X-Files Retrospective: How Chris Carter Wrote the Perfect Series Finale…
…And Then Didn’t End The Series
There’s a story which is probably apocryphal and gets attributed to various politicians. I’m going to use Hubert Humphrey because he was quite loquacious and he’s one my favorite political figures.
The story goes that Humphrey had delivered a stump speech that he thought went quite well. Then the next day a female constituent said she’d heard his speech last night. “In my opinion you missed several excellent opportunities,” she told him.
Humphrey, who took political criticisms seriously asked: “To do what?”
“To stop” she said simply.
Anyone who is a fan of TV, particularly broadcast shows, will know the context of this statement. Most network series, both before and after the period of Peak TV, far too often go on past their creative high point because they are still drawing in viewers and therefore making money for the network. Usually by the time the series comes to an end, the average viewer is relieved rather than disappointed by this. I’m certainly no different; I have a laundry list of shows starting with CSI and ending with The Blacklist & Riverdale that clearly stayed on the air far too long. There are series on the air right now that have long since gone past their expiration dates that none of the networks will put to sleep.
But in the case of The X-Files it is particularly more painful than almost all the others for a very clear reason: Chris Carter wrote the perfect series finale for the show, set it up that way…and then for a reason that is inexplicable, decided to keep the show going. I’ve written about this before in a few other articles related to The X-Files but didn’t go into detail, so this time I will.
Let’s start with the official word, written in a compendium about Season 7 a few months before the eighth season began.
In all things, producer Paul Rabwin tells us that the staff thought Season 7 was going to be the last one. “David (Duchovny’s) contract was up and we felt maybe the show had run its course. Chris Carter is quoted as saying: “I kept saying I would not do the show without David. Fox was asking me to commit to doing another season with or without him.”
Rabwin then says: “As the season progressed, we found ourselves starting to get energized again. Word started to get around that this would not be the end…As we got towards the end of the season, everyone was kind of hopeful.”
I remember reading this when I bought the book in the summer of 2001. Even as a devoted fan of the series, this required a suspension of disbelief that I could not buy, and that last statement by Rabwin doesn’t seem to correlate with what the viewer was seeing on the screen.
In Wanting to Believe, Robert Shearman’s episode guide to the series, written in 2009, Shearman paints a more accurate version of events as well presenting a truer picture of what we were getting in Season Seven.
“The seventh season feels as if its no longer certain of its own future….The cast were clearly willing to admit that they’d be relieved if the show was cancelled, there were increasing reports that Duchovny and Anderson had fallen out, and Duchovny was suing the network for lost royalties. The innocence and charm of The X-Files had gone. And with no guaranteed continuation, with the storylines wrapped up, and nothing new to say, Season 7 is a schizophrenic beast. Half the time it doesn’t seem to care anymore. And the other half it rushes around like a bull in a China shop, as if keen to play around and have as much fun as possible before the lights go out. Either way its undisciplined, and either way there’s a feeling that there’s nothing to be developed, no new direction that there’s time to explore. The X-Files, finally, is creatively bankrupt.”
That pretty much sums up what the viewer was getting in Season 7. The Syndicate storyline had been wrapped up in fiery glory in the middle of Season 6 and Carter had not come up with anything to replace it with. The Smoking Man and many of the other figures we associate with the mythology are either killed off early in the season or only making perfunctory appearances. Samantha Mulder’s fate, which has been the impetus of the series since the Pilot, is handled in the midpoint of Season 7 but its done in such a ham-handled and perfunctory way that even the people who love the episode admit that it is polarizing. After six and a half seasons in which Samantha Mulder has been told that she is central to the conspiracy, that she has been an alien clone, murdered by a serial killer, or has been raised in the suburbs by the Smoking Man. As recently as One Son, Smoking Man told Mulder directly that Samantha was alive. Now in the middle of Season 7, he tells Scully that she is dead. We’re told to believe that everything Mulder has thought his entire life about his sister was an invention of his own memories and that Samantha Mulder actually died when she was thirteen…except not even that is locked down for sure. In a scene where Mulder sees the ghost of his sister playing with other children in starlight — something that only Mulder saw — he decides to dismiss everything he’s spent his whole life believing with no more concrete evidence than any of the dozens of other leads he’s followed his whole life. I didn’t buy it a quarter of a century ago, I still don’t now. This really feels like Carter, who wrote the episode, is trying to check off a box before either the series ends or Duchovny leaves The X-Files.
And we get that in so many of the episodes throughout Season 7, which have the real feeling of the show crossing off items from its bucket list before the series ends. Wrapping up Millennium which was cancelled in 1999? Check. Handling the fate of Donnie Pfaster, the death fetishist who nearly killed Scully back in Season 2? Check? Inviting back William Gibson and Tom Maddox to write another cyberpunk episode? Check. You wouldn’t mind if any of these episode were imaginative or at least fun, but they’re all among the ultimate nadirs of the series.
Similarly Carter seems willing to let all of his regulars indulge their creative impulses. David Duchovny gets to write and direct another episode, but while he stuck to something resembling the mythology, this time it’s a piece of self-indulgence to invite his then wife Tea Leoni and Garry Shandling on to the series to play themselves playing Mulder and Scully. Gillian Anderson gets to write and direct her own episode which plays, frankly, like a pretentious student film. William B. Davis gets to write his own episode where the Smoking Man takes center stage and plays a somewhat sympathetic character. The latter is by far the best one of the three, but even that has been permanently stained by the fact that when the series returned for its eleventh season, the show retconned in it to something so fundamentally disgusting that I won’t write it here.
And in many cases, it looks like Carter is going to come almost to the point of having Mulder and Scully give into their sexual tension but won’t quite. In ‘Millennium’, they kiss on New Year’s Eve 1999 and say ‘the world didn’t end’ to each other. In the penultimate episode, Mulder and Scully drink a beer and watch Caddyshack together, the first time we’ve seen them hang out after work in almost the entire series. In ‘all things’, the episode opens with Scully getting dressed in Mulder’s apartment, and a bare-chested Mulder is on a bed, still asleep. None of these are referred to again until the series is almost over.
The only writer who still seems to have his head on his shoulders is Vince Gilligan and the three episodes he writes are the creative highpoints not only of the season but are among the best of the series. In ‘Hungry’, we get to see a Monster of the Week episode entirely from the perspective of the monster and we come away with sympathy for him and something resembling antagonism towards Mulder. In ‘X-Cops’, the crew of Cops tags along on a full moon and runs into Mulder and Scully in the midst of an investigation. The episode is filmed in the style of Cops — shaky camerawork, obscenities blocked out, faces blurred — and is one of the series comedic highpoints. And in the penultimate episode ‘Je Souhaite’ Gilligan directs his very first episode of television and in a simple story about a genie makes the argument that the series was never really about a conspiracy and saving the world but the bond between Mulder and Scully. “After seven years of chases and struggles and quests, the tender truth is the best thing to seek is the comfort of watching Caddyshack with someone you love.” It seems counterintuitive to the very nature of The X-Files, but its honestly I think it’s the right idea for a series and there’s an argument it should have been the final standalone…particularly of what the season finale was like.
The Season 7 finale is titled Requiem, which truly sounds like the appropriate title for a series finale. The title is a symbol for the music we play after a life ends…in this case the show we’ve been watching for seven years. And so much of Requiem truly plays like Carter is planning to end his creation by going full circle, which in this case means going back to the start.
This was a note that many network series had already done and would do in the year’s following The X-Files. Homicide: Life on the Street had ended the previous May with Tim Bayliss, the cop who we had first met when the series began, leaving the unit with a flashback replaying segments from every episode and his last line. The episode ends with Meldrick walking through an alley with a flashlight with his new partner, uttering many of the same lines of dialogue that were said in the opening scene of the series, some by him, some not.
Later on other series would carry on this tradition. ER ended with a series finale that had many callbacks to the pilot 15 years ago, including Mark Greene’s daughter, now a med student, now appearing in Cook County. Alias would end its run in 2006 by reflecting on many of the critical moments in Sydney Bristow’s life that brought back many previous cast members and flashed with the present to see where she was now. And Buffy The Vampire Slayer ended with several callbacks to the series premier, including Giles walking away from the three teenagers he met in the pilot and saying, ‘The world is doomed.”
So when ‘Requiem’ begins in Bellefleur, Oregon with the sheriff we met back in the Pilot, it seems very much like The X-Files is about to do the same thing. The case involves Billy Miles, the young man who was at the center of the action of the Pilot, calling Mulder and Scully and telling them that abductions are happening “but not to him.” Mulder and Scully go out and they are reminded not only of their first case and how much has changed for everyone else — but not them.
Billy Miles is now a deputy, who in seven years has gotten married and divorced. Teresa, a classmate of his, who had also been abducted, has also gotten married and has a new baby at home. But Mulder and Scully are still in the exact same place they were seven years ago. They still have no respect from their peers, friends and loved ones have died, and the conspiracy they’ve spent the series trying to stop has been resolved, but there’s no closure.
In the opening of the episode an FBI auditor tells them all of this and they have no ready answers to the questions. Scully’s best explanation is “We open doors that lead to other doors” But all those open doors have led to rooms that have nothing in them. And by this point, we know that nothing Mulder and Scully find on The X-Files will ever change the opinions of the powers that be. At one point Skinner tells Mulder as much: “You could have an UFO fly by the White House and an alien shake hands with the President. What it comes down to is…they just don’t like you.” And Mulder knows it.
In a scene that reflects this, Scully comes to Mulder’s motel room late at night, feeling ill. In the Pilot we saw this happen and Mulder comforted her and confided in her: the friendship was formed out of this. In Requiem, Mulder puts Scully into his bed (swoon) and cradles her in his arms (squee) and makes her the center of it. “Maybe they’re right about this…but for all the wrong reasons. It’s the personal costs that are too high.” It’s as close as Mulder has come in seven years to admitting that maybe everything he’s done just isn’t worth it.
We also see the three remaining members of the Syndicate: Krycek, who is rotting in a Tunisian prison, Marita Covarrubias (Laurie Holden) who very reluctantly comes to bail him out and the Smoking Man. At this point the Smoking Man looks truly pathetic. He’s in a wheelchair, speaking through a tube in his neck. He knows that there is a UFO in Oregon and pathetically describes it as “Our chance to rebuild the project.”
William B. Davis has been brilliant in his limited abilities in seven seasons, but he’s mesmerizing as a man who has lost everything to this cause and now seems hopelessly left behind. That he believes he can trust Krycek, a man who has betrayed him half a dozen times before, to do his bidding shows that he has truly run out of allies in his battle. And indeed, in the final act, Krycek and Covarrubias to betray him to Mulder.
By this point the Bounty Hunter has been taking former abductees and Mulder is convinced that they will not return. In the final act, Mulder and Scully have returned to DC when Skinner brings Krycek and Covarrubias to him. The two of them tell him everything the Smoking Man has told him. Krycek says: “I want to damn the soul of that Cigarette-Smoking son of a bitch.”
In what might be called the Last Supper of The X-Files, Mulder, Scully, Covarrubias, Krycek, Skinner and The Lone Gunmen look over footage and plot out where the UFO is over Chinese food. Scully walks out and Mulder tells her that regardless of this being true she’s not coming with him to Oregon. “There has to be a time and that time is now. They’re taking abductees, Scully. You’re an abductee. I’m not going to risk…losing you.” It’s as close to a declaration of love as our heroes have made in seven years. But Scully tells Mulder: “I won’t let you go alone.”
In Oregon, Skinner and Mulder go out to the site. But in DC, Scully investigates the medical records of the abductees and notes that they all suffered from anomalous brain activity — what Mulder suffered earlier this year. Scully now knows that Mulder is the one in danger of being taken, and then after feeling ill all episode, faints into the arms of the Gunmen.
That night, Mulder walks up to where a group of laser pointers are reflecting off something. He puts his hand into it, it begins to shake wildly. Skinner looks up and Mulder is gone. Skinner shouts out Mulder’s name.
The scene that follows is one of the great moments in The X-Files. Duchovny’s expression is a mix of disbelief and ecstasy. As Skinner shouts out in a voice that is scattered, he looks ahead…to see all of the abductees standing in a bean of light with a dazed look on their face.
Without a word Duchovny expresses so much as he willingly, almost joyfully walks into the field of abductees. He looks up to see a spaceship, enormous beyond reckoning. As the light grows brighter, we wonder to ourselves: Has this been Mulder’s lifelong dream? To become one of the people he has spent his life searching for?
And then Mulder’s expression changes. The Bounty Hunter silently walks into the field. We never can read the expression on Brian Thompson’s face but Mulder’s expression becomes that of terror as the light becomes brighter and brighter…
…and we cut to Skinner looking up as a ship bigger than you can imagine takes off to the soaring sound of Mark Snow’s music and disappears. In a voice filled with shock and awe, Skinner says: “Mulder.”
That night Krycek and Covarrubias come to the Smoking Man’s apartment. He seems to know what has happened and what is coming as he says: “We’ve failed. Perhaps you never meant to succeed. Anyway, the hour is at hand, I presume.”
Krycek walks past the Smoking Man’s nurse. “What are you doing?” she demands. “Sending the devil back to hell,” he says as he grabs the wheelchair. Covarrubias stops the nurse from interfering.
Krycek pushes the wheelchair to a flight of stairs. The Smoking Man says simply: “As you do to Mulder and to me, you do to all of mankind, Alex.” Krycek hesitates…and then pushes the wheelchair down the stairs. To the final boss of the series, it’s a pathetic ending and the one he deserves. (Yes, I know it wasn’t the one he got. Let me finish.)
The next day Skinner visits Scully at a hospital bed and tries to put on a brave face. Scully begins to cry: “I already heard.” Skinner, who has been a man of steel resolve, finally breaks down: “I lost him. I don’t know what else to say.” His tone is shaking but firm. “They’ll ask me what I saw. And what I saw I can’t deny. I won’t.”
This is Mitch Pileggi’s finest hour on the series. For seven seasons he has stoically listened to every detail of the bizarre reports Mulder and Scully have given him, never taking a position, never committing, never even admitting he believes them. Now his world view has changed forever and he can’t pretend otherwise.
Scully says tearfully: “We will find him. I have to.” Skinner is about to leave. But Scully isn’t done. “There’s something else I have to tell you, sir. Something I’m going to ask you keep to yourself.” Then a smile appears on her face.
“I’m having a hard time explaining it — or believing it — but…I’m pregnant.”
Cut to credits.
It’s very hard not to watch Requiem and not think this would have been the perfect note to end the series. Yes it remains utterly ambiguous to the fates of our two heroes, but as Shearman puts it:
“…the genius of it would have been that it stayed true to the show. That it never tried to come up with some nebulous truth, but right to the very last moment kept us guessing. There’d have been a poetic righteousness in that.”
I have little doubt the fanbase would have been pissed at this ending to an extent — ambiguous endings were not something TV did in 2000, and they still don’t go over very well today (The Sopranos is the most obvious example but I’m sure we can all think of two or three more without trying.) But it would have been different in this case because The X-Files had never been about wrapping things up definitively.
The receipts prove this. Depending on how you choose to look at it, The X-Files actually ended no less than four times, the first time in 2002 (I’ll get back to that) the second with the second film (when no one thought it had a future) and with the revival seasons in 2016 and 2018. Each have an ambiguous ending but the difference is, all of them seem to end with the possibility of continuation, a movie, another revival around the corner. Whereas Requiem really seems like it is willing to close up shop with this. Mulder has been taken with no clear idea if he’ll ever come back. The Smoking Man seems dead in a way we haven’t seen before (I remember being certain this was the case up to 2002.) And somehow, despite everything, Scully is pregnant.
You can see how this could have worked best for the show. This could have been the final point for the series and then Carter could have realized his dream of continuing the series in movies. It’s not like we wouldn’t have a really great jumping-off point: Scully frantically scouring the country for Mulder, trying to understand the child inside her, and at the climax of the film finally finding Mulder. We all saw how this played out in the last two seasons; it’s really hard to argue this not playing out better in a single movie. Even if the Smoking Man had survived, you could see this revelation playing out better in a feature film then the series carried on with it.
But instead, for reasons unclear even twenty four years later, Carter kept the series going. And as a result, all of the goodwill he brought up with the finale was worn away. Maybe given the reactions and the high quality of Requiem (it’s still one of the best episodes of the series), Carter thought that they had made an argument for more. But just because you’ve made an argument for it doesn’t mean you should follow through.
And as a result in the next two seasons, the circle that Carter had closed with Requiem had to be reopened. And in every respect it did so badly. The fate for Mulder looked final in Requiem, now it just seemed no more really than all the other Mulder in jeopardy finales we’d gotten over the years. Billy Miles and everyone from Oregon worked as subjects for becoming full circle; in Season 8, they had to become part of another conspiracy that the show completely bungled. And worst of all by making Scully pregnant they gave both the character and the series baggage that it bungled every possible way and some you wouldn’t think possible. Then somehow, when the series picked up again in the revivals they had to deal with the baggage all over again, and only sometimes did they make anything out of it.
The X-Files might return in some form in a while — Ryan Coogler has been signed to handle a new version with new characters taking place in the same universe. Whether it actually happens is another story but Chris Carter has said he’s done with the series one way or the other. That can only be a plus. Carter has been guilty of countless sins in his tenure of The X-Files but one of his biggest was that he never figured out when the best time was to end his dream. Someone else needs to take over who understands that there has to be an end.