half-expecting some other guy to come out of the woodwork and claim his kid. He genuinely needs Scully to tell him that he’s got nothing to worry about, even if it’s in the context of a joke.
So much of Mulder’s life has been characterized by his fear of openly wanting anything other than “the truth” – not professional respect, not a life partner, not a family, not a good relationship with his parents, not even a comfortable place to sleep. On some level, he doesn’t believe he deserves these things; on another, he’s convinced he won’t get them and that it’ll hurt too much to try. That’s why the pizza man exchange is so low-key heartbreaking – because Mulder is finally going for it, the only way he knows how.
KatyBeth: “Never give up on a miracle,” says Fox Mulder at the end of “Per Manum,” holding Scully as she cries that her last chance of IVF wasn’t successful. He loves Scully so much that he’s happy to do whatever it takes to get her the baby she so deeply wants to have, and while he couldn’t know that things would unexpectedly work out for them sometime following this moment, he believes in Scully. This man has seen the unexplained and believes in everything, but he knows Scully will have what she wants because the moral arc of his universe bends to her will.
Kim: I’ll never forgive Chris Carter for denying us the scene where Scully actually asked Mulder to be her Baby Daddy. How did she do it? Did she call him up and ask him? Did she do it over coffee? Did she invite him over for dinner and open a bottle of wine? Did she just come out and say it? Did she ask him at the office right before she left for the day? How did Mulder REACT? Did he like… leave as soon as she asked so he could think about it? Did SHE leave? How do you not show this, Chris Carter?? How?
Add this to the long list of things I’ll never forgive him for, but that’s an entirely different post.
ANYWAY, I DIGRESS.
At the very least, “Per Manum” gave us the moment Mulder said yes and he does it in the most Mulder of ways and it makes me want to claw my face off. Mulder shows up at Scully’s apartment after some undisclosed amount of time (head canon: exactly one hour and one minute as to not appear too eager) and at first it seems like he’s trying to let her down easy, saying he’s flattered and that he doesn’t want his decision to come between them. But his face! The whole time he’s saying this shit he’s looking at her with such awe that it’s clear he’s really like, “I can’t believe she asked ME, oh my GOD, this is such an honor and a privilege” versus “Ugh, I can’t believe she asked me to be her baby daddy, gross.” But sweet, vulnerable Scully doesn’t realize that and is all, “Oh, Okay then,” and Mulder finally realizes she’s not picking up what he’s laying down and interrupts her, simply saying, “My answer is yes.” His fucking face as he watches her REALIZE he’s saying yes and the way he like nuzzles the side of her head when she hugs him! The way he jokes about being a pro at jerking off for the sperm donation process! IT’S ALL JUST SO!!! FOX MULDER IS GOING TO BE A BABY DADDY AND HE’S SO EXCITED ABOUT IT!
- Best Scully Moment?
Kim: The best Scully moment of Season Eight comes approximately 11 minutes and 13 seconds into the premiere. Like the true queen she is, the normally unflappable Dana Katherine Scully angrily throws a cup of water in John Doggett’s face after he blatantly tries to undermine her confidence in Mulder and their relationship. As a fandom, we didn’t yet know that Doggett was going to prove to be a good guy and a true ally of the X-Files. We were all still reeling from the events of “Requiem,” and we were definitely still processing the idea of a Mulder-less season. None of us trusted the guy from Terminator 2: Judgement Day. So it was immensely satisfying to see him get owned because it felt like Scully wasn’t just standing up for Mulder and their work on the X-Files. She was standing up for us too, and for that, I cherish her.
KatyBeth: For all the shit I talk about “Badlaa,” it amuses me that my favorite Scully moment of the season comes right at the end: shaken by having shot at what appeared to be a young boy, she tries to reconcile her attempts to step into Mulder’s shoes with her own sense of what is right:
In an instant, I realized that it’s what Mulder would have seen, or understood, because that’s just how he came at things – without judgment and without prejudice and with an open mind that I am just not capable of.
Scully’s response to Mulder’s sudden absence defines her character arc across this season. She tries to find him, literally, in the world around her – but she also looks for him within herself. His influence is visible beyond her pregnancy, her slideshows, and the way she forms a supportive bond with John Doggett (she even promises to get him a desk!). Scully finds herself opening her mind in unexpected ways, playing Mulder’s role now that Doggett has stepped in as resident skeptic. That’s why I find this moment, when Scully breaks down to Doggett, so striking: she may be changed, but at her foundations she is still Dr. Dana Scully, wanting hard evidence before taking action. Shooting at what appears to be a child would have shaken her at any point in the past, but I can’t imagine what a headwonk that would be to Scully now that she’s pregnant. All she needs is a little reassurance from Doggett to brush herself off and keep going.
Sage: Almost every single day of their partnership, Scully is the one selling Occam’s Razor to Mulder, trying to persuade him that the most obvious explanations to their cases are likely the correct ones. But she rides so hard for him when he’s gone that she changes her own mind just so his viewpoint will be represented in any given room. The shining example of this is in “Patience,” when Doggett asks if she’s “familiar” with the principle. “Yeah,” Scully replies. “You take every possible explanation and you choose the simplest one. Agent Mulder used to refer to it as ‘Occam’s Principle of Limited Imagination.’”
Firstly, if Mulder had been there, he would have high fived her. But this response is so much more than just a subtle burn to the new skeptic in the basement. It reveals a great deal about Scully’s character and how she loves and holds space for people, especially Mulder. There’s no weakness in opening up to his way of thinking; it’s just that, to her, his absence is wrong, on a baseline, fundamental level. He should be there, he should be the one saying these things – and that’s not only necessary to their work but to how she now processes the world around her. That she tries to fill that void is a testament to the amount of respect she has for him, and for my money, the Scully we get in the first half of Season Eight is one of the strongest, most self-assured versions of her, because she’s operating from this place of defiant, unwavering devotion.
- Best Doggett Moment?
KatyBeth: In the year 2000, I was ready to hate John Doggett with my entire soul. But just like with Dan Lewis, I was pleasantly surprised to find that I liked the new guy so much. Really, what’s not to like about this man? John Doggett speaks Spanish, walks while reading, has actual friends, fights back against the man, refuses to be used to further someone else’s agenda, reads every X-File in the cabinet, feeds Mulder’s fish, befriends Dana Scully and gains her trust and looks out for her even before he knows her secret… it’s hard to pick just one best moment. I love our grumpy new best friend with the grown man house and actual life. But when he sends Reyes and Scully to the town in Georgia where he was born so Scully could give birth in safety and privacy (or so he hoped), it gives me the same warm feeling as when the Doctor gave Amy and Rory his cradle for Baby Melody. He’s a good best friend!
Sage: Nobody wants Dana Scully walking out on them (though we love to watch her leave, hey-ooo), so John’s reaction when thinks that she changed her mind about starting her maternity leave (and possibly leaving the X-Files forever) in “Alone” is beyond understandable. “You’re not gone five minutes, Agent Scully, and already I’m starting to feel a stranger in my own off–”
She made room for him! She made it comfortable! He felt like he belonged there because she was there! He’s a little bereft at the thought of going on without her. Their friendship is so pure.
Runner-up: “About all I know about the paranormal is men are from Mars and women are from Venus.” Protect him.
Kim: John Doggett has his very own Donna Noble “Please, just save SOMEONE” moment in “Vienen” when he doubles back to rescue Diego Garza, even when the whole oil rig is LITERALLY blowing up around him. Garza has already succumbed to the same fate that befell his friend Simon de la Cruz by the time Doggett finds him, but Doggett’s intention is what really counts here. That gut instinct that drives him to try and save the only other uninfected person on the rig speaks volumes to his character and who he is as a person and you know what? The Doctor would be fucking proud of him.
- Best Shipper Moment?
Sage: The slow hospital wakeup with Person A coming into consciousness and Person B having sleeplessly waited by their bedside is a beloved romance trope for a reason, and Mulder and Scully have been making the ICU sexy since Season One. I don’t know how to answer this question with anything other than Mulder blinking back into the world he was taken from the better part of a year ago in “Deadalive,” and Scully’s face being the very first thing he sees. The double take she does when his hand twitches in hers! Somebody sedate me.
There’s a great gifset of this scene on Tumblr with lyrics from Hozier’s “Work Song” (When my time comes around/Lay me gently in the cold dark earth/No grave can hold my body down/I’ll crawl home to her), and it always gets me in my feelings about how, even though Mulder and Scully are surrounded by death and touch it all the time, it literally cannot separate them. I’m not trying to be poetic either – that’s canon to me, as canon as Scully’s immortality, and I believe that this season proves it. They are constantly pulling each other back from the darkest places, even when all seems lost (and in this case, has been lost – for three months!). Scully literally had to bury this man. Maybe Orpheus doesn’t turn around every time we sing it again, is what I’m saying.
Kim: I was going to be a basic bitch and say the final scene of “Existence” and Mulder being all, “The truth we both know,” and Mulder and Scully sharing a gorgeous kiss that I would have been perfectly content having as the final image of the entire series. But then I rewatched “Essence” and you know what fucking blasted me off the face of the earth? That scene where Scully is stitching up Mulder in her kitchen after his encounter with Billy Miles. It’s like that scene in Beauty and the Beast where Belle tends to the Beast after the wolf chase, except it’s like a thousand times more soft and domestic. The casual physical intimacy of this scene makes me insane! He grabs her wrist when his boo-boo stings! She pats the top of his head in apology! He looks up at her through his eyelashes all flirty as he comments on her bedside manner! She fucking bops his nose with a cotton ball. These are two people in a long term physically intimate relationship, and you’ll never be able to convince me otherwise.
KatyBeth: After eight years, multiple face and hand kisses, a lot of questionable situations involving motel rooms, and an entire human baby that they conceived, it’s wonderful to end the season on a moment of Mulder and Scully safe and happy, holding their newborn baby. When Mulder says, “The truth we both know” and gives Scully the best, most well-lit kiss in series history, it’s everything.
- Thirstiest Moment?
Kim: Alex Krycek is a messy bitch who lives for drama who also knows how unfairly hot he is. Never is more clear than in “Essence” where he shows up out of the blue, pulling up beside a parallel parked trapped Mulder and Scully in his black car, rolling down the window and being like, “Get in losers, we’re going on the run from a super soldier.” Plus, we get the added thirst trap moment when all of Scully’s boyfriends are loading her in the elevator, trying to get her out of the building and Skinner’s like, “Nope, you stay here,” and Krycek just SMIRKS at him. And then he clearly stays right by the elevator doors for the dramatic reveal when they all have to come back upstairs because Billy Miles has found them. I might have clapped at his shit-eating grin as he said, “Hey, look who’s back.” What can I say? If loving Alex Krycek is wrong, I don’t want to be right.
KatyBeth: That Scully/Skinner standoff in the desert during “Without” was meant to be hot and laden with sexual tension, right? Because wow did it ever succeed.
Runner-up: John Doggett’s gun show when Mulder comes over to hang out during “Essence.” (I’m a woman with simple tastes!)
Sage: No disrespect to Mulder, who I will never not desperately miss any time he’s not around, but the energy between Scully and Skinner is especially insane the first half of Season Eight.
Scully is both spiraling out and fiercely focused on the one objective that matters to her; Skinner is racked with guilt, especially since he knows (and is the only one who knows) how alone she feels and why. The grief that they share brings an intimacy to their relationship that was never there before, and I firmly believe that if The X-Files had been an HBO show produced in the 2010s, they would have had weepy sex once during this period and never spoken about it again. You know I’m right.
Anyway, my thirst moment occurs in the middle of “Without,” when both of them know that there’s a shapeshifting alien bounty hunter stalking Gibson Praise in the Arizona desert, and that they therefore can’t trust their own eyes. They end up in a standoff when Scully tries to make a break for it, holding their guns on each other and demanding proof in the form of the (again, exceedingly intimate) secret that they share. Frankly, Gillian Anderson and Mitch Pileggi couldn’t share an uncharged moment as these characters if they tried, and this one is especially heavy and also very hot.
- Grossest Moment?
KatyBeth: It’s a tie between the “Jesus Worm” and the “Butt Genie”, both disgusting options.
Sage: Human-sized bats, flesh-eating bacteria, a small man who crawls into people’s anuses to fly internationally without a passport (whyyyy)… many gross moments stand before me, but I only have one photo in my hands. This season’s winner iiiis….. giving birth without the benefit of running water or heavy drugs! Dana Scully, come on down.
Kim: There’s a lot of gross shit that happens in Season Eight, from the slug that would be God in “Roadrunners” to John Doggett literally being regurgitated by a soul eater so he can be reborn in “The Gift.” But what takes the cake for me this season is when a bloated and decaying Billy Miles wakes up in his hospital bed in “Deadalive.” After removing his own chest tube, which is horrifying enough, Billy gets up and shuffles to the shower, where he promptly sloughs off ALL OF HIS SKIN chunk after bloody chunk. (Did we have to SEE the CHUNKS?) It’s like he used one of those fancy foot masks that promises to dissolve your calluses and give you baby soft feet in five to seven days except he used it on his whole fucking body. It makes my stomach turn just thinking about it.
- Funniest Moment?
Sage: Special Agent Monica Reyes is a charm bomb, okay? And all those so-called fans who still refuse to welcome her and John Doggett into their hearts do not deserve them anyway. How do you not instantly fall in love with the one woman who’s brave enough to drive out into the middle of nowhere with a colleague (an acquaintance, really) in labor and single-handedly not only deliver her baby but also protect her from an army of almost-unkillable super soldiers? There’s not much room for levity in Season Eight given the circumstances, but our crunchy free spirit does what she can in that department as well, serenading Scully with her a capella cover of a soothing whale song. The nurturing goofball we needed.
Honorable mention to the Lone Gunmen doing their best “We Three Kings,” bearing gifts and coming to pay their respects to the child.
KatyBeth: There’s nothing more special than a woman performing whale songs for her almost-boyfriend’s best friend while they’re hiding out in an abandoned town in Georgia so said friend can give birth. I like to think that’s the moment that snagged Reyes a best friendship with Scully and the label of godmother for Baby William. (Because you know Scully’s only other female friend is Skinner’s secretary.)
Kim: God bless Agent Layla Harrison for asking the most important question of the series: Exactly how the fuck did Mulder get a practically comatose Scully out of Antarctica? I can’t get over the way Mulder and Scully just stand there bickering over what really happened, listening to each other, but also not listening to each other, like they are an old married couple that have been telling this story for years. And Harrison just sits there and watches them, basically a living embodiment of an eating popcorn gif. I love when The X-Files is willing to make fun of itself and this is hilariously perfect way to acknowledge a long dangling plot thread as the series moves into its final act.
- Best Monster/Villain?
Kim: Hear me out. The true villain of “Medusa” (a fucking great episode) is NOT the microscopic flesh-eating sea creature running amok in the tunnels of the Boston subway system but Deputy Chief Karras, who is more concerned with getting the trains running in time for rush hour than potentially unleashing a global pathogen on an unsuspecting general public. He sends Doggett’s team into the tunnels knowing there were bodies down there that died under mysterious circumstances! He actively works against Scully’s investigation, going so far as to attempting to intercept the bodies going to the CDC. He gives the go-ahead to resume operation ahead of schedule! He’s a real dick in general!
On the other hand, I suppose that as a New Yorker that’s been deterred many a time by the MTA, I can appreciate Karras’ determination to get the transit system up and running again. Even Scully eventually admits that ultimately, he was just doing his job. So I suppose you could say the TRUE true villain is America’s overburdened and crumbling infrastructure system. Someone get Mayor Pete on the line!
KatyBeth: Alex Krycek, my beloved. The slipperiest rat who ever lived. He escaped every scenario from a car bomb to a gulag to a prison with most of his dignity and limbs intact. He and Marita took over the Syndicate, finally, and then he disappeared until it was time to fuck with the Skinner/Mulder/Scully alliance again. But the one thing he couldn’t outrun in the end was Skinner’s gun. (Honestly, he should have expected this after torturing him with nanobots for a few years. Skinner is stone cold in this moment.) Krycek, last of the interesting antagonists, truly gone too soon.
Sage: I wish I could say it was Knowle Rhorer, just to drag his stupid name again, but the bittersweet day has come to pay posthumous tribute to Alex Krycek. To that end, here’s a list of the coolest things he’s ever done:
- Had no backstory, was seemingly hatched fully formed by the Syndicate at age 25.
- Been the only canonical witness to Speedo Mulder.
- Additionally: Stood next to him in that little number and managed not to look down.
- Controlled Walter Skinner’s blood robots with a remote that would come with a motorized car from RadioShack.
- Didn’t tell anybody he spoke Russian, just pulled it out one day.
- Had his arm amputated with no anesthetic.
- “Kiss my American ass.”
- Steeped his tea with his prosthetic arm for the bit, even though it would have been much easier with the good one.
- Kissed Mulder before Scully did.
- KILLED BILL MULDER. (Fuck that guy.)
- Been handcuffed to a balcony by Walter Skinner. (Who among us?)
- Threw CSM down a flight of stairs.
- Right in the Feels Moment?
KatyBeth: I changed my answer so many times because this season has no shortage of feels, but I’ve landed on the end of “Alone”, when Mulder and Scully visit their fan and distant coworker Agent Harrison in the hospital. Leyla Harrison was named for a real-life fan of the show and fic writer who had recently passed, a loving tribute that becomes even sweeter as you watch the character attend a fan panel for one. She gets to ask her heroes questions about their work together, and witnesses some of the most adorable banter David and Gillian performed onscreen. (The answer to how Mulder rescued Scully from Antarctica, btw, is money.)
Sage: *Diana Prince voice* We have a babyyyyyy!
Everything about the gestation/arrival of William that doesn’t have to do with him being the center of an intergalactic conspiracy gets me, from Scully’s cute maternity outfits to Doggett calling him “a little J. Edgar.” In a perfect world (like one in which women exist and also write TV), the fact that these two people made a baby and surely have emotions about that would be better explored, but it’s The X-Files, so I’ll take what I can get. So while “Per Manum” should have been a talky three-hour movie, for example, I can live with the fact that Scully doesn’t take a fraction of a second when she learns that her ova are viable to even consider using an anonymous donor. Like…she goes into that appointment already knowing that she wants Mulder to be the father of her child, and she probably decided that a long time ago. She was thinking about it at least as far back as “Home.”
But you asked for a moment, so that’s what I’ll give you. (Okay, two moments. Best I can do.) The first is one of the most painful bits of blocking this show ever subjected us to, in “Deadalive” when Scully is waiting in Mulder’s hospital room, unsure that he’ll ever wake up, holding his hand in one of hers and cradling her bump with the other one. That is her family!
The second is the rare moment of pure happiness we get to end the season on, when everything is quiet for once and Mulder and Scully can focus on each other and bask in the life they created. Is the final scene in “Existence” a little cheeseball? You’re damn right, and I declare that we (and especially they) deserve it. Mulder soothing his son, Scully watching them meet each other with the biggest, most uncomplicated smile on her face… as much as I wasn’t ready for the show to end, a huge part of me wishes that we could have just left them there, making it canon that “the truth” really is the partners you fall in love with along the way. (Also, god bless David and Kim Manners for telling Chris Carter to take his scripted forehead kiss and shove it. Grow up, Chris!! That’s not how babies get made.)
Kim: Walter Sergei Skinner, you guys. This man basically swore an oath to Scully at the end of “Requiem” like he was a fucking knight of Camelot and boy, did he honor it, from defying the higher-ups at the FBI to road tripping with her to the desert to probably making sure she was taking her pre-natal vitamins in the early days when he was the only one who knew she was pregnant. He essentially offers to help raise the baby in Mulder’s stead. This man is ready to STEP UP and it’s overwhelming.
For me, the Scully/Skinner dynamic comes to a head when she knocks on his hotel room door in “This is Not Happening.” She had a bad dream about Mulder and she needed comfort and he’s just…so soft and concerned about her??? And then he puts clothes on (BOO!) and stands with her in the parking lot and just…exists with her. Frankly, it’s devastating.
Scully: I once had a talk with Mulder about starlight. How it’s billions of years old. (They look up at the stars.) Stars that are now long dead whose light is still traveling through time. It won’t die, that light. (Skinner watches Scully watch the stars.) Maybe that’s the only thing that never does. He said that’s where souls reside. I hope he’s right.
(Long pause. He puts his arm around her shoulders.)
Skinner: If you’re trying to prepare yourself, I want you to stop. Nothing says that we’re going to stumble over him in some field. Nothing says he won’t be fine.
(Scully nods. Then her face falls and she turns into his chest and sobs quietly. He holds her and stokes her hair gently.)
What really gets me in the feels with this scene is how Scully lets Skinner in. Scully, who is so used to being like “I’M FINE” and bottling up her emotions, lets her walls down and allows him to comfort her. She allows herself to TAKE comfort from him. Honestly, I would NOT BE SURPRISED if this scene was the very origin of the entire genre of hurt/comfort fanfiction. Who among us didn’t watch this and wonder if maybe they had some grief sex after this? Only me?
- Best “Mulder, You’re Lucky You’re So Cute” Moment?
Sage: Being tortured by aliens/the shadow government for six months and then in the ground for three certainly wouldn’t leave anyone in a good mood, but jeezy creezy, Mulder could use a good slap in “Three Words.” He feels confused, replaced, forgotten – and like maybe someone else has knocked up his wife – and none of these feelings are pleasant. (I lay some of the blame on unnecessarily holding back information from him – why wouldn’t Scully just tell him she’s carrying their child? “It makes no sense!,” she yelled at the sky.) But, my dude, a little respect and benefit of the doubt for the friends who literally exhumed you from the family plot and brought you back to life would not go unappreciated. You’re lucky your corpse is still so cute.
Kim: Listen up, Fox William Mulder. I get that you were abducted and tortured (naked!) by aliens for months. I get that you literally died and I get that you were literally buried in the ground for three months. I get that you came back from the dead only to discover that life seemingly went on without you, that the love of your life is both heavily pregnant and working with some normie former cop who is not at all spooky. I GET IT. It sucks! But being formerly dead is not an excuse to be a raging dick for the entirety of “Three Words,” especially to said heavily pregnant love of your life who literally moved heaven and earth in order to bring you back to her. I can excuse you being a dick to John Doggett, I mean, you don’t know him from Krycek. But being a dick to Dana Katherine Scully?? Acting like you don’t know who the father of her child is?? Being offended that she tried to carry on YOUR LIFE’S WORK to honor your goddamn memory?? You’re lucky you’re so cute!
KatyBeth: What kind of asshole comes back from the dead (again) and decides that the smartest thing to say first to his life partner is “Who are you?” Absolute jerk behavior. A nation of people traumatized by the amnesia plotline in Lois and Clark cried out in pain and Dana Scully absolutely considered pulling his name off the birth certificate.
- Best Guest Star?
Kim: Is it cheating to name the future co-lead of Season Nine as the best guest star of Season Eight? Maybe. But goddammit, we didn’t know Annabeth Gish was going to be our new leading lady when she popped up in “This is Not Happening.” Technically she IS a guest star this season and her casting is inspired and I want to talk about it, so there.
I fucking love Monica Reyes, you guys. I love that she’s kooky and New Age-y and a little bit chaotic. I love that she smokes and I love that her wardrobe leans body con and I love that she radiates bisexual energy. While it took me several episodes to warm up to Robert Patrick as John Doggett, my immediate reaction to Monica was “Ladies and gentlemen…HER,” and I entirely chalk that up to Annabeth’s warmth and natural screen presence. (It also helps that I am forever endeared to her because of Shag, one of my ultimate slumber party movies in junior high.) She brings a much needed female presence to the show and it’s so great getting to see Gillian Anderson play off of another woman. Scully needs girlfriends, y’all! Especially girlfriends who were definitely sent to her by her sister Melissa’s spirit and who sing whale song and tell her she’s beautiful in the middle of hard labor. It’s what Scully deserves and HAS deserved for eight whole seasons and I’m so glad we get to spend so much more time with her.
KatyBeth: Joe Morton’s presence in “Redrum” is so compelling that I barely notice that Doggett and Scully are missing for most of the episode. It’s rare for this show to give so much screentime to a guest star over the series regulars, but the man who invented SkyNet deserves every moment of time he is given. Morton plays a man accused of the murder of his wife, trying to discover the culprit as he moves backwards in time each day. In the end he saves his wife but winds up in prison for a crime he did commit as time rights itself.
Sage: The casting of Joe Morton as a prosecutor friend of John’s who stands accused of murdering his wife in “Redrum” is not only a Terminator 2: Judgment Day reunion with Robert Patrick, but also a Scandal pre-union with Mellie Grant herself, the indomitable Bellamy Young, who plays his defense lawyer. Even if it didn’t share those fun connections with his other projects, the man we know best as Eli Pope, the most ruthless motherfucker to ever run a deep-cover government-sponsored cabal of spies/assassins, would still outpace everyone else in this category by a country mile.
The word that first comes to mind when I think of his work is “gravitas.” No matter what Papa Pope was spouting in his flowery, sometimes overwrought monologues, Joe Morton sold it, and he does the same in his X-Files appearance. This man is always going to give you conviction, and his performance as a man who’s mourning his wife, facing the loss of his freedom, and experiencing the worst days of his life in reverse order supplies the human element “Redrum” needs to be more than just a twist on a time travel story. May he never be out of a job.
- Favorite Y2K fashion?
KatyBeth: Machine-knit dusters in a wide range of neutrals are so hot right now. (I still own my long black one, purchased because it looked like Monica Reyes would wear it. That’s the impact of TV on fashion!)
Sage: Knowing what I was wearing in 2001 makes it difficult to be nostalgic for the fashion of that time. Nevertheless: the blue-gray sweater Scully wears in “Essence.” It looks so cozy, especially for an eight-months-pregnant lady, and I love the raw neckline and cuffs. It’s definitely more her than the muted floral maxi dress she has on earlier in the episode, but of course our Dana feels more comfortable stitching up Mulder and talking conspiracies with Doggett in her kitchen than she does unwrapping baby gifts in front of a dozen women she can’t possibly know that well.
Kim: Give me all of Scully’s cozy pregnancy cardigans and sweater coats, please and thank you.
- Sum up your feelings about the season.
Sage: It is a truth universally acknowledged that Season Eight of The X-Files only exists because Fox wanted to make more money. Kudos to everyone on the creative side then that it doesn’t feel at all like a soulless cash grab. I have been a defender of Season Eight since my first viewing, and this rewatch only confirmed that I was right to be. Especially mythology-wise, this is some of the best storytelling the show has ever done.
I miss Mulder. Scully misses Mulder. We all miss Mulder. (Mentally we are all curled up in his bed with our faces buried in his shirt.) But the well of ideas was running dry, and the series needed a shake-up. New blood is the easiest way to do that, especially with Doggett, aside from being a good boy and an almost immediate Scully fan, being the anti-Mulder. Throw in some finely calibrated angst, a miracle child in peril, and the promise of Mulder eventually returning, and you’ve got a reinvigorated audience.
That said, there’s a run of MOTWs in the middle of the season that is truly unfortunate. Some are boring, others are in horrifically bad taste. It feels like there was a conscious effort to go darker in the standalones to match the mood of the characters, and that’s fine, but errors in judgment were made. There are also no comedies in this season, and while that’s appropriate given the circumstances, it makes for a pretty dour binge. Don’t get me wrong, I love the pain, but The X-Files was known as much for its funny episodes as it was for its scary ones by this point in its lifetime. Fortunately, there’s a little more room for levity (and, unfortunately, for the mythology to shit the bed again) in Season Nine.
Kim: Much like Season Four of Community, Season Eight of The X-Files is not nearly as bad as fandom discourse might lead you to believe. In fact, it’s not bad at all! At times it’s even GREAT. It’s just different, that’s all! And if there’s one thing I’ve learned over the course of my years as a fangirl, it’s that fandoms generally hate change and are slow to accept it. And I will admit that in the fall of 2000, I was one of those fans initially grumbling about John Doggett and how The X-Files was no longer The X-Files without Fox Mulder. Guess what? I was wrong! I’ve known that for a while, as I’ve obviously revisited the series since then, but still. I needed to admit it publicly. Season Eight of The X-Files is good and the fandom was just bitter.
What really stood out to me in our rewatch of Season Seven is how tired The X-Files was starting to feel, and I didn’t get that same sense at all in Season Eight. There are some rough patches, sure, but those are more of a figuring out a new character and a new dynamic kind of variety versus a we’ve run out of ideas and are all sick of making this show kind of variety. Much like the Presidential campaign did for the final season of The West Wing, Mulder’s abduction and the subsequent search for him breathes new life into the series. It’s like a big old shot of adrenaline because as many times as we’ve said, “Now it’s really personal” before, Scully’s pregnancy makes it feel really fucking personal. Should the show have called it quits after that gorgeous final scene with Mulder and Scully kissing over their newborn son? Probably. However we all know that’s not how network TV always works, especially with a show that was a cash cow for so long. But no one can say that the writers didn’t do their damndest trying to set Doggett and Reyes up for success, and that’s what really matters the most to me.
KatyBeth: Let’s clear this up right now: Season Eight is good, actually.
With the loss of David Duchovny from the regular cast, the show seemed prepared to fail. How could the writers possibly pivot from the focus on Mulder and Scully and their relationship to a world where there was a Mulder-shaped hole? From my perspective, they made a handful of strong choices that led to a very successful season.
Expanding the cast: The addition of Special Agent John Jay Doggett, formerly of the NYPD, is the best thing this show could have done. It’s been long past time for this show to add an ongoing character after killing off so many in the previous seven seasons. He fits in with our ongoing faves in his own way, without stepping on Mulder’s life. Scully needed a new best friend and he is a good one, once they get past the water-throwing and the mistrust. But wait! There’s more! Perhaps emboldened by the success of Doggett himself, the show gifted us Monica Reyes, Special Agent, whale song singer, good looking in a leather jacket, with a more open mind than even Fox Mulder and way less childhood trauma.
Serializing the stories properly: We all know this show is a mess when it comes to the personal histories of its characters, and while they fumble the ball a standard amount here (you cannot find out you are pregnant in May of 2000 and give birth in May of 2001, that is not how human gestation works), they mostly get it together in terms of Scully’s pregnancy. This isn’t sending the agents to a month of quarantine at the end of one episode and having them on another case the next week in the following episode – Scully is carrying a ticking time bomb that will only remain a secret for so long. It helps the narrative along and gives everyone a focus beyond some vague concept of “the truth” or a search for a long-missing person.
Focusing on properly spooky stories: This season makes season seven look fluffy as heck by comparison. Doggett, Scully, Reyes, Skinner, and Agent Harrison investigate the creepy, the gross, the gory. Their lives are on the line so many times. It’s of note that this feels like the closest the show ever got to being a proper procedural, and I don’t mind it. I would have watched these rotating combos of coworkers investigate the weird for a long time.
Unchaining Walter Skinner from his desk: You know who’s quite lovely in a crisis? AD Skinner. He’s out here partnering up with Doggett anytime Scully is unavailable, teaming up with the boys, and being extremely handsome while doing it. Thank you to whoever let him leave the standing sets of the FBI and be out in nature.
Not being so coy about Mulder and Scully’s relationship: The reluctant sigh from Chris Carter as he typed into one of those laptops I saw in the museum last weekend translated into joy and happiness from us. Sure, it’s questionable how Scully got pregnant given her fertility issues, but it’s not because she wasn’t in a loving, committed relationship. (File this one under “Things They’ll Never Do Right Again.”)
Seriously though, as I watched back through to answer these questions, I had the worst time making myself stop watching so I could write. What a fun, stressful time in all their lives! I love it so much and it ends on such a beautiful moment. Pack it up, everyone, it was a good series finale.
Wait, sorry, I’m just receiving word that the show got picked up for a potentially ill-advised ninth season. Fasten your seatbelts… it’s going to be a bumpy ride.
Are you also a defender of Season Eight? Or are you raring to tell us why we’re wrong? Either way, share your thoughts in the comments?
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