In The X-Files revival recap for the premiere, Mulder and Scully are called back into action but what they discover unravels their work to the very core….
By Damon Martin — Editor/Lead Writer
For nine seasons and two movies, The X-Files was one of the most fascinating and original shows on all of television, born in a time before the current “golden age” of the small screen where new ideas seem to be popping up constantly.
In a world where Mr. Robot is named the best TV series of the year, The X-Files of old might have gotten lost in the shuffle amidst a slew of well written, well acted and all together mind bending shows that currently occupy our airspace.
Thankfully, The X-Files was unique as unique could get while it was around and now the show is back for a six-episode event series that not only reboots the show but also retcons much of what we believed to be true at the end of the finale that aired back in 2002.
Nearly 14 years later, Mulder and Scully are back on the case but what unfolded in the first episode felt more like a reset as the team returned but they are now facing a much different and more dangerous world.
In the wake of 9/11 and a world teeming with equal parts of anger and fear, Mulder and Scully find out — to their shared horror — that everything they worked on for a decade was all an illusion. It was all a carefully orchestrated smokescreen that kept them busy and off track while the real evil was lurking behind every door — and they were human.
With that said, let’s recap the first episode of The X-Files revival titled “My Struggle”….
We Have to Go Back
Following a flashback sequence that Fox Mulder voices as he explains his obsession with the supernatural and the extraterrestrial after the abduction of his sister and a decade long investigation as part of the FBI working exclusively on cases known as the X-Files. Alongside Dr. Dana Scully, who was brought on board to do nothing more than debunk his outrageous theories, Mulder is now a man without a purpose after the X-Files were shut down and he was left jobless and alone. But his pursuit of the truth is still out there even if the people who listen to him have dwindled down to zero.
Enter Tad O’Malley.
An internet conspiracy theorist just this side of Alex Jones, who believes in aliens and how the government was behind 9/11 among a slew of other ideas that he spews forth every week on his talk show. O’Malley has uncovered something quite disturbing but he can only share it with two people he knows he can trust — Mulder and Scully — and after putting in a call to their old boss Walter Skinner it looks like a reunion is about to take place.
From the calls placed to both former agents it’s clear that the love they built over nine seasons has now dissipated and they are no longer together — and after this and Han and Leia, are we just supposed to stop believing love exists at all?!?
Still, Mulder and Scully are convinced to meet with O’Malley to see what kind of evidence he has that was worthwhile enough that Skinner would call them all together.
After Mulder and O’Malley have a pissing match about who knows more when it comes to alien abductions, the trio finally settles into a begrudging trust so they can get down to the business at hand — meeting a young woman named Sveta, who has apparently been kidnapped, experimented on, impregnated and then had her babies stolen by aliens.
Sveta has markings all over her stomach, flashes of memories from the times she was abducted and proof that this was all done by aliens. The proof is inside her DNA, which she’s willing to give to Scully to examine so everyone can know that she’s telling the truth. It looks like the X-Files have been (unofficially) re-opened!
The Truth is Out There
Scully takes Sveta for a blood test — while later giving herself one as well — to investigate her claims of alien DNA. As the doctor and patient sit together, Sveta reveals some more of her alien inherited powers such as the ability to read other people’s minds. Along the way, Sveta figures out a few key elements of Scully’s past including her relationship with Mulder but when she mentions William — Mulder and Scully’s son who was given up for adoption in the final season — this intuition hits a little too close to home.
Meanwhile, Tad takes Mulder to visit a secret location where scientists have built an ARV — alien replica vehicle — using technology stolen from an actual crash landing from more than 50 years ago (more on that in a minute).
Mulder is mystified to see that the replicated alien craft uses no actual fuel for power but instead uses ‘zero point energy’ thanks to a synthetic element called ununpentium. The scientists explain that this energy could have been used by humanity for the past 60 some years but the people behind harnessing the technology wanted us dependent on fossil fuels instead. Why exactly? Stay tuned.
Mulder also witnesses the alien craft literally disappearing before his very eyes and he’s officially on board with Tad to prove this latest conspiracy theory is true.
Not So Little Green Men
Considering what he’s just witnessed, Mulder is more convinced now than ever that something or someone has been behind these alien landings but he’s no longer seeking the little green men coming from the sky but instead the very real humans acting as puppeteers this entire time.
He revisits Sveta when he gets the truth out of the frightened girl — she wasn’t abducted by aliens but instead humans flying around in ARV’s disguised as invaders from above. She admits that her memories were wiped but some did remain and those that did were of her real, human captors who continuously experimented on her time after time after time.
Mulder is rattled.
Everything he believed is now in question because he’s seen the alien technology harvested by humanity and used to convince a young girl that she’s been abducted numerous times. Was this every alien abduction that he’s ever discovered? Have humans been behind it all this entire time?
Mulder rushes to the FBI building where he runs into Skinner and discovers that the room that once housed the X-Files has been ransacked and left in ruins. Sure it’s been 13 years since anybody worked there, but Mulder is disturbed that the case files are all gone and nobody seems to know where they are or who took them.
Mulder then meets with an elderly scientist, who confirms his worst suspicions that humans have been behind this entire ordeal from the beginning. The scientist as we learn is the same one we first saw in flashbacks throughout the episode that showed the real alien crash landing in Roswell and how government officials not only executed the lone alien who escaped the vehicle, but how they tested it and harvested the technology from the ship to make it their own.
The scientist wasn’t the most willing participant but he was also operating and experimenting on an alien life — something no other person in history has been able to do so he wasn’t about the turn down the opportunity.
Back in present day, the scientist tells Mulder that he’s finally close to uncovering the truth of it all — that humans have been behind everything since the first time someone claimed they were abducted by alient. Mulder is even more shaken than before and he needs to consult with his nearest and dearest.
While Mulder is scurrying for answers, Tad is putting the moves on Scully and she seems receptive until she gets a call from her old partner asking her to rush back to Sveta’s place where they will all get the answers they so richly deserve.
Tad lays out the mass conspiracy that’s been going on for a century now as a shadowy group of powerful men have secretly orchestrated catastrophic events for the past 50 years while quietly gaining control of the food and pharmaceutical industries for one goal that is slowly but surely coming to pass — the complete and utter destruction of the world as we know it so this all powerful group can take over and mold society into the kind of creation they deem fit. A world ruled by an iron fist where people’s rights are secondary to their control.
It all seems plausible to Tad and Mulder anyways but there’s just one problem — Scully reveals that the tests she conducted on Sveta came back negative. She’s not infected with any kind of alien DNA.
There’s More to This Story
The next day just as Mulder feels like his latest theory has been debunked and Scully is back at work where she’s bettering the world by helping kids with Microtia — a real deformity where children are born without ears — something very strange happens. Sveta has gone on the news and refuted everything she told Tad and claimed that he put her up to it to help prove his wild conspiracy theories. Soon after that, Tad’s show is off the air and the website that once housed his program has been taken down.
Mulder and Scully both realize that what they are watching is a massive cover up by the very people who have been pulling the strings this entire time.
Scully then tells Mulder something she couldn’t say the night before — she not only tested Sveta’s DNA but she compared the results to her own as well because she’s had more than a few encounters of her own. It took additional testing and some serious scrutiny to get the answers, but Scully reveals that she has markers in her DNA that matched Sveta. Meaning they both have alien DNA inside them from separate experiments but it’s all coming from the same source.
As this discovery is being made, the shadowy secret government rolls into Tad’s secret base where the human made ARV is blown to bits. Meanwhile, Sveta is fleeing from her home and trying to make a clean getaway except one of the ARV’s from the bad guys shows up over her car, probes her and then blows it up as well. All the evidence that Tad gathered has now been destroyed and he’s nowhere to be found.
Mulder and Scully know it’s time to start digging again and they get a shared message from Skinner telling them to get in touch because this is urgent.
And just before the episode ends, we find the Cigarette Smoking Man, charred but still very much alive after he was allegedly blown up during the series finale, and he’s just received some bad news — they’ve re-opened the X-Files.
And with that The X-Files revival is off and running!
Episode 2 will air on Monday night at 8pm ET on FOX and we will recap all six episodes of the X-Files revival this season!
