Case 08, File 20: Essence

 AKA: He's Not Exactly Captain America Here

Since the death of the Conspiracy, The X-Files' overarching plot has lacked a certain sense of urgency. It's not that the series actual stakes have gone anywhere, the invasion is still theoretically impending. But without the human players working in and around that, those stakes have never seemed more nebulous, and I think the series knows it. They needed a new hook to build their Myth Arc episodes around, and with only a little bit of digging, they found one.

Case 8.5, File 11: The Lying Game

 AKA: Oh Boy That Title Does Not Inspire Confidence

One of the core appeals to making a spinoff as opposed to an original show is that existing in the same universe as the show allows you to drag in characters and elements from the show you're spinning off from without having to introduce or establish them, making for fairly efficient storytelling, as well as cross-show appeal and easy marketing. It sure would suck then, if you went to all that effort and then the reviewer of this episode got completely distracted when talking about the episode by a personal tangent.

Case 08, File 19: Alone

AKA: Till Now, I Always Got By On My Own

While The X-Files has some meta jokes and commentary, it is not, as a rule, a very meta show. It has a handful of episodes that have meta elements, but outside of Hollywood A.D. it's not really something they do very often, they're not Community. But, well, as I've noted, Duchovny is only back for a few episodes and is preparing to wander back away, with no guarantee he'll do any more appearances outside of myth arc episodes. This was, as far as anyone knew, the last Monster of the Week with Mulder in it (and indeed it was, until the revival). So perhaps understandably, the series wanted to take a moment to have a bit of a victory lap.