In The X-Files Revival recap, Mulder and Scully are in classic form as they hunt down a monster but find out that the scariest creatures sometimes lurk inside us all….
By Damon Martin — Editor/Lead Writer
It’s been great to have The X-Files back in our lives but no episode felt closer to the original series than the latest episode titled “Mulder & Scully Meet the Were-Monster”, which was written and directed by longtime show favorite Darin Morgan.
While the original story that started in the debut has barely been touched on since that time, the latest episode was the best and brightest of the new series, full of laughter and classic exchanges between Mulder and Scully throughout the hour.
The episode focused on Mulder’s continued gloomy outlook since realizing that the lights in the skies may not be aliens and the things that go bump in the night aren’t necessarily monsters. In fact he’s so disenchanted that he’s swearing off monsters all together — there’s no such thing after all.
Except the latest case coming into the X-Files involves a monster.
Of course it does.
With that said, let’s recap the latest episode of The X-Files titled “Mulder & Scully Meet the Were-Monster”….
Monsters Aren’t Real
“Spooky” Mulder has become “Melancholy” Mulder lately after coming to the harsh realization that the cases he pondered for all those years as part of the X-Files are now being explained away by lots of easy answers and apparently some serious ice. He’s tired of believing and has now become the skeptic, which is exactly what Scully was hired to do alongside him in the first place.
Just when it appears Mulder is going to rip the ‘I Want to Believe’ poster in two with his pencil tossing skills (which were rather good by the way), Scully comes in with a case — and it involves a monster sighting in Oregon.
A trio of bodies were found with their necks ripped out by a paint-huffing stoner couple and identified by an animal control officer named Pasha, who was out hunting strays when he ran across some kind of strange three-eyed or possibly two-eyed reptile like creature in the woods.
Mulder immediately chalks this up to an animal attack or possibly a serial killer — and he gave up hunting serial killers before he gave up monsters because they’re all the same. But Scully can’t quite get on the same page with him just yet.
The hunt continues after the creature is spotted and then bopped by a transgender prostitute at a local truck stop. When Mulder and Scully go to investigate, they once again run into Pasha, who was called in to hunt down another stray, as well as a dead body and then finally the creature itself. Mulder gives chase while his phone takes a million photos — and in a Fletch-like twist — none of them actually identify anything except the supposed creature’s neck, which suspiciously has a bite mark on it.
After this latest run in with whatever has been hunting people in the woods, Mulder is finally back to his old self. He’s theorizing all kinds of insane possibilities about this monster, who could be the next step of evolution or a step back, and throughout his entire rambling speech, Scully just keeps a sly smile on her face.
This is the way she prefers her Mulder.
So she believes him right?
No, Scully counters — he’s bat crap crazy.
Say Hello to Guy Mann
Back at the hotel that was something out of Psycho, Mulder hears shrieks coming from the lobby and when he finds the manager sucking down rubbing alcohol like it’s whisky, he realizes something must be wrong. Mulder comes to find out that the creature he’s been hunting has been staying in this same hotel — and he figures this out after discovering that the hotel manager has a secret passage way with animal heads in every room with the eyes cut out so he can spy on the guests.
Anyways, Mulder finds the creature’s room and inside he discovers a pill bottle with a prescription written out to ‘Guy Mann’. Mulder tracks down the psychiatrist, who proceeds to tell him that the patient he was seeing is battling with some sort of psychosis where he believes he becomes some kind of a giant lizard creature similar to one described in folklore, who terrorized villages until one day he was killed by a shard of green glass — the secret weapon against giant lizard creatures apparently.
But the twist was the creature then realized he just stabbed himself to death — meaning that all he did was kill the monster inside. It was a metaphorical story but one lost on Mulder, who really just wanted to track down this Guy Mann. Finally, the doctor tells Mulder that he told the patient to wander through a graveyard because that will definitely shake him loose once he realizes that no matter what he does or how crazy he gets, everybody eventually ends up there.
Quite the therapist huh?
Mulder finally heads to cemetery when he encounters Guy Mann for the first time and his story is certainly an interesting one.
Human Behavior
After trying to convince Mulder to stab him with a piece of green glass, Guy Mann finally explains his long, winding story of how he ended up here.
It seems Guy Mann isn’t the typical monster, who goes from human to creature but instead he was turned from creature to human when he was bitten by the real killer in this story.
As soon as Guy — who only eats insects until convincing himself to try out a burger for the first time as a human — transforms he’s overcome with all these human instincts. He needs to wear clothes. He needs a job. And he needs to buy things.
Guy accomplishes all of that but still doesn’t feel fulfilled in his new human life so he gets a dog and that seems to do the trick until he comes home one day from his job at “Smart Phones Is Us” and finds that the dog has ran away. Overcome with rage, Guy decides to hunt down the man who turned him into this ungodly human being only to find out that the person he’s seeking is the actual killer in the story — Pasha the animal control officer!
Guy continues with his story of humanity — including a sex filled fantasy involving Scully — but that one finally gets a bullshit call from Mulder. Still, Guy’s story seems pretty credible and he talks a good game. But Mulder is convinced that Guy is actually the murderer, who acted out these killings in ritualistic fantasy as ‘the monster’ just like his therapist suggested. Guy is so disgusted with Mulder’s theory after he reveals himself as ‘the fuzz’ that he runs away in protest.
During this entire ordeal where Mulder is interviewing Guy Mann, Scully has quietly solved the case entirely on her own and it seems her partner’s instincts in the beginning were right on the money.
It turns out that the bites on all the victims were human — not animal — and she traced them back to Pasha, the animal control agent.
Scully not only finds him, but captures him on her own without much assistance from Mulder, who was off talking to Guy Mann at the time. It seems Scully’s original instincts were correct — this was all just the work of some maniacal serial killer who was masking his crimes with a conveniently placed monster in the same story.
But just as Mulder was ready to slink back into skeptic mode, he realizes that part of Guy’s story made sense when he figured out that Pasha was really the killer.
He quickly tracks down Guy Mann in the woods again and this time the strange wanderer is stripping off his clothes and ready to give up this human life once and for all. Guy experienced the best and worst of humanity and he wants no part of it so he’s going to go back into his 10,000 year hibernation while hoping that when he awakens, the bite that made him turn in the first place will have worn off.
Just when it looks like Guy is just another schizophrenic with an overactive imagination, he turns from human to lizard right in front of Mulder’s eyes before shaking the FBI agent’s hand and saying that he was glad to have met him during his brief time as a man. Mulder agrees while his eyes remained awe struck at what he just witnessed.
Monsters do exist.
Mulder is back, ladies and gentlemen, Mulder is back.
