This was just meant to be a season finale? Really?
I feel like most of 'Requiem' played like a series finale, rather than just another end of the season. I didn't look, but maybe there was some question as to the show's renewal at this point? By the end of the episode, it looked like they kind of wrote an alternate ending 'just in case' they were renewed. And obviously they were, so I'm now looking forward to seeing where this leads in season eight.
But I say it played mostly like a series finale because they revisited the site of the very first X-File shown in the series. And not only that, but all the characters from that returned and are grown up or just older now. The Lone Gunmen were here and working with Skinner. And Marita who we haven't seen in a couple of seasons. And naturally, Krycek and the Smoking Man, the latter looking to be in not such good shape, especially after being pushed down the stairs.
I'm amused, though, at the fact that Marita and Krycek refer to the Smoking Man as the Smoking Man. I don't know that we've ever heard the show's villains refer to him at all. I would have thought maybe they'd have a different name for him, or he'd have given them an alias, but apparently everyone knows him as the Smoking Man.
But there's still not a whole lot left to explore now. And Skinner has seen the alien spacecraft, even if he's not entirely sure what he was looking at. I feel like they were trying to close out pretty much everything from the show's mytharc. But now where does that leave them?
With the search for Mulder, obviously. I think this is the third season finale that's ended with Mulder presumed dead or missing. 'Anasazi' had him apparently incinerated by a much healthier Smoking Man and 'Gethsemane' had Scully identifying his body. So I figure the next season will start with a brief search, and then like when Scully returned in 'One Breath', Mulder will be back, only hopefully he'll have some stories to tell about his experience.
We're also left with - again - the threat of the X-Files being shut down, which seems to happen more or less every season now. But this time it seems they're attempting it without explicitly shutting down the X-Files, just making it more difficult for Mulder and Scully to do their jobs. And that's what pushes Mulder to allow himself to be abducted. He's clearly tired of the bureaucracy, ready to move on to something else. Which is really weird because there are two seasons left.
Perhaps the sudden bizarre alliance between ... well, everybody (seriously, that was a weird scene), can lead to a new and exciting story for the remaining seasons and can keep Mulder involved and interested, assuming the aliens return him in one piece.
Of course, they could also use that to make a clean break from the alien storyline, or at least what we've seen of it so far, and come up with a new paranormal plot arc (also, it's 2000 now, which means serialised television is becoming a lot more popular, so maybe the last two seasons will have slightly more episodes that connect). Bring Mulder back from his abduction (is it really abduction if it's essentially voluntary?) and pretty much forget about the entire plot up to this point. Basically reset the series in a way. It seems unlikely, since I know there are only two seasons left, but still, it could happen. They did it on Fringe with the fifth season and it didn't quite work, but we'll see what they decide to do here.
Especially now that there's another twist in Scully's mysterious pregnancy. Wasn't she sterile? Didn't the government or the aliens or whoever harvest all her ova? Also, are they implying what I think they're implying? I already kind of assumed that Mulder and Scully had slept together in 'all things', though it was pointed out to me that we don't see her actually get up out of the bed, and since she had fallen asleep on the couch at the end of the episode, it's unlikely anything happened that night. But maybe the next. Either way, is there any other possible candidate for the father than Mulder? I'm pretty sure it's not Frohike.
To some extent, I'm wondering if they were trying to make a clean break and sort of reset the series starting in the next season. Everything has kind of seemed different since they killed off the Syndicate in 'One Son' anyway. As much as this series has any continuity, even the mytharc episodes from the beginning of season seven haven't really been revisited. I was hoping they'd explore more of the idea that human life and human religion on earth actually originated from aliens, but now it seems like that's been mostly forgotten, except for a passing mention in this episode, so I doubt they're going to come back to it.
Fortunately for me, I don't have to wait very long to find out.
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