Our summer binge is long over but The X-Files is a show that I never stop thinking about. While not perfect, it’s a groundbreaking show that’s influence can be felt and seen in so many shows that followed it. So, because of that and because I’ve had so much fun doing this rewatch, I’m keeping the fun going and will keep on going until I hit the final episode of the revival. This time I’m going to do things slightly differently though as some weeks we’ll be combining episodes and in time, when we reach the movies and spin offs I’ll get into those as well. This week, we begin the third season. The third season of The X-Files has some real classics including the two parter I’m looking at today. “The Blessing Way” and “Paper Clip” blow the lid off of the mythology and get right into the nitty gritty of what we’ll see in the later mythology episodes. Let’s do this.
1. Mulder Lives!
Yes, of course, Mulder didn’t die. Could you imagine? When we last saw him in “Anasazi,” he seemed to have blown up in the boxcar with those deformed bodies we weren’t entirely sure were human or not. Albert Hosteen has found Mulder’s body and begun a healing ritual that is known among his people. During this, Mulder sees visions of his father and Deep Throat who both tell him that he has to turn back and keep doing his work and discover the truth. At this point, everyone believes Mulder to be dead, even the Cigarette Smoking Man believes that he took out Mulder once and for good. Scully, however doesn’t believe he’s really dead and she spends much of “The Blessing Way” trying to not only get back her job but also getting closer to the truth, whatever that is and it puts her directly at odds with Skinner. Mulder makes his reappearance in “Paper Clip” when he goes back to his apartment to find Skinner and Scully in a showdown, pointing guns at each other. Mulder’s believed death has a lot of ramifications in such a small amount of time and we get to see how everyone deals with it from Scully to The Lone Gunmen and even though we know he’s definitely alive (because he is a main character after all) it still hurts to see all that pain.
2. Skinner, Friend or Foe?
One of the most conflicted characters in all of The X-Files is Deputy Director Skinner. He’s a guy who cares a lot about his job, the rules of that job and delivering justice to those who have done wrong. In his time in this position though, that has put him in the line of site of CSM and his associates because of the rank he has and because Mulder is one of the agents he’s responsible for. This two parter is a real turning point for him and I think this is where he becomes a valued ally to Scully and Mulder but doesn’t quite lose who he is. After watching everything unfold, Skinner ends up with the tape and goes to Scully to try and figure out how to stop all this bloodshed and save them. He eventually loses the tape but is smart enough to come up with a backup plan that not only gets Scully and Mulder reinstated to the FBI but he also saves their lives. Mulder, in the end, isn’t exactly happy with the deal that’s made (we’ll get to that) but Skinner stands up to CSM and firmly cements himself against him and his people. The relationship between Mulder and Skinner will always be rough but in the end, we know that Skinner can be trusted and that starts here. Skinner is really an unsung hero in this whole story and he’ll do plenty of things that make us question him but he’s a good man and this is really the start of him being vital to the mythology.
3. The Conspiracy Revealed
There is a point to these two episodes and the entire conspiracy is basically told to us straight out over “Paper Clip.” There are still other parts to this that will come later but I’ll break it down. In “Paper Clip,” we are told of Operation Paperclip which was something that actually existed. It was an initiative that saw a lot of German scientists and doctors over to the US after World War II to basically mine the information and discoveries they had made. You can see how this would be incredibly problematic and straight up messed up. In the fictional world of The X-Files, one of these people is Victor Klemper. He experimented on the crashed alien ship and alien from Roswell and was using human test subjects to create alien/human hybrids. The Syndicate was gathering genetic material in case of the apocalypse or any other disaster and Mulder’s father helped gather that information. Klemper then used that information to continue his tests. When Mulder and Scully find the massive amounts of files hidden away in that mountain, they find both Scully’s file and Samantha Mulder’s file along with hundreds of thousands of others and it all goes back to the smallpox vaccine and abductees. But wait, there’s more! It turns out that Bill Mulder was troubled by all of this and the Syndicate made him choose which of his children would be taken away. Taken away by who? I know but I won’t spoil that just yet. What we know is that Samantha was the child that Bill Mulder chose and that decision has scarred his family forever. This is all incredibly bonkers but I love it.
Continued below4. Scully’s Woes
Scully has her own heap of issues to deal with in this saga. When she goes to the FBI for a meeting with Skinner, she goes through the metal detector and for some reason it keeps going off. She has the guard use the wand over her and it goes off near her neck. She’s very confused as to why and so she goes to a trusted doctor at the FBI about it. He says she probably got hit by something and didn’t even realize it. It turns out that there is something in her neck but it’s not shrapnel, it’s some kind of chip. She doesn’t remember how it got there and that leads her to go to hypno therapy at the request of her sister Melissa. She doesn’t learn a ton from it just yet and now she’s become a target and CSM wants her dead. He goes directly after her and uses Alex Krycek to do so. Krycek, who has a very punchable face, ends up shooting Melissa Scully instead of Dana Scully and it’s awful. Scully really goes through a lot in this two parter in a way that Mulder doesn’t and this whole thing with the chip in her neck will come back in a huge way in season 4.
5. What Comes Next
In the end, Skinner ensures that despite not having the tape anymore, Skinner ensures that the information isn’t dead. He has Albert Hosteen memorize everything and then Albert passed all that down to other people in his tribe so even CSM can’t kill everyone to cover it up without bringing heat on himself. This leads Scully and Mulder to come back to the FBI after relinquishing the tape and now that they’re at a sort of standstill here with CSM and The, they are safe. Scully gets to see Melissa before she passes away but barely and she feels a tremendous amount of guilt about it. Mulder tries to comfort her and Scully tells him that she’s more motivated than ever to keep digging into the X-Files because she knows the answers are in those cases. They hug (*screams forever*) and that’s how it ends. They’ve both lost someone so close to them. Mulder has lost his father and Scully lost her sister but they’ve found strength in each other and in this work. It’s such a pivotal moment for the two of them and while things are far from over, they have this moment now to regroup and get back to work.
