Case 11, File 10: My Struggle IV

 AKA: The End. No, For Real This Time

The end of Season 10 and the beginning of Season 11 were marked by the series giving us a huge, life changing cliffhanger, which it then had to take back rapidly. And I don't want to speak too broadly, but my impression is that everyone hated it. If I was the creator of The X-Files, that would leave me with one major goal for what is the ultimate series finale; Don't go out on an incredibly unsatisfying cliffhanger you'll have to walk back if you get another season.

Our episode opens with a quick monologue from Jackson about his childhood. He had a pretty standard "Kid with super powers" backstory; Powers manifested as a child, he started to learn how to control them, slightly delinquent teenage years, decided to stop using his powers cause he was being monitored by the government. Of course then the events of Ghouli happened and that brings us up to speed.

Our episode starts properly with a flash forward to Mulder meeting Jackson at a hotel, only for us to check in on Skinner meeting with Kersh. Skinner gets told that Mulder is going on Tad O'Malley's show to tell the world about the upcoming plague and thus Mulder and Scully are out and the X-Files is shut down. Skinner meets with Scully who tells him that Mulder is with Jackson, and also she's the one talking to Tad.

We then flash back to the day before, where Mulder and Scully get a call from Reyes, who tells them she thinks she's found Jackson and that he'll be at a warehouse in Maryland. Scully thinks it's wrong from her psychic bond with Jackson but Mulder has to give it a shot. Turns out Scully was right though, because Jackson isn't there. In fact, the people there are the dudes who want to colonize space. Mulder doesn't take this super great, and kills all the dudes.

But Scully has already tracked down Jackson via him winning a bunch of lotteries. Mulder arrives just in time to follow a truck he got in, but Jackson uses his mind powers to fuck with the truck driver and evade Mulder. Mulder, kinda fed up, goes to Norfolk to wait for him, while Jackson hitches a ride with...a dude who was following Mulder with a tracker on his car. I'd say well done, but he explodes the dude when he gets to Norfolk, so who cares?

"Hey dude, if you wanna buy ecstasy it's two doors down."

Jackson goes to see his two ex girlfriends and says some shitty teenage boy stuff and reveals that he's staying in a hotel out of town. Mulder goes and sees them too and eventually gets the name of the hotel. But as soon as Mulder shows up the dudes following him do too, and Jackson explodes them and bolts. Back at the FBI, Scully calls up Tad and tells him about the upcoming plague, and says that shit's fucked, while Cigarette Smoking Man calls up Skinner and demands he bring him Jackson.

That brings us back to the present and Skinner and Scully go out to find Jackson (with Skinner eventually filling Scully in on the "Jackson was created by Cigarette Smoking Man thing), while CSM gets a hold of the tracker on Mulder's car. Mulder finds out Jackson is heading to the docks, Scully and Skinner follow Mulder, as does CSM, so everyone meets at the docks. Scully runs into Mulder in the warehouse they find themselves in, but Mulder assures Scully that she can't help Jackson but that Jackson loves her. Oh and then Mulder shows up. Oh Jackson, you mind controlling scamp.

Cigarette Smoking Man arrives and tries to run down Skinner, but Reyes gets shot by Skinner before Skinner gets crushed by the car. So that's uh, two major characters just dead, huh? Outside, Jackson (looking like Mulder) has a quick confrontation with CSM, who shoots him in the head, before real-Mulder shows up and shoots CSM a bunch of times. And so, our episode and show end with Scully telling Mulder that Jackson wasn't their son, but also that she's pregnant again. Oh and I guess a stinger revealing Jackson is alive.

To answer the burning question on your lips, no this episode is not very good. It's probably a better ending than Season 10 gave us (although that is not a high bar to jump over) but its just a weak and drab episode. I don't know if The X-Files ending with a bang was ever possible or even desirable, but I have to believe it was capable of ending better than this limp little whimper.

"Two Mulders? Wait, is this the fantasy or the nightmare version of it?"

The most depressing attempt the episode makes at feeling climactic is in offing a few characters, and honestly, it feels a little cheap. Reyes may not have been with the series at its peak, but she was a main character, and she deserved better than getting unceremoniously shot by Skinner and forgotten about. And Skinner HAS been with the series, through thick and thin, and seeing him just die randomly to getting hit by a car straight fucking sucks. It's not like the series is above letting its major characters get big exits, X wrote a name in his own blood, Krycek got a full speech. Let Skinner go out doing something, dammit.

The other major death is the Cigarette Smoking Man, and I'm sorry, I not to be this blunt, but I just straight don't fucking buy it at this point. CSM has been shot, flung down stairs and, lest we forget, blown up by a fucking missile, and he's always shrugged it off just in time for a dramatic reveal. It's like the X-Files being shut down, a meaningless attempt to feel climactic that only draws attention to how many times they've pulled this exact stunt.

And it's a shame because it does draw away time from the stuff that I think the episode should be about. Jackson might not be a nice character, but he is a believable character, and I wanted to see more from him. He seems like a fairly reasonable interpretation of what would happen if you handed a teenager super powers; He's neither a monster nor a great hero, but just kind of a petulant kid and that might be enough of a hook to make him engaging, or at least engaging enough to follow for an episode.

The other thing that gets left in the dust of the plot's relentless drive towards the end is the emotional landscape of the characters. Scully gets the news that Jackson was created by the Cigarette Smoking Man as part of a 2 sentence information dump from Skinner, and then she barely has 5 seconds to emotionally react before seeing Mulder's car speeding past and following it (in a starkly literal metaphor for the plot overriding the emotional moments). Even the reveal that Scully's pregnant again gets dropped with no foreshadowing and barely any time to let it land.

"It sounds impossible, but the writers really did go back to the "I'm miraculously pregnant" well."

But if there's one thing that the episode does manage to get right it's understanding what the fanbase wants to see out of its characters. Maybe it has to massacre a few secondary characters, but it does know that we want to see Mulder and Scully back together, and while it doesn't quite have the guts to retcon the retcon about Jackson's parentage, giving Mulder and Scully a new kid does feel a little like an apology.

And so, that's it. The series ended, no season 12 has been announced or even hinted at, and given that Gillian Anderson has definitively stated she doesn't want to do anymore, I find it highly unlikely it will return in any form. And rightly so, she's the only actor who stuck through the entire thing, if she doesn't want to, that should be it. So maybe, for now, knowing that our leads are together, are safe, and are capable of finding safety and happiness with each other, can be enough of an ending for now.

When I first started talking about the revival seasons, I mentioned the big shadow that Twin Peaks: The Return casts over The X-Files' revival. But I don't know if that's fair; Twin Peaks: The Return was a startlingly singular vision, created by an exceptional artists whose control over his craft and style had only grown over the decades Twin Peaks was gone, and it ended on a note that emphasized that seeking the past, seeking to right all the wrongs and make everything perfect, will eventually destroy you. There is a lesson in that for The X-Files, but not one I think it's capable of learning.

The X-Files, for all that it is my favorite show (and it is) never had the level of artistic vision required to pull a theme like that off, and whatever you can say about Chris Carter, he is not an artist on the level of David Lynch. So maybe now, with all 218 episodes, 13 episodes of a spinoff and 2 movies behind us, we can look back at The X-Files as it is; A messy, often highly inconsistent show, plotted on the fly and held together, from its peaks to its valleys, by its two leads. And maybe, under that viewpoint, a messy, inconsistent, clearly hacked together at the last second, finale that nevertheless does manage to hand its two leads a happy ending, is fitting. It might not be perfect, but it does fit with the show taken as a whole.

And maybe that's enough.

Case Results:

• Best Episode: The Lost Art of Forehead Sweat
• Worst Episode: My Struggle III

Case Notes:

• Holy shit. Holy shit. That's it. That's the end. I...I really can't say how insane it is to have finished this whole project. I'm so grateful for everyone who read, who shared, who commented (even if you didn't like it). I'm still not sure what I'm going to do next, but I genuinely started tearing up during those last two paragraphs. I'm gonna write a short thing about my relationship to The X-Files in the next couple days, so watch for that. And thank you again. So much.
• This previously on is like, 2 full minutes long.
• Okay, letting Jackson do a opening monologue is a decent payoff to letting Mulder, Scully and CSM do it.
• Jackson sees CSM in his visions already hates him.
• I like the vision where Cigarette Smoking Man says that he never envisioned killing Mulder, haven't you tried to kill him like 10 times dude?
• Kersh opening a conversation "Have you seen the internet" got a big laugh out of me.
• Kersh just drags Skinner in to tell him "Hey, I'm kicking Mulder and Scully out and closing the X-Files, for like the 20th time."
• The person who went on Tad O'Malley's show to tell them shit was fucked being Scully is fun.
• I honestly keep forgetting Reyes is working for the bad guys now until the show reminds me, it was such a weak plot point.
• Oh is that one of the dudes who wants to bring humanity into space? Oh I definitely didn't recognize him.
• I still don't totally dig the way they turned Mulder and Scully into ninjas, but I'll admit the way he put down the space guy was pretty rad.
• Random sequence of Jackson being a parkour master is oddly placed but entertainingly shot.
• Finding Jackson via clusters of people winning the lotto is really good, it's clever.
• The sequence intercutting Jackson fucking with the truck driver, Mulder chasing them and Scully calling Tad is a really good one, it feels tense even if it doesn't add up to much.
• That said Jackson, maybe don't scare the hell outta people who are driving trucks.
• Jackson moving heaven and earth to go talk to the girls he was seeing is endearingly childish, it feels like something an authentic teenager would do. On that note I also kinda dig his kinda rambling rant with Sarah, it's kinda gross and manipulative in the way teenagers often are, but it also feels like a realistic teenage response to the situation.
• Jesus, Jackson FUCKED the dude who was tracking him UP
• In the first episode he was in, Jackson had some subtle mind powers, now he's just exploding cops.
• Hey, Skinner actually gets to do something this episode.
• The episode goes to a lot of lengths to get everyone down to the docks for the finale.
• Jackson using Mulder's face to have a conversation with Scully is actually pretty decent, especially since they don't overplay their hand.
• The reveal that the Mulder shot in the flashforward is actually Jackson is pretty obviously where the episode has always been going, but the scene is handled well.
• Jackson surviving a bullet to the head in the end isn't the note I'd go out on.
• As always, these reviews are supported by my Patreon. I only have 4 Patrons right now, but Kerry,  JL, Cameron and Maria, your support means the world to me. Thank you so much, and I hope you like what comes next, when I figure out what that is.