Well, I suppose this really is 'The End', isn't it? Only it's not, because there are still four seasons and two movies left.
Spoiler alert: It's not the end.
But in a lot of ways it is. Cancer Man cruelly and vindictively sets Mulder's office ablaze, and the X-Files are shut down. Again. They've pushed a giant reset button in a way.
I know the show's production moves to Los Angeles starting with the sixth season, so I guess it makes sense - they might as well torch the set because they don't need it any more. OK, so it probably wasn't quite as arbitrary and dangerous as that, but hey, fire. Fire is good. And burning everything really sends the message that it's over. Now I kind of wonder what the renewal status was each season of the show. Did they know there would be a sixth season? Or were they hedging, thinking that if there wasn't, the movie would give the closure the fans needed?
There was also a lot of death in this episode. Death that felt a lot like cleaning up loose ends, though we don't know exactly what those loose ends were. It certainly ties in well to the idea that this might still be something of a reset for the series, especially with the movie coming up. (Which, by the way, I will be writing about as if it's a single episode, so not a Friday Feature, just a regular post. A very long post, I'm sure.)
The actual plot of this episode, though, turned out to be secondary, at least in my mind, to the absolute best part of this show: Mulder and Scully. There's no point in denying it any more: I SHIP THIS. Seriously. These two are perfect for each other, they just can't see it. Wait, no, they can see it. They both see it, and they both know it, they just can't say it out loud.
I'm reminded of Peter and Olivia in Fringe's third season, especially the episode, 'Concentrate and Ask Again'. In that episode, a man with psychic ability has chosen to live in isolation, much like Gibson's choice to watch TV and play chess, as a way to manage his ability. And in that episode, as well, there is a love triangle to be resolved, only at least on Fringe, Peter's and Olivia's feelings for each other are well known. Here, an ex of Mulder's shows up and there's clearly a connection that Scully can detect from a mile away, because Diana, like Mulder, is a believer. They're perfect for each other, right?
I thought that Scully would ask Gibson outright what Mulder thought of her, but he was already vague about it, and I think she's kind of in denial herself. But the fact that Mulder didn't want Gibson to say who he was thinking of means he was thinking about Scully, right? Thinking about Diana would be obvious, but again, he's just vague enough that it could go either way, at least for the characters on screen. And both women naturally assume he's thinking about Diana, with whom he seems to have quite a history.
However, in a moment showing great growth, Mulder essentially shuts down any possibility of reuniting with Diana, telling her that he's done well with Scully, because she challenges him. She makes him take a scientific approach to his work, which makes him a better agent, and he's right. Imagine Mulder working with Diana rather than Scully - every outlandish theory he came up with, she'd go right along with unquestioningly. No science, no rigour, no validation of the facts of the situation.
OK, so I've spent a good portion of this post talking about Mulder and Scully. As in Mulder/Scully. I guess there was also an episode in here somewhere. Don't get me wrong, it was a good one, but I clearly have had Important Things™ to say about Mulder/Scully.
At least we finally get the official reveal that the Smoking Man is Jeffrey's father. I was hoping for a more The Empire Strikes Back kind of scene, but it was not to be. Because I think Jeffrey is evil, so maybe he's OK with this guy being his father.
And everything else in the episode is manipulated very carefully by the Smoking Man and the Death Eaters, and now they have the boy who can read minds. I suppose he could have some use to them, but given that they tried to murder him in the beginning, I don't exactly have high hopes that they'll spare his life. Perhaps, though, they'll send him to a special academy to become a secret assassin, and his older sister, who's an up and coming doctor, will have to risk her career to rescue him, and then go on the run with a bunch of outlaws on a smuggling ship. Wait, that's a different show.
But to some extent, getting the boy wasn't their main goal in the first place. Like I said, everything was carefully manipulated. The whole situation was engineered to get the X-Files shut down and separate Mulder and Scully, because they must have been too close to discovering the truth.
And now one file remains unburned from the original X-Files: the case of Samantha Mulder. There's no way that's not going to be important later.
Also, a random aside that doesn't fit anywhere else in this post: Gibson looked like Harry Potter, right?
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