The end. Wait, that was season five. This is really the end. No more X-Files episodes after this. One movie. Some comics. And it's over.
Nine years of television, for us condensed into around ten months. And what a ride this has been. Let's see how it all turns out.
I want to write a little bit about what I expect from the finale before I actually watch it. I think Mulder will return. They've been talking about him all season, so they clearly wrote all those lines and scenes with the idea that he might eventually come back. I don't think they would kill him offscreen and resolve the rest in the show somehow. Plus, they knew it would be the series finale, so they kind of have to give the fans what they came for, which is one last look at Mulder and Scully, the ones who started it all.
I kind of think the cold open will end with a severely injured Mulder arriving on Scully's doorstep.
There will also be flashbacks, I'm sure. Maybe just memories, or maybe alternate views of things where we thought we knew what was happening, but now are going to be shown in a different light to reveal some secret of the X-Files universe. We'll probably see the Cigarette Smoking Man again. Maybe even the Lone Gunmen (R.I.P.) Maybe they'll dig up X and Deep Throat - maybe we'll find out their true identities.
I don't expect every question to be answered - there's only 86 minutes or so of episode here. But I'm looking forward to a satisfying conclusion to a series that, while it stumbled at times, especially in the later seasons, had a pretty solid nine year run, in my case just ten months.
And so, without further ado, I watch 'The Truth'.
And I'm back. Wait, this isn't live. OK, right, anyway.
This was actually somewhat of a letdown? Well, let me first say that I loved the final scene. I will always ship Mulder/Scully, and now it seems they can finally be together. I mean, sure, they'll have to stay off the FBI's radar for a while since at least someone there thinks they got blown up in New Mexico, but it seems they can do that together now. We'll see how that plays out in the future - i.e. the next movie.
Speaking of New Mexico, though, I checked the times in the episode. Mulder was broken out of prison some time after 11:21pm, and the card showing Mulder and Scully arriving at the Texas/New Mexico border is at 5:07am, less than 6 hours later. Which means Mulder drove that SUV about 270 miles per hour. Or is the inclusion of the 7:12am card at the FBI meant to imply that 5:07 is the next day and Mulder and Scully drove at a relatively normal speed and have been on the road for more than a day? Eh, whatever, it's not important.
Because as soon as they got to their destination, I knew exactly who they would find there. In fact, most of this episode was fairly predictable. Gibson showing up was somewhat of a shock, but in hindsight that, too should have seemed obvious. This episode was largely a salad bar. Everyone showed up again, even the still very dead Krycek and Lone Gunmen in Mulder's ... were they hallucinations? That's something I'm not sure of, because they were actually pretty helpful. Maybe he had the answers all along?
I suppose I was somewhat worried that we'd get the Seinfeld ending - a long trial to recap basically the entire series followed by a guilty verdict and Mulder's imprisonment. And wait, we kind of did get that, although here the trial was a total sham. Only Kersh seemed to redeem himself by assisting in Mulder's escape at the end. I'm not sure why he didn't just orchestrate a more elaborate scheme before the trial got underway, because that might have actually gone better and prevented him from having to reveal anything or expose Gibson.
I admit I was also disappointed by the cold open, which seemed largely contrived to put Mulder in a position where he would end up 'killing' Knowle Rohrer. But also, there was a problem here for the series in that the cold open started with Mulder as if he had been in the show all along and never left. I was expecting and hoping for more of a return of Mulder, not a story that he's suddenly in at the start. Sure, he returned to everyone else, but why not give the viewers that surprise, too?
In fact, there was very little here that was surprising. I knew Mulder and Scully wouldn't die because there's another movie. I suspected Doggett and Reyes wouldn't die, because they aren't important enough to die. I don't know what happened to Skinner, though I suppose there's a chance he was murdered off-screen. He just went into that meeting with the Deputy Director and that was it, his last appearance in the series.
I even expected Knowle Rohrer to actually be killed by the end of this. There are still other super soldiers out there, but he was one with a name and a bit of a character arc. I'm more disappointed that they didn't use what they learned in 'Trust No 1' to go to war with the super soldiers. I should have realised after nine seasons of this show that serialisation is not really a thing it does, and that there's no need to resolve the main plot.
Speaking of which, I might as well address the ending. Because what the hell was that? First of all, I guess it's a little surreal watching this after 2012. Not that I ever expected the world to end then anyway, but it's not even speculative now, it's just false. But also, you're bringing this up in the finale? There was plenty of time during the series to reveal this. That is what all the plots have been leading to? Well that means they still have ten years to stop it as of the end of the series, right? I know the second movie came out in 2008, so I guess it'll probably deal with the fallout from that knowledge.
But why do this? Finales are supposed to wrap things up, not open up huge new plot possibilities! Also, it retroactively makes almost every earlier plot regarding the alien invasion pointless. It didn't matter that the Syndicate got burned up at all. It didn't matter that they won't find William or that Mulder is alive. The date is set. It has been for centuries.
Maybe the writers just didn't know how to end the show, or didn't know how to write an episode that didn't introduce new mysteries.
I'm still glad it at least closed out with Mulder and Scully together. In a way, that's all that mattered. They have each other, and despite Mulder's misgivings about his quest, at least Scully has the confidence in him to keep him from getting down on himself for it. Together, they can prevent the end of humanity and the alien invasion.
The truth is still out there.
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