When X-Files fans tuned into the show’s series finale on May 19, 2002, few of them were satisfied with what they saw. While the return of David Duchovny as Agent Mulder was exciting after his absence from season 9 and much of season 8, having Mulder be the subject of a military tribunal for much of the episode was a mistake. Instead of tying up the show’s many loose threads (particularly the government conspiracy plot relating to extraterrestrials), the episode became a lengthy recap of the series’ mythology without resolving anything.
In fact, it did the opposite by promising an impending alien invasion a decade later in 2012.
The X-Files finale should have given an ending to Mulder and Scully’s story, ideally with the full-scale alien invasion the show had been teasing since its beginning, but it seemed that series creator Chris Carter was hedging his bets. On one hand, his interviews at the time expressed the importance of the episode, but he also kept hinting at potential X-Files films to come, and the finale seemed to want to save something for that.
Indeed in 2008, The X-Files: I Want to Believe hit theaters, but it ended up being a standalone story unrelated to the show’s central alien mythology. In interviews at the time, Carter again said he was saving the alien invasion plot for the next movie. However, The X-Files: I Want to Believe didn’t do well with critics and was only a modest financial success, so no such movie ever came.
Eventually, after 2012 (the promised alien arrival date) came and went, the idea of another movie fizzled and was replaced with a limited six-episode revival of the series. This would arrive in 2016 and eventually become known as X-Files season 10.
Once again, this should have closed out the alien invasion story. After all the missteps — like failing to get another movie made and the X-Files finale being on nearly everyone’s “worst finales” list — Carter should have taken those six hours and told a great, big alien story which finally offered some closure. Instead, he offered up some pretty excellent standalone episodes and two truly awful mythology stories that not only didn’t resolve anything but only further complicated the show’s central mysteries.
For example, season 10 begins with Mulder having a crisis of faith when a right-wing podcaster convinces him that all the business about aliens he’d been chasing for decades was actually a hoax created as a distraction to fuel the military industrial complex. So Mulder, whose whole character hinged on him being a believer in aliens, no longer believes. Granted, he’d had these kinds of disillusionments at times during the original X-Files run, but that’s when the show had room to justify and explore them. With just six episodes, there just wasn’t the time, and all it did was further delay any big payoff to the alien story. Instead, the can was kicked down the road yet again.
(By the way, if you’re wondering why the invasion didn’t happen in 2012, it’s explained that the aliens decided they no longer wanted Earth because humans had polluted it so much. However, it’s later said they’re still going to invade, just not right now.)
When season 10 ended, it seemed the show was finally getting to that big story as it focused on an alien plague outbreak and ended with Scully staring at a UFO in the sky. This meant fans would have to wait until Season 11 for a conclusion, but that it was, finally, hopefully coming.
When season 11 arrived in 2018, however, it was revealed that the previous episode was merely a vision of events to come by Scully. To make things worse, much of Season 11 got sidetracked by a story about the hunt for Scully’s son William, who embodies the single most confusing, frustrating storyline in the show’s long history.
To give you the short version, William was born in season 8 and given up for adoption in season 9 to protect him from various nefarious forces like aliens, super-soldiers and the Cigarette Smoking Man. At times, William is believed to be part alien, while at other times he’s believed to be part super-soldier. We also believe him to be Mulder’s son, only to find out in the revival that he’s the Cigarette Smoking Man’s son instead.
So season 11 still didn’t feature the invasion that was continuously promised, presumably because Chris Carter again believed there was the potential for more episodes. However, season 12 never came and, after having a miserable time making season 11, Gillian Anderson made clear that she was done playing Scully thanks to the stories being repetitive (especially because her entire arc became about finding her missing son). So not only was the alien story not resolved, it seemed as though it never would be because, as the past had proven, without both Mulder and Scully, the show just doesn’t work.
In fairness, the two revival seasons of The X-Files weren’t all bad. Much like the original series, they alternated between episodes about the show’s complex mythology and monster-of-the-week stories. Those standalone episodes were highly praised for feeling like the old series. The mythology, however, disappointed fans at every turn.
The conventional thinking is that there are so many loose ends and unanswered questions to The X-Files that no finale could ever wrap it all up in a bow. History, however, doesn’t bear that out. In reality, Chris Carter never really tried to end The X-Files. Instead, what’s made concluding The X-Files impossible is the promise of more X-Files down the road. When the show ended its original run, there were potential movies to be made afterwards, so the door had to be left open for that. After they did a movie, there was still the potential for another movie. Once that was abandoned and the show was revived instead, Carter should have said “That’s it! This is the ending!” and those six episodes should have given the fans what they always wanted, a big invasion storyline that’s been teased since the show’s inception. But no, a 10th season meant that maybe there could be an 11th, and an 11th season meant that maybe there could be a 12th. Every single opportunity given to Carter to end The X-Files has been sidestepped in the hopes of doing more.
And now, eight years after season 11 ended, no one’s even talking about season 12. Instead, there’s a reboot of The X-Files coming from Ryan Coogler and it’s unclear if it’s a continuation of what was or a full-on reboot in a totally different timeline. Most recently, Coogler has been ambiguous about the return of Duchovny and Anderson, and while it’d be great to see them back, it’s hard to imagine Coogler would want to complicate his new series and potentially alienate new fans by having the show’s original mythology as an albatross. Which means, as much as I’d like to think we’ll get it some day, I can’t help but assume a reboot, with or without an appearance from Duchovny and Anderson, won’t and can’t give us the big, satisfying end to the original series’ central story. At best, it’ll just kick the can down the road yet again.
